Outlook 98 review

The corporate version uses the Exchange global address book for email names and addresses, as well as the Contacts folder. The Internet-only version doesn't have this confusion and will happily use the Contacts folder for everything. As you might expect, the Contacts folder integrates with other Office applications so you can use Word to get names and addresses from Outlook either for individual letters or for a mail merge.

One annoying fact about Outlook's contacts handling is that it's still one-dimensional. You can't easily have many contacts for a company and have them all share the same address details. There is a fudge - a menu item labelled 'New contact from same company'. This copies some details from the current contact into a new one, so you just have to add the name, phone number and email address. This doesn't help if the company moves offices or changes its phone number; you'd still need to find all the contacts you have for that company and edit their records by hand.

Managing tasks

Task management goes a little beyond the standard to-do lists in Outlook 98. Apart from managing your own current list of tasks, you can assign work to others and track their progress. You can allocate start and due dates to tasks, say how long they should take and assign priorities. Tasks can, of course, be listed in many ways, grouping them by priority, category or owner. You can also see your tasks on the Task Pad, which sits next to the Calendar or in Outlook Today.

The email facilities include the standard Inbox, Outbox and Sent Items folders, and you can create your own email folders too. The extremely handy Rules Wizard will sort your incoming and outgoing mail into those folders based on plain English rules that you create. There are a number of pre-set rules, including some for Junk Mail and Adult Content. In addition, you can even have Outlook 98 reply automatically to email with templates you create - useful for general acknowledgement emails.

Email can be sent and received in plain text, rich text or HTML format. When you reply to someone you'll reply in the same format that they wrote to you, by default. Be warned that HTML mail and rich text take up far more space than plain text, and many people won't thank you for sending 12Kb of background picture and coloured text when a 1Kb plain text message would do just as well. If you use the corporate version of Outlook 98, all your messages will be sent via your chosen default email service, which is likely to be your Exchange mailbox. If you use the Internet version, outgoing replies are sent via the same email account that received the original item, and new outgoing mail is sent via your default account. These choices can be modified if you wish.

Most of the other email options in Outlook 98 are fairly standard. Attachments can be sent using UUEncoding or MIME; messages that are replied to or forwarded can include the original quote from it and so on. You can set up multiple signature files, including colour and font information for rich text and HTML mail. Finally, mail addresses and Web URLs in the text of an email are automatically hyperlinked, letting you send mail or jump to a Web page just by clicking on the shortcut.

Everything within Outlook is form-based, so every form can be customised by you or by a system administrator. Existing forms can be copied and then modified to create new forms which can be published on your corporate email system for anyone to use. This can form the basis of simple or complex workflow applications - anything from a 'While you were out' message to a full timesheet or holiday request system.