Microsoft Outlook is a powerful personal information manager. It includes an appointment calendar, forms for entering information about appointments, contacts, and tasks, a journal, and electronic sticky notes. Use Outlook to keep track of your appointments and meetings, manage your business and personal contacts, maintain a to-do list, and keep a record of your activities (files you work on, phone calls you make, and email you send and receive).

Outlook is also an email client, which means you can use it to send and receive email. This enhances Outlook’s value as a personal information manager. Here are some examples that show how:

• Use Outlook to store information about your contacts, including their email addresses, then use Outlook to keep in touch with them via email.

• Organize a meeting by finding a time when all your co-workers are available, then send them an invitation to your meeting. The invitation goes out as email (and if they accept, Outlook places the meeting on their appointment calendar for them).

• Send a task request to a colleague. Outlook will let you know (via email) if your colleague accepts the task and, if so, when he or she completes it.

Outlook's interlocking pieces work together well, and Outlook works well with the other applications in the Office suite.

Box shots reprinted with permission from Microsoft Corporation.

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