When you open up your brand-new Microsoft Office 97 productivity software suite, you find an exciting new program: Outlook, Microsoft's cutting-edge e-mail tool and personal information manager. With its workgroup collaboration features, including task and contact lists, Outlook is one program you want to take advantage of right away. Use your e-mail to create contact lists and maintain your calendar; use your contact list and calendar to generate e-mail and schedule appointments; keep electronic sticky notes that can serve as reminders, and track it all with a nifty journaling feature. Outlook lets you drag and drop items from one module to another for instant integration and can seamlessly interact with the rest of the Microsoft Office 97 productivity suite as well. Microsoft Outlook For Dummies shows you how. Plus, with author Bill Dyszel's expert guidance, you get practical, how-to tips on effectively integrating Outlook with all your other programs, so you can improve accuracy while cutting redundancy.

It is not for nothing that the Dummies series is so successful: More often than not (this book is a case in point), Dummies books deliver clear, concise introductions to complex software. This guide starts off with an introduction to Outlook's interface with details on how to use the package's drag-and-drop capabilities. It then teaches you how to manage files and folders and create new views and forms. Additional chapters focus on Outlook's Inbox and Contacts features, and show you how to work with the Calendar, Notes, Journal, and Tasks sections. The final section of the book, "The Part of Tens," offers ten of almost everything: shortcuts, things Outlook can't do, ways to use Office 97 for snappier e-mail, ways to use Outlook and the Internet, and so on. The author provides a lot of detail and ease-of-use tips while making your introduction to the package as painless as possible.