Microsoft Office Outlook 2007
Manufacturer: Microsoft Corp. Part number: 543-03007
- More product information:
- Editors' review
- User reviews
- Specifications
- Manufacturer info
- Bottom Line:
- If you work with Microsoft Outlook on a daily basis, this upgrade can make scheduling simpler and e-mailing more interesting. Still, we wish Instant Search and e-mail rendering were better.
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CNET editors' review
Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 price range: $81.49 - $119.99
- Reviewed by: Elsa Wenzel
- Reviewed on: 02/14/2007
- Released on: 01/30/2007
The good: Microsoft Outlook 2007 lets you drag and color-code tasks and e-mails on its calendar; allows image editing within messages; speeds up searches; integrates with other Office software; adds straightforward e-mail security warnings; e-mails can display previews of Office files; offers new contact cards; and most commands remain in place from Outlook 2003.
The bad: Outlook 2007's new Instant Search didn't find recent content within Inbox subfolders; Outlook uses Word 2007's HTML for rendering, which leaves some formatted messages looking lopsided; expensive tech support.
The bottom line: If you work with Microsoft Outlook on a daily basis, this upgrade can make scheduling simpler and e-mailing more interesting. Still, we wish Instant Search and e-mail rendering were better.
If you depend upon Microsoft Outlook's e-mail and calendar, the 2007 version offers welcome changes that can save time and keep you on your toes. Microsoft renovated all of its Office applications for 2007, but many of these updates simply repackage existing features. By contrast, Outlook 2007 offers new features that could change the way you work. Admittedly, many of these tweaks are for ease of use and don't exactly reinvent this desktop e-mail client, but the changes enhance what Outlook already did well and make for a more elegant and practical experience overall.
Our installation of various Office editions on Windows XP computers took between 10 and 20 minutes, which was quicker than prior editions of Office. You'll have to be online to access services later, such as Help and How-To as well as Clip Art and document templates. Our review of Microsoft Office 2007 details the installation process and the ingredients of each edition. Under the hood, the Outlook Connector is mostly the same as in the past for setting up your e-mail. If you run Outlook 2007 on Windows XP, you'll either have to install its new Instant Search separately or keep the older search engine. Windows Vista users already have Instant Search through the included Windows Desktop Search.
Interface
Luckily for those upgrading, Microsoft has spiffed up the formerly drab, gray look of Outlook without rearranging most of its commands. Unlike the 2007 versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, Outlook 2007's main interface shuns the Ribbon toolbar and keeps its File, Edit, and other menus. That makes it easy to jump right in and start using Outlook 2007 if you're accustomed to an earlier version. The Ribbon emerges once you begin to compose a message or an appointment. Within the main window, a new, collapsible To-Do bar summarizes your current appointments and tasks for the day.
When you compose an e-mail message, the tabbed Ribbon appears, allowing you to format the text as well as attach files, contacts, and images. A similar window appears when you schedule appointments, set up tasks, or edit individual contacts. Under the Options tab, you must choose HTML or Rich Text if you want to attach images. If you're working in plain text, the buttons for dressing up messages will fade. As with the layout of other Office 2007 programs, contextual tabs appear and disappear based upon your work at hand; for example, the picture-formatting menu shows up only once you've clicked on an image. Getting used to this can take some practice.
Features
After using Outlook 2007 for several weeks, we found it hard to return to Outlook 2003--largely because we'd grown used to the ease of dragging e-mails to the calendar and color-coding them for scheduling, as well as seeing each day's tasks appear within the calendar. These little changes can be a big deal if Outlook is your messaging and scheduling nerve center.
Items that you flag for follow up appear within the To-Do bar, and there's more flexibility in flagging. Just right-click the flag icon on an Outlook e-mail, and you can specify precisely when to follow up on a message. Forget to mark an item as complete? It rolls over to the next calendar day until you're finally finished. Right-click the rounded box that represents the Categories column for a specific e-mail message, and you can color-code a message with multiple colors. This allows you to view scheduled items as a "heat map" on the calendar for a quick visual signal of what's hot on your to-do list. You can also set a Quick Click for Outlook to label messages with the color of your choice by default when you click on its Categories box.
If you receive a message that sets off Outlook's alarm bells, the e-mail client prevents images and other suspicious content from loading until you allow it. Just click the warning message to open options for downloading the attached pictures and managing other security settings. When we clicked Change Automatic Download Settings from a suspicious Outlook e-mail message, we were taken to the Trust Center to pick which types of content to permit. Microsoft leaves the strictest settings on by default. You'll also receive a warning when you forward or reply to an e-mail message that Outlook's security settings have flagged.
Message composition is improved, especially when formatting an e-mail. Outlook's use of the tabbed Ribbon commands expands its capabilities. You can insert a photograph and preview live changes to it from a pull-down menu of styles. You can highlight text within an Outlook message, right-click on it, and quickly translate or find synonyms for the selected word. Still, it took us a couple of days to get used to the tabbed layout when we were writing e-mail messages.
Outlook 2007 lets you add RSS feeds within your list of folders so you can read your favorite news and blogs. You can match the feeds with those selected within Internet Explorer 7 but not within other browsers such as open-source Firefox.
Integration among applications has improved throughout Office 2007. For instance, if you receive a PowerPoint presentation attached to an e-mail in Outlook, right-clicking on the file name lets you preview a slide show. Similarly, you can preview documents from Word and Excel 2007 within an Outlook message. You can even highlight Excel columns and rows, although you can't edit them.
However, there are some downsides to Outlook 2007. We wish that it had tagging so we could organize e-mails by content, as Gmail does, rather than within folders. We found Outlook's Search Folders function for filtering less than intuitive. Also, many of the newsletters to which we subscribed were missing images and suffered from gaping blank spaces when read in Outlook 2007. In Outlook 2003, the same HTML e-mails looked polished and tight. That's because Outlook 2007 uses the same HTML standards as Word 2007 rather than those of Internet Explorer to render messages. Designers of newsletters and targeted e-mail advertising may have problems creating Outlook 2007-friendly content.
We like that Instant Search lets you pull down a list of criteria to drill down within a search, and it retrieved data faster than Outlook 2003 did. Instant Search is supposed to scour your messages, appointments, and RSS feeds, but it failed to find words within recent messages we had filed into Inbox subfolders.
Service and support
Boxed editions of Microsoft Office 2007 include a decent, 174-page Getting Started guide. During the first 90 days, you can contact tech support for free, and help at any time with any security-related or virus problem is also free. Beyond that, paid support costs a painfully high $49 per telephone call or e-mail. Luckily, Microsoft's online help is excellent, although we're displeased that Microsoft and other software makers are increasingly promoting do-it-yourself assistance. You can also pose questions to the large community of Microsoft Office users via free support forums and chats. Microsoft Office Diagnostics tool, included with Office 2007, is designed to detect and repair problems if something goes haywire.
Conclusion
Light users of Outlook are unlikely to need the changes offered by the 2007 version, but they may still benefit from the improved scheduling, message composition, and security. If Outlook is the nerve center of your digital communications and scheduling and you've wished for more flexibility in its older versions, then we recommend this upgrade.
User reviews
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Side-by-side test indicates "stay with 2003"
by keithmanning on February 16, 2007
Pros: Handling RSS feeds
Cons: Speed and HTML rendering
Summary: I have two identical machines on my desk. I have been using Office 2007 on one and 2003 on the other for several months (2007 Beta and now the final ...
Summary: I have two identical machines on my desk. I have been using Office 2007 on one and 2003 on the other for several months (2007 Beta and now the final version).
Outlook has been the big disappointment in Office 2007. It is very slow and the rendering of HTML messages can only be described as atrocious.
Having the two versions side-by-side as you do real work helps to sharpen the contrast. I have tried to force myself to use the Office 2007 machine for all Office apps so that I can make the transition. This has worked fine for Word and PowerPoint. However, Excel and Outlook have problems. Excel has incompatibilites which means for workbooks I need to share I am sticking with 2003. In the case of Outlook, when I am busy or tired I go back to 2003 because the speed and awful HTML rendering of 2007 is depressing.
I have been doing my side-by-side trial for long enough now. My conclusion? I am going to use Outlook 2003 from now on. I will keep a version of Outlook 2007 on one of the machines so I can take a look at updates and new features. But, at the end of the day, Office tools are supposed to make you more productive - and Outlook 2003 beats 2007 in making me productive.
The article refers to benefits of Outlook 2007 in areas like converting emails to meetings with drag-and-drop. I would strongly recommend the add-in Clear Context. It gives you those features and more with Outlook 2003 or 2007, thus nullifying these small advantages of 2007.
Keith8 out of 8 users found this user opinion helpful.
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Not Worth Upgrading as a Stand Alone
by EtoileBrilliant on February 16, 2007
Pros: Looks better than Outlook 2003
Cons: Migrating normal.doc template from 2003 is anything but easy
Summary: Having purchased Office 2007 for the purpose of getting Excel 2007, I decided to give my Outlook the "2007" treatment as it was part of the Small Business Edition. There'...
Summary: Having purchased Office 2007 for the purpose of getting Excel 2007, I decided to give my Outlook the "2007" treatment as it was part of the Small Business Edition. There's definitely a nicer feel and as many other's have said, you can't help thinking that Steve Bulmer threw a copy of Apple's OS at the MS developer and said "copy this" - right down to the choice of default typeface.
My feeling is that Outlook 2003 probably wasn't due for an upgrade but they added one in since it was part of the Office suite. Having said that, out of all the Office 2007 products I have used, it's the one that has changed least. There are no "Ribbons", menus seems to be a la 2003.
I'm a big user of styles and autotext in Word and liked the idea of using Word 2003 as my email editor. I maybe wrong but this option seems to have been dropped. Whilst this is no bad thing in itself, it appears that both Outlook 2007 and Word 2007 use two separate normal templates (Normal.docm and NormalEmail.docm) which makes it impossible to synchronise styles.
My advice, don't buy the upgrade as a stand alone but use it if you get it as part of the Office 20074 out of 4 users found this user opinion helpful.
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Ridiculous, not worth a cent
by Johannes Franke on October 10, 2007
Pros: Slight improvements in the object model
Cons: Ugly GUI, slowest Outlook ever, unstable, lossy
Summary: This is from a developer's point of view. I've recently read that PC Resellers can now offer downgrading from Vista to XP for free, with good reason. Maybe ...
Summary: This is from a developer's point of view. I've recently read that PC Resellers can now offer downgrading from Vista to XP for free, with good reason. Maybe one should consider to request such a downgrade model for Office as well. I have developed for Outlook since 2000, and must say that Outlook 2007 is the worst version ever. Much of my time has gone into finding ways to avoid built-in bugs but it was never as bad as now. Once I thought Outlook is great, now I'd change to Thunderbird a.s.a.p. if only I wouldn't work at a business concentrating on extensions for Outlook and Exchange. Maybe Microsoft's strategy will force me to change my job as this is getting more and more frustrating.
Let me give you some details:
* the performance is just ridiculous. It starts up as if I had a USB 1.1 device as my main hard drive. Opening dialogs on my 3,4GHz / 2GB machine happens in multiple layers, one can almost see the window frame being painted line by line. There is actually nothing that happens about fast.
* what comes out is plain ugly. I hate the new GUIs from Microsoft. The main window hasn't changed much in its contents, but what about sub-windows such as e-mails, contacts, etc.? A maximum waste of space on top of the window, changing all the time so one never gets used to it, hiding options that were earlier easily found in the menu bar... oh by the way, the menu bar is now hidden for some reason, and appears only if one of the shortcuts of the main menu entries is pressed on the keyboard. A great innovation, Microsoft! So, before using a menu, better learn by heart all of its shortcuts. By the way, some things were just removed, e.g. contacts and categories on task items (they were positioned at the bottom of the window in OL2003). And no hint on how to get that information back on the screen. Thanks!
* working with group calendars was slow on OL2003 already. Now, it's all hourglass! Watch other's appointments pop up one by one on the month sheet. In one second, five items appear, five more the next second, and so on. You never know when the horror's over... probably if nothing has happened for a minute or so. And with all this new slowness, Microsoft didn't even take the time to fade items in softly, that way there would at least be some eye candy for the waiting period.
* the migration of larger PST files from pre-OL2007 to OL2007 either fails completely, or causes Outlook to slow down even more due to the chaos produced in the migration process. Instead of starting with a clean PST file and moving all previous entries there orderly, the PST appears to be patched to death, or something close to it. So there's nothing else than recommending users to move their PST away, start with a clean new one, and dragging items folder by folder to the new PST. That's just sickening. Why didn't they at least offer a tool to do this, or allow folder hierarchies to be copied along with all their items?
* a "feature" that existed for as long as 7 years now, and still no improvement: Outlook won't quit properly in the presence of add-ins. This is what most of my support calls are about. People wonder why they need to restart their computer to change their Outlook profile, or see add-ins after Outlook was shut down once? How can I explain to users what is happening and what they can do about it? Why, after seven years, can Outlook still not clean up properly and stop caring about resources allocated to add-ins? When the user tells the application to quit, the app should give a f**k about open allocations, and simply quit, or at least give a warning or something. What it does instead is either stay open/invisible, or crash with an error report. This is Murphy style, it does the worst one might assume in that situation, irritating users, and they sure pass it on to me.
* if the add-in is doing background activity such as evaluating callback messages from TAPI (as in my case), Outlook 2007 will simply lock up on slow machines if in that moment the user is editing a body text of any type of item (contact / journal / whatever). Outlook will eat all CPU time, and never return. Hello, task manager! I've not found out yet when a machine is too slow so this problem occurs, but there's a lot of candidates out there and enough users who won't listen and install OL2007, finally ending up calling me and raising a "new" issue about Outlook lockups.
* Microsoft removed CDO from the setup and put it into a separate download that users must now acquire instead of just choosing the option during the setup. Most Exchange-related apps need CDO. They just don't care for developers any longer. Rather spend the money in marketing campaigns instead of using their brains and stop changing everything.
Not this way, folks. In my opinion, Microsoft is now far beyond making good software, as they prove with Vista and Office 2007. This cannot be the result of giving credit to what users want. Maybe everything is "secure" now because nothing is trusted any longer (not even the user), unfortunately they have somehow forgotten about usability. Sickening!3 out of 3 users found this user opinion helpful.
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worst software I have ever used
by whkrause on July 1, 2007
Pros: none at all
Cons: crashes constantly, useless
Summary: Just Google on this p.o.s. and you'll see. Why would I want an email client that can't be opened 2 time out of 3, and will ...
Summary: Just Google on this p.o.s. and you'll see. Why would I want an email client that can't be opened 2 time out of 3, and will crash in short order the other time?
3 out of 4 users found this user opinion helpful.
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Don't upgrade if you write letters to contacts
by Von Hug on February 20, 2007
Pros: Business Card window is the only plus
Cons: Can't write new letter to contact directly from Outlook 2007
Summary: I thought that Outlook 2007 was going to add improvements and new features to Outlook 2003. Apparently it looks like repackaging with some things left out of the box. Does ...
Summary: I thought that Outlook 2007 was going to add improvements and new features to Outlook 2003. Apparently it looks like repackaging with some things left out of the box. Does Microsoft think that snail mail is dead? I am used to writing letters (hard copy) to my contacts directly from Outlook. With Outlook 2007 you can no longer write "new letter to contact"; you need to go to Word first and then choose your contact -- how much time does that save! I would have liked to see a label and envelope feature added to Outlook 2007 but I guess Avery and Aladdin will have to be the third party add-ons for that function. Outlook 2007 is a big disappointment. I went to the Microsoft launch and had asked about printing a label from Outlook but I never got an answer. Now I know why. They also talked about the workspace window and how it has shrunk over time. With the new ribbon the space is smaller than with the 2003 version. Maybe if you had a 25 inch monitor then the workspace would appear bigger. I don't recommend using Outlook 2007 -- stay with 2003, it has the right features and doesn't drag along like 2007.
2 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.
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A good e-mail and calendaring system, could be easier to configure
by xjbri on October 18, 2007
Pros: Easy to set up, Integrates into a lot of other programs/devices, Calendar is excellent
Cons: Difficult to configure and tweak, mixes old and new interfaces, junk mail implementation could be better
Summary: There's no other program that does quite as
much as what Outlook does. Thunderbird is the closest, but it is e-mail only and the calendar plug-ins could use some ...Summary: There's no other program that does quite as
much as what Outlook does. Thunderbird is the closest, but it is e-mail only and the calendar plug-ins could use some help.
This is one of the best calendaring systems I've used to date. The reminders have saved me from missing appointments, and the calendar can be imported into an iPod through iTunes!
The e-mail client is no frills, but it does have plenty of options. It was very easy to set up, all it needed was my e-mail address and it did the rest and prompted me for a password. No worrying about finding the pop3 address or anything!
However, tweaking options and configuring e-mail settings is a bit more difficult. There are several "option" menus. There is a lot of redundancy and duplication of effort. Sometimes it takes a lot of effort to find the one setting you want to change, like how often it checks e-mail. There could be vast improvements in this department.
Although many people have complained about the html rendering, I have not encountered any problems, and I frequently receive newsletters and other html-heavy e-mails. Everything seems to look great.
The spam folder is a bit tricky. While it's easy to tag an item as spam, it's convoluted to remove something from the spam folder. When you click a message is not spam, it prompts you to add the user to a "safe list." This is not always the best method of preventing items fall in your spam folder, I'd prefer it "learn" what items should or should not be there, like other clients and web-based e-mail systems. The good side here is that it updates the spam filter through Windows Update frequently, so at least I know it will catch the latest attempts to bypass filters.
Outlook integrates nicely with Vista and you can find your e-mails through the Vista search.
I've had no problems finding e-mails I was looking for using Outlook's search feature.
The to-do bar is handy and lets me look at the calendar and my upcoming appointments.
Outlook 2007 could be better, however. Only the e-mail composition window uses the new "ribbon" user interface, which makes Outlook seem kind of inconsistent. The rest of outlook uses the old menu system. That's good for people who don't like too much change, I guess.
Another thing is that to keep outlook in your system tray, you must minimize Outlook, instead of just hitting close. I wish it would stay in the tray even when I click the close "x". It's hard to remember to hit minimize.
I also had some problems getting Outlook to sort my e-mails into different folders, it seemed to ignore some of the "rules" I set up. However, this might be due to something I am not doing right.
Outlook has not crashed on me, and seems relatively stable, except that if I leave it open when I shutdown windows, it does some kind of check when I re-open it (although the check doesn't usually seem very useful).
In conclusion, Outlook has worked great for me. I am currently getting a post-grad degree and rely on e-mail and my calendar immensely. I don't think I'd be able to function without this product!1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.
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Want to lose your email? Try Outlook 2007!
by Beachdude67 on August 17, 2007
Pros: Looks nice.
Cons: Features removed from Outlook 2003, wipes mail by default.
Summary: This is by far the worst version of Outlook released by Microsoft. Autoarchive was turned on by default. There was no notification asking if I wanted to archive as with ...
Summary: This is by far the worst version of Outlook released by Microsoft. Autoarchive was turned on by default. There was no notification asking if I wanted to archive as with previous versions. The end result was that Outlook succeeded in deleting every email I had in my inbox - which was about 2000. This wouldn't have been a mess, however when I went into the deleted box, and selected them all to move back to the inbox, it refused and instead asked me if I wanted to create a new item. Figuring it might be creating a new folder for these emails under the inbox, I agreed. Outlook then froze and when I recovered, all the emails were gone.
Many of the features from previous versions that were nice to have are gone. "Select all" is no longer there - this was a very nice to have feature and is gone for no apparent reason.
Outlook 2007 is an unacceptably bad product.1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.
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Outlook Business Contact Manager Review
by JG Adams on May 26, 2007
Pros: Interfaces well with MS Mobil and PDA
Cons: Not as complete as ACT! or Maximizer
Summary: I found the Business Contact Manager easy to use, although not as intuitive as ACT! Of Maximizer. There are some necessary features that are missing, like the ability to write ...
Summary: I found the Business Contact Manager easy to use, although not as intuitive as ACT! Of Maximizer. There are some necessary features that are missing, like the ability to write a letter. MS Business Contact Manager does not keep associated items with the records as well as ACT! or Maximizer. I do like the way it interfaces with Outlook, but it does not automatically recognize incoming e-mail messages and associate them with contacts ? you must associate them manually, and that is a pain.
All things considered, I would recommend ACT! or Maximizer over MS Business Contract Manager. Sorry, I don?t have any experience with Goldmine or other contact mangers.1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.
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Why do Microsoft Exec's not get it?
by tmiq on March 18, 2007
Pros: Outlook 2007 is an incredible program.
Cons: It's not what it should be.
Summary: It's clear, both David Allen and Sally McGhee's significant contributions to management are not embraced. Why?
Today, with ever-increasing information overload, most knowledge workers and managers struggle greatly. ...Summary: It's clear, both David Allen and Sally McGhee's significant contributions to management are not embraced. Why?
Today, with ever-increasing information overload, most knowledge workers and managers struggle greatly. Why Microsoft is not investing heavily in the Outlook interface is hard to understand (maybe they are, but Olk2007 just doesn't cut it). Today, Outlook 2007 doesn't understand the idea of hierarchical tasks that contribute to an overall objective. That's crazy. When your faced with a litany of tasks, you need a way to do that. And, please, don't ask me to use MS Project to manage this; give me a freakin' break.
With the resources Microsoft has, how can they not get all of this? Who in the world are they consulting with?
Outlook 2007's changes are modest at best and, therefore, get a poor rating from me.
If Microsoft really wants to lead in the area of knowledge management at the worker level, they need to do better than this, period. I'm very disappointed in Outlook 2007, which is not much of an improvement at all over Outlook 2003.1 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.
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Stick to Outlook 2003
by jmaustin on March 8, 2007
Pros: If it wasn't so slow the new features might be great
Cons: slow, slow, slow
Summary: Before you buy this software google on "microsoft outlook 2007 slow".
Summary: Before you buy this software google on "microsoft outlook 2007 slow".
1 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.
Specifications
- Manufacturer: Microsoft Corp.
- Part number: 543-03007
- Description: Office Outlook 2007 provides an integrated solution for managing your time and information, connecting across boundaries, and remaining in control of the information that reaches you. Office Outlook 2007 delivers innovations you can use to quickly search your communications, organize your work, and better share your information with others - all from one place.
General
- Category Office applications
- Subcategory Office applications - personal information management
- Language(s) English
- License pricing Standard
- Localization English
Software
- License Type Complete package
- License Qty 1 PC
- License Pricing Standard
- Platform Windows
- Distribution Media CD-ROM
- Package Type Retail
System Requirements
- OS Required Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Windows XP SP2 or later
- Software Requirements Internet Explorer 6.0
- Min Processor Type 500 MHz, 500 MHz
- Peripheral / Interface Devices CD-ROM
- System Requirements Details Microsoft Windows Server 2003 SP1 or later - RAM 256 MB - HD 1.5 GB, Microsoft Windows XP SP2 or later - RAM 256 MB - HD 1.5 GB
Manufacturer info
- Microsoft Corp.
- Manufacturer profile
- Browse Microsoft Corp. products on Shopper.com
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- Website: http://www.microsoft.com/
- Address:
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052 - Phone: 425/882-8080
- Fax: (425) 706-7329
