Word & Outlook 2007: They’ll Change the Way You Work

People always ask me if an upgrade is “worth it”. No upgrade is an absolute yes, but the Office 2007 release is easier to recommend than previous releases have been. Now I know some will misinterpret that as suggesting other upgrades are not significant. It’s not that easy and depends on a myriad of factors specific to each user or organization. We can debate security, stability and features, but my point is that Office 2007 offers so many enhancements (including a complete change in file format) that they are hard to ignore. It’s not a subtle change in appearance. It’s big. Really big. Instead of choosing between the heart stamp or the Elvis series when you mail a letter, the changes in Office 2007 are like sending a regular letter vs. email. The difference is far more than cosmetic. Office 2007 looks very different but it also has a gamut of new features that can truly change the way you work.

What software you use and what features you consider useful are very subjective. Since I consider Outlook and Word to be the most commonly used (and underused) applications, we’ll focus on those for now. Regardless of how you use them (and especially if you don’t use them at all), the 2007 versions will bring more power and potential to your desktop.

How? Let’s talk about your life for a moment. While I’d love to discuss your quirky Aunt May or the idiot you drove behind to the grocery store, I am more interested in the planning of your life which primarily consists of things to do, people with whom you do them and the communications therein. Whether you are a student, a business owner or an employee in a multinational corporation, everyone has these same things they need to manage. Outlook has always been able to do that and Word has always been able to write letters, so what’s the big deal about Outlook and Word 2007?

Let’s say you receive an email from a customer who needs your attention. You need to review a series of messages that have occurred between the two of you and coordinate a meeting between yourself, the customer and two of your co-workers, one of whom is in a remote office. You use the new Quick Search feature in Outlook 2007 to find all items that contain the key words you are looking for. You begin typing but do not have to finish the word because Quick Search searches as you type. It shows you three items which are stored in three different folders. You select the first one. You see that you received and replied to the message. You click on the Info bar in the message and quickly find all threads of that discussion which includes a total of 12 email messages which you review. Your co-worker is a consultant and does not have a mailbox on your network, but you view her calendar with a single click on a checkbox and then overlay that calendar with yours so you can select a good time when you both are available. You also open and overlay a production calendar for your client’s new product release so you don’t miss a deadline. With this information, you schedule a meeting that fits all the parameters, sending all participants a meeting request. In the meantime, you drag the original email to your Task List to create a ToDo item and mark it with a follow-up flag for tomorrow. This item shows up on the ToDo pane and the daily calendar view in Outlook 2007.

Summary: You have reviewed a month’s worth of related messages, checked availabilities of internal and external participants, scheduled a meeting with four people, sent notices and set a ToDo item with a reminder and you did it all in less than 5 minutes. It works at home the same as in small or enterprise business. The new features you used include:

• Quick Search
• Calendar Publishing and Overlay
• Reminders & Follow-Up
• ToDo Pane

Want more? You have several people entered into a Contacts folder in Outlook. You need to send them an email. Instead of a generic or “bulk” email, you create a mail merge so each message is customized and addressed to each individual. You select the contacts from Outlook then write the letter in Word. You insert a variety of paragraphs in the body of the letter using pre-built blocks of text that your company has developed. You also create a diagram to illustrate a business process and properly reference data used in the diagram in an APA formatted bibliography. You didn’t type the reference information; it was pulled from data already stored in Word. You apply a theme to quickly add consistent company colors and fonts. All formatting is previewed in the document before you actually apply it. You include a non-disclosure statement at the end that is required by your legal department. You send the letter to 150 recipients with a few more clicks. You save a copy of the letter in PDF format with three more clicks and close the file.

Summary: You have created 150 customized letters, ensured content and design consistency with your company and legal department’s requirements. You applied formatting, created an illustrative diagram, properly referenced sources, sent the letter with copies filed to each person’s Outlook folder and saved it into a PDF format for archival purposes in less than 15 minutes. The new Outlook and Word features you used include:

• Quick Parts
• Smart Art
• Themes
• Preview formatting
• References
• Save as PDF (without Adobe Acrobat software)

It’s hard to tell you all the ways you might use the new features in Outlook and Word 2007. There are a lot of changes. What I can say with certainty is that when you learn to use these features, your work will become more consistent and you will become more efficient. No matter what type of work you do as a student, a small business or part of a large corporation, these new features will assist you in exuding the competent professional image we all need. Office 2007 is the key.