Microsoft Office System
Communication tools |
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Of all the core applications within Office System, only Microsoft Outlook 2003 has gotten a total makeover. It looks quite different: the preview pane now shows twice as much of a message as before, and the main interface boasts a much-improved navigational bar at the left, as well as a slew of new tools.
As far as we're concerned, Outlook's junk e-mail filter is perhaps the most important new feature. Unfortunately, Outlook didn't trap every piece of junk mail in our tests. (Third-party products from Norton and McAfee do a much better job, stopping between 90 and 95 percent, while Outlook 2003 nabbed only 80 to 85 percent.) Still, Outlook puts forth a good effort.
Additional new Outlook tools group messages and replies into conversational threads, quick-flag messages for later follow-up, and customize views to show, for example, all messages from the last week or all those with attachments from John Doe.
Want more? Outlook now displays small desktop alerts as new mail arrives that show the sender, the subject, and a small slice of text. The alerts then allow you to open the message on the desktop, flag it, or delete it without pulling up the entire Outlook interface. Finally, Outlook no longer automatically downloads images from Web servers--good news for both home and office users, since some spam images eat up Internet bandwidth and sometimes contain rather offensive nudity. No doubt in our minds: Outlook 2003 is the one app in Office we wouldn't want to give up if we had to drop back to an earlier version of the suite.
But communication improvements within Office System aren't limited to e-mail. Microsoft Publisher 2003, which comes bundled in the Small Business and Professional editions, sports new Web design wizards that make it easier to build a credible if unsophisticated Web site for personal use or a very small business. We also love the new wizard that walks you through the process of creating catalogs from data stored in, say, Excel, and the one that helps assemble and distribute newsletters by e-mail. If you want to market your small biz, Publisher is a good tool to have.
Microsoft FrontPage 2003, the big brother to Publisher, now supports XML and the ability to add flash animation and dynamic Web templates. FrontPage is available only as a standalone app.
 Outlook 2003 lets you customize Outlook's Search Folders to show groups of messages by date or by author. |
As far as we're concerned, Outlook's junk e-mail filter is perhaps the most important new feature. Unfortunately, Outlook didn't trap every piece of junk mail in our tests. (Third-party products from Norton and McAfee do a much better job, stopping between 90 and 95 percent, while Outlook 2003 nabbed only 80 to 85 percent.) Still, Outlook puts forth a good effort.
Additional new Outlook tools group messages and replies into conversational threads, quick-flag messages for later follow-up, and customize views to show, for example, all messages from the last week or all those with attachments from John Doe.
Want more? Outlook now displays small desktop alerts as new mail arrives that show the sender, the subject, and a small slice of text. The alerts then allow you to open the message on the desktop, flag it, or delete it without pulling up the entire Outlook interface. Finally, Outlook no longer automatically downloads images from Web servers--good news for both home and office users, since some spam images eat up Internet bandwidth and sometimes contain rather offensive nudity. No doubt in our minds: Outlook 2003 is the one app in Office we wouldn't want to give up if we had to drop back to an earlier version of the suite.
But communication improvements within Office System aren't limited to e-mail. Microsoft Publisher 2003, which comes bundled in the Small Business and Professional editions, sports new Web design wizards that make it easier to build a credible if unsophisticated Web site for personal use or a very small business. We also love the new wizard that walks you through the process of creating catalogs from data stored in, say, Excel, and the one that helps assemble and distribute newsletters by e-mail. If you want to market your small biz, Publisher is a good tool to have.
Microsoft FrontPage 2003, the big brother to Publisher, now supports XML and the ability to add flash animation and dynamic Web templates. FrontPage is available only as a standalone app.
Contents: Microsoft Office System |
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