Outlook 2000 in a Nutshell

Chapter 3. Program Insights

This chapter looks at the underlying structures and program interfaces of Outlook. Much of the material here addresses cross-component tools and features that are independent of the installation method you’ve chosen or the connectivity features you’ve configured. With few exceptions, everything discussed in this chapter is available whether you are running under IMO Outlook (see Chapter 2), connecting to an Exchange Server, or using the program as a standalone Personal Information Manager.

In the pages to follow, you are going to read about Information Stores, Address Books, items, folders, and properties. These are the fundamental building blocks of Outlook. In order to understand the program and use it effectively, it is very important to grasp how these terms relate to the data you create and the tools Outlook provides to manipulate and view that data.

There is also considerable material in this chapter on views and forms. Views are the mechanism used to display the items contained in a folder. Outlook installs with a preconfigured set of views, and as you will soon discover, these default views are customizable in a dizzying number of ways. Forms are the structural containers used to input and display individual data records. When you open a Note or Calendar entry, it opens in a form; when you create a contact record, you enter the details in a form.

All in all, there is a lot of very densely packed material in this chapter. It is a functional necessity, ...