Outlook 2000 in a Nutshell

Name

Contacts → Actions Menu

Synopsis

The Actions menu shown in Figure 8-1 contains commands for creating contact records and distribution lists. It also provides commands that transfer information from existing contact records to other Outlook components and external application.

Figure 8-1. The Contacts Actions menu

Outlook’s Global Shortcut Keys

Learn the global keyboard shortcut keys shown on Outlook’s menus. (For example, Ctrl+Shift+G used by the Flag by Follow Up command.) These are global keyboard shortcuts, functional from any Outlook component. Learning the most common ones saves a lot of mousing around.

Actions → New Contact

Actions → New Contact opens a blank new contact form. Because creating contact files is central to the functionality of Mail and other components, the command is always accessible from the File menu (File → New → Contact), and has the global keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Shift+C. In the Contacts component, it is the default New command, used by the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+N and the Standard Toolbar New buttons.

The Contacts form shows five tabbed sections:General, Details, Activities, Certificates, and All Fields. These tabs structure your contact data in manageable and logical chunks of information.

The Actions menu in Figure 8-2 accessed from the Contacts form is subtly different from the one found on Outlook’s main menu (Figure 8-1). The Actions menu on the Contacts ...