If you are not sure whether Outlook is installed, follow these steps:

If you can't find what you are looking for in step 3 or 4, Outlook has not been installed. The process is easy and is explained in the following section.

Outlook is almost always supplied on disks (CDs or DVDs) as part of a Microsoft Office System installation along with the other Office programs such as Word and Excel. Depending on your needs you can install just Outlook, the entire Office system, or any combination of programs you desire. This section deals specifically with the Outlook aspect of installation.

To begin installation, insert the Office 2007 CD into your CD drive. On most systems the setup program will start automatically. If it does not, follow these steps:

The first setup screen, shown in Figure 2.1, asks you to enter your product key. You can skip this step and enter the key later if you wish.

Figure 2.1. Entering the product key on the first setup screen.

The next setup screen gives you two of the following three choices:

If you choose Install Now or Upgrade, the install process will complete automatically and notify you when it is complete. If you choose Customize, you will see the dialog box that is shown in Figure 2.2.

The Installation Options tab, shown in the figure, lets you specify which Office programs, and which components of each program, are installed. The initial settings here are the same as would be in effect for a default installation. If an item has a plus sign to the left, click it to expand the display to show sub-components. For example, Figure 2.3 shows the sub-components available for Outlook.

Figure 2.2. Specifying custom install options.

Figure 2.3. Installation options for Outlook.

Each item has a down arrow that you can click to change the install options for that item. These options are

The other two tabs in this dialog box are

Once you have finished customizing your Office installation, click the Install Now button to complete the installation.

Soon after you install Outlook, you must activate it in order to retain full functionality. Activation is Microsoft's way of preventing a single copy of Outlook from being installed and run on multiple systems in violation of the end-user license agreement.

To activate your Outlook installation, select Help, Activate Product and then follow the on-screen prompts. Activation requires an Internet connection. Though it's very unlikely that Outlook would ever be installed on a computer without an Internet connection, you can activate it by telephone if needed.

Microsoft makes product updates available for download from its web site. It's a good idea to stay current with updates because they can fix program bugs and security problems.

To check for updates, select Help, Check for Updates. This command will launch your web browser and navigate to Microsoft's update site. Follow the instructions on the update page to download and install updates.

Be aware that if you have the full Microsoft Office system installed, Outlook updates will be taken care of as part of Office updates. Also, if you have your Windows operating system configured for automatic updates, this process will be taken care of "behind the scenes" and you need not do it yourself. There's no harm in checking for updates, however—you will be informed if you already have the latest update installed.

Like most Windows applications, Outlook has a menu bar at the top of the screen. It contains the top-level menus such as File, Edit, and View. You open a menu by clicking it or by pressing Alt + the access key, which is whatever letter is underlined in the menu name. A top-level menu command never performs an action on it own—rather, it displays a list of further commands from which you can choose—again, by clicking the item with the mouse or pressing the underlined access key (this time without Alt).

Figure 2.4 shows the open File menu. You can tell a lot about a menu command just by looking at it:

Note that some menu commands turn something on or off. In this case the menu item will display a checkmark to its left when the item is on and no checkmark when it is off. If you have displayed a menu and then change your mind, press Esc or click anywhere outside the menu to close it.

Figure 2.4. Outlook's File menu.

Outlook's menus can be customized to suit your preferences. You can add and remove items, move items to a different menu, and even rearrange the order in which menu items appear. This kind of customization is covered in Chapter 19. There is, however, one menu-related option you should know about now.

Outlook can display either full menus or short menus. A short menu contains a subset of the full menu commands. The commands that appear on the short menus consist of a few most important commands plus the commands you have used most frequently. That's right, Outlook keeps track of your command usage and configures the menus accordingly. This can help reduce screen clutter. After all, if you rarely or never use a particular command, why take up screen real estate with it?

When a short menu is displayed there is an arrow at the bottom of it—click this arrow to open the full menu. You can also tell Outlook to automatically display the full menu after the short menu has been open for a brief period. These options are set on the Options tab of the Customize dialog box, which you display by selecting Tools, Customize and clicking the Options tab (see Figure 2.5). The options of interest are near the top:

Outlook can display one or more toolbars directly below the main menu. Each toolbar contains buttons, lists, and other elements that provide access to commands that are relevant to the current situation. In other words, the content of the toolbars—some of them, anyway—changes as you move from task to task in Outlook. For example, when you are working on email there is a Reply button on the toolbar, but when you are working in the calendar there is not—because this command would not make sense. If you hover over a toolbar element—that is, rest the mouse pointer there without clicking—Outlook will display a tooltip at the mouse cursor describing the function of the element.

Figure 2.5. Customizing the way Outlook displays menus.

Figure 2.6 shows Outlook's three toolbars. This is how the toolbars look when you are working on email. The toolbars are

If the Outlook window is too narrow to show the entire toolbar, some of the buttons will be hidden. You can access these hidden buttons by clicking the down arrow at the right end of the toolbar.

Figure 2.6. Outlook's three toolbars.

Note that at the left end of each toolbar is a vertical row of dots. You can point at these dots—the mouse cursor will change to a 4-headed arrow—and drag the toolbar to any desired location. You can dock the toolbar along any edge of the Outlook window. You can also display a toolbar as a free-floating window anywhere on the screen. Figure 2.7 shows the Web toolbar free-floating below the Outlook window. To move a free-floating toolbar, point at its title bar and drag.

To determine which toolbars are displayed, right-click any toolbar and on the menu that is displayed, shown in Figure 2.8, check or uncheck the toolbars as desired. The Customize command that you see on this menu is covered in Chapter 19.

Figure 2.7. Outlook can display its toolbars anywhere you want them.

Although Outlook's main window has retained the traditional menu and toolbar structure, other windows, such as the one you use to compose an email message, now use ribbons. A ribbon is sort of a combination menu and toolbar, designed to provide fast and intuitive access to commands.

Figure 2.9 shows a ribbon, in this case one of the ribbons in the compose message window. You should note the following things about ribbons:

Figure 2.8. Specifying which toolbars to display.

The navigation pane is displayed at the left side of the Outlook window. It is shown in Figure 2.10 and contains two sections:

Figure 2.9. Most Outlook windows present commands and options on ribbons.

The lower section of the navigation pane normally displays buttons for the seven main parts of Outlook: Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, Notes, Folder List, and Shortcuts. If the Outlook window is not tall enough to display all seven buttons, some of them are shown as small icons instead. In the figure, for example, Mail, Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks are displayed as buttons and Notes, Folder List, and Shortcuts are displayed as icons just below the Tasks button.

Figure 2.10. Outlook's navigation pane.

At the top-right corner of the navigation pane you'll see a left-pointing arrow. If you click this arrow the navigation pane will collapse to a narrow bar along the left edge of the window. You still have icons in the lower section to move around in Outlook, but the upper section is not visible. You collapse the navigation pane to provide more room for other screen elements. Click the arrow again—it is a right-pointing arrow when the pane is collapsed—to return to the normal navigation pane display.

The To-Do Bar can be displayed along the right edge of the Outlook window, as shown in Figure 2.11. If it is not visible, you can display it by selecting View, To-Do Bar, Normal.

The use of the To-Do Bar is covered as needed in later chapters. For now it's enough to know these basics:

Figure 2.11. The To-Do Bar summarizes tasks and appointments.

The remainder of the Outlook screen is the work area. This area displays a wide variety of information depending on what you are doing in Outlook. It's here that you'll read email messages, view your appointments, and so on. Use of the work area is covered in later chapters that deal with specific aspects of Outlook functionality.

Outlook help, and in fact all Office help, is based on topics. A topic can be thought of as a single page of help information on a specific topic (although the material in some topics is much longer than one page).

Topics make use of hyperlinks, just like the web pages you are probably used to surfing. Clicking a hyperlink takes you to a different location in the same topic or sometimes to a different topic. As you move around between topics you can use the Back and Forward buttons in the toolbar to retrace your steps.

The table of contents is organized into books. Each book can contain topics as well as other books. If the table of contents is not displayed, click the Show Table of Contents button on the toolbar.

To expand a book in the table of contents, click it. Figure 2.13 shows the table of contents with the Tasks book expanded and the To-Do Bar book expanded. You can see that the To-Do Bar book contains three topics. Click the topic that you want to view. Click an expanded book to collapse it.

Outlook help has a search tool that lets you search for information. It can be very useful when you cannot locate what you need in the table of contents. It is located just below the help toolbar. All you need to do is enter the search term in the box and click the Search button. Outlook displays a list of relevant topics, as shown in Figure 2.14 for a search on "email format." Each item in this list is a link that you can click to view the topic.

Figure 2.13. The table of contents displays books and topic titles.

If you click the arrow next to the Search button you will see a list of search options. These options let you specify what will be searched. For the most complete and wide-ranging information you should keep the default All Outlook selected. In special situations you may want to select one of the other options to narrow the scope of the search.

Figure 2.14. Displaying the results of a help search.