In this section:
If you want to get the most from your computer and your software with the least amount of time and effort—and who doesn’t?—this book is for you. You’ll find Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 Plain & Simple to be a straightforward, easy-to-read reference tool. With the premise that your computer should work for you, not you for it, this book’s purpose is to help you get your work done quickly and efficiently so that you can get away from the computer and live your life.
Let’s face it—when there’s a task you don’t know how to do but need to get done in a hurry, or when you’re stuck in the middle of a task and can’t figure out what to do next, there’s nothing more frustrating than having to read page after page of technical background material. You want the information you need—nothing more, nothing less—and you want it now! It should be easy to find and understand.
That’s what this book is all about. It’s written in plain English—no jargon. There’s no single task in the book that takes more than a couple pages. Just look the task up in the index or the table of contents, turn to the page, and there’s the information you need, laid out in an illustrated step-by-step format. You don’t get bogged down by the whys and where-fores: just follow the steps and get your work done.
Occasionally, you might have to turn to another page if the procedure you’re working on is accompanied by a "See Also." That’s because a lot of tasks overlap, and I didn’t want to keep repeating myself. I’ve scattered some useful Tips here and there, and thrown in a "Try This" or a "Caution" once in a while, but by and large I tried to remain true to the heart and soul of a "Plain & Simple" book, which is that the information you need should be available to you at a glance.
Whether you use Outlook at home or on the road, I’ve tried to pack this book with procedures for everything I could think of that you might want to do, from the simplest tasks to some of the more esoteric ones.
Another thing I tried to do in this book is find and document the easiest way to accomplish a task. Outlook often provides a multitude of methods to accomplish a single end result—which can be daunting or delightful, depending on the way you like to work. If you tend to stick with one favorite and familiar approach, I think the methods described in this book are the way to go. If you like trying out alternative techniques, go ahead! The intuitiveness of Outlook invites exploration, and you’re likely to discover ways of doing things that you think are easier or that you like better than mine. If you do, that’s great! It’s exactly what the developers of Outlook had in mind when they provided so many alternatives.