Computers are supposed to be ultra-efficient timesaving devices—and perhaps they are—yet everyone’s life is just as wonderfully full and busy as ever. There are reports to be written, projects to coordinate, shopping to be done, vacations to plan, and kids to take to soccer. Although Entourage can’t drive your kids to practice, it can remind you when to take them, and it can help you take control of the rest of your day. Entourage is a willing and able partner in keeping track of the million things you need to do and the information you need to get them done.

Entourage means email, contacts, and calendar to most people. And the objective- and goal-oriented can’t live without its Tasks feature. But many have yet to catch on to the Project Center, a virtual Entourage command center that first appeared in Office 2004. It gives you one-stop access to all the email messages, appointments, to-do items, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and other files connected to a certain project. A project can be a major work-related goal, but it can also represent your volunteer work, New Year’s Eve party, kids’ soccer camp, financial planning—actually any life pursuit. All you have to do is create a project and tell Entourage which items to “file” under it. From then on, everything relating to that project is at your mousetip.

This chapter shows you how to use all of Entourage’s organizational goodies, starting with the Calendar and Tasks features, then pulling them all together under the umbrella of the Project Center, and finishing up with a few vital components addressing the entire ball of Entourage wax: synchronizing, searching, linking, and categorizing.