Organize Your Contacts

• If you already use Outlook for email purposes, you may have several contacts saved there already. However, you can take your email address book a step further with Outlook 2003. Keep contacts that you frequently send group messages to in a distribution list. This can be found under "File" and "New." Include the physical address of your contacts, and your Outlook address book can take on entirely new functions. You can print address labels from Outlook by selecting "Letters and Mailing" and "Envelopes and Labels" from the "Tools" menu. If you're about to head out to meet with a contact, you can have Outlook 2003 display a handy map to the location by clicking "Display Map of Address" in the "Actions" section of the toolbar, while a contact information screen is displayed.
  
  

Customize Your Calendar

• Outlook is an ideal place to keep track of your schedule. When an invitation to a meeting or other engagement is sent via Outlook, participants can simply click "Accept" or "Decline." When accepted, the meeting will then appear on the calendar of all participants. In a network, such as an office, you can also view the calendars of your co-workers to see if they are free or busy during various times of the day. This is an indispensable trick when you are trying to determine the best time for an appointment involving several people. If your busy day often leaves you scrambling to complete forgotten tasks at the close of the day, you can assign various assignments to different times of the day with your To Do list. Outlook will provide you with handy reminders when it's time to switch to a new task.
  
  

Keep Track of Your Communications

• In the "Tools" tab, select "Find" and "Advanced Find" to locate one of the most useful tools available in Outlook 2003. Here you can search your emails by subjects, recipients, attachments, importance and a slew of other factors. This is helpful when you need to locate that memo that was sent last week but has long since been lost in your read messages. Outlook also offers personal folders for sorting your emails. When a message is worthy of its own item on your To Do list, you can even attach the email to the task by dragging to email to the "Task" button.