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Setup Outlook 2003
Outlook is the most used mail client which is being used by many people. If Outlook 2003 is being installed on the computer, then you have to configure it so you can collect your e-mail and read it. If Outlook 2003 is installed and configured, Outlook 2003 automatically gets the e-mail from an Exchange server within a network or from another e-mail provider like Gmail etc.
How to configure Outlook 2003 for usage?
If Outlook 2003 is just installed and you open it for the first time a wizard will be started so you can configure Outlook 2003 as you wish.
When the wizard starts the next screen is shown.
Here you have to select which type of server gets your e-mail.
Normally if you are working in a company network there is an Exchange Server so then you choose for the option 'Microsoft Exchange Server'.
If you use Outlook 2003 in a home situation and you have a provider like Gmail, you should choose for the option 'POP3'.
The other options aren't used very often, so I do not discuss these.
If you have chosen the right mail server you click 'Next'. In this example I will discuss the POP3 mail server because this is the most used type of server in a home situation.
The next screen is shown.
In this screen you have to give up the e-mail settings.
User information:
Here you enter your name and your e-mail address.
Server Information:
Here you have to enter the server information which you normally have received from your Internet provider or e-mail provider. For example if you have an e-mail address at Gmail, you enter at the
'Incoming mail server (POP3)' text box: 'pop.gmail.com'
and at the
'Outgoing mail server (SMTP) text box: 'smtp.gmail.com'.
These server types you can normally find also on the website of the provider.
Logon Information:
Here you have to enter the user name and password which is provided by your internet provider or e-mail provider. If you have an e-mail address like michaeljackson@gmail.com then you enter michaeljackson at the 'User Name' text box with the right password.
If you have completed this screen you can test the settings you entered by clicking the 'Test Account Settings' button. If the tests are successful then Outlook 2003 is configured well and you can use Outlook 2003 as your mail client.
-- Free / Busy options --
Free / Busy options means that you can configure the options about times you are available for meetings which can be arranged by Outlook 2003. In your Outlook 2003 calendar there can be appointments, meetings, etc be planned already so at these times you are not available. The hours which you have nothing in your calendar you are available.
The above you can easily show to other users in the network so they can see when you are available and a meeting can be planned for example on a moment that every person invited is available.
This function is very useful to plan meetings and is used very often. You can configure yourself how many months in advance your availability must be published on the network to other users.
If you want for example that your colleges can see your availability for the next 6 months then you can set the free / busy option to 6 months. Now the users in the network can see your availability from this month until the next 6 months and no further. So when it is January and you set this option for 6 months, others in the network can see in your calendar when you are available up to and including June.
How to configure the Free / Busy options in Outlook 2003?
Step 1:
Click 'Tools' in the menu and click 'Options'.
The next screen is shown.
Step 2:
In this screen you click the 'Calendar Options' button.
The next screen is shown.
Step 3:
Here you click the 'Free/Busy options' button.
The next screen is shown.
Step 4:
In this screen you can enter how many months your availability must be published for your colleges on the network.
To complete the setup;
Click 'Ok'.
Click 'Ok'.
Click 'Ok'.
Now your availability is visible for your colleges for the period you just entered. It can take a while before the Exchange server has updated this setting.
-- Share Calendar -- (only for Exchange Server e-mail accounts)
In Outlook 2003 you can share also your agenda to others in the network so someone else can read or edit it. This could be very easy for an executive secretary to keep up the calendar of the management and to see when the management is not at the office when there is for example a phone cal for the management.
It can be also be useful for your colleges that they can view your calendar, so they can see when you are at the office and when you are not.
This calendar is easy to share and you can configure how to share your calendar. In Outlook 2003 you can configure who can just read your calendar and who can also edit it. This you can configure for each college individual. For example the executive secretary is the right to edit the calendar but other colleges can only read your calendar.
Using this way of sharing your calendar you can easily configure how you want to share your calendar.
How to share the calendar in Outlook 2003?
Step 1:
Click 'Calendar'.
The next screen is shown.
Step 2:
In this screen you can share the calendar. In the left pane you see 'Open a Shared Calendar'. Using this link you can open a shared calendar.
To share your calendar you need to have an Exchange Server e-mail account. If you don't have an Exchange Server e-mail account you cannot share your calendar.
If you do have an Exchange server email account you see on the left pane 'Share my calendar'. This link you find as shown in the picture below.
If you do have an Exchange Server e-mail account the link 'Share my calendar' is shown where I marked the red circle.
Step 3:
So if you have a Exchange Server e-mail account you simply:
Click 'Share my calendar'.
Click the 'Add' button.
Enter the name of the person whom you want to grant sharing permissions to and click 'Add' and 'Ok'.
In the 'Name' box, click the name of the person you just added.
Under 'Permissions', in the 'Permission Level' list, click the permission level that you want.
It could take a few minutes before the Exchange Server has updated these settings.
-- Open shared calendars --
Beside sharing your own calendar you can also view others calendars. This can be very useful if you want to know where your college is when he or she is absent and at what time he or she is back at the office.
You can only view someone else his calendar after that person has given you permissions to read or edit his calendar. So first that person has to give you the right permissions.
If that person has given you the right permissions you can view that persons calendar using the following way:
How to open shared calendars?
Step 1:
Click 'Calendar'.
The next screen is shown.
Step 2:
Click in the left pane 'pen a shared calendar'.
The next screen is shown.
Step 3:
Here you enter the name of your college or you click on the 'Name' button to select your college from the list.
If the user is chosen and you clicked 'Ok' the calendar of your college is being showed near your own calendar in a different color.
In the left pane now you see the calendar of your college also at the 'Other calendars' area. By checking the check box of your college you can show or hide that calendar. Using this way you can view several calendars of several colleges.
-- Add personal address book --
In Outlook 2003 there is a standard contacts list where often all users of a company network are published in. Using this contacts list everyone in the company can easily select a user from the list and send an e-mail or plan a meeting.
If you want to add some private contacts to a list it isn't quite useful to add these to the standard contact list because you want to separate your business and your private contacts.
To add a 'Personal address book' you can easily separate your private contacts from the business contacts.
How to add a personal address book?
Step 1:
Click 'Tools' in the menu.
Click 'E-mail Accounts'.
The next screen is shown.
Step 2:
In this screen you select 'Add a new directory or address book' and click 'Next'.
The next screen is shown.
Step 3:
In this screen you select 'Additional Address Books' and click 'Next'.
The next screen is shown.
Step 4:
In this screen you select 'Personal Address Book' and click 'Next'.
The next screen is shown.
Step 5:
In this screen you can give the personal address book a name and you can enter the path where to store the address book.
I recommend that you leave the path as it is.
Click 'Ok' and you will be asked to restart Outlook 2003.
Step 6:
After you have restarted Outlook 2003 you can see your personal address book by clicking 'Tools' and 'Address Book'.
Then the next screen is shown.
Step 7:
In this screen you see that there is the just added 'Personal address book' also in the list.
You can select this address book to view your personal contacts.
-- Out of office assistant -- (only for Exchange Server e-mail accounts)
The out of office assistant is very useful is you go on holiday or if you have a couple days off. This out of office assistant automatically replies to the sender of an e-mail with the text you can configure yourself in advance.
So if you use this out of office assistant the sender gets nicely an e-mail back which is more professional then let the sender wait until you are back at the office. Also when it is an important e-mail you can let the sender know that you are on holiday and that he can send the important e-mail to your college for example.
How to configure the Out of office assistant?
Step 1:
Click 'Tools' in the menu.
Click 'Out of Office Assistant'.
The next screen is shown.
Step 2:
In this screen you select either you are In the office or Out of the office.
In the upper text area you can write the text which has to be replied to the sender.
In the lower text area you can add rules for incoming e-mails. You can add a rule by clicking the 'Add Rule' button.
For example you can add a rule to forward e-mails from specific senders to another e-mail address. Or for example you can add a rule to delete automatically e-mails from a specific sender.
If you are back from your holiday and you open Outlook 2003 again you will be prompted with the next message.
Here you simply click 'Yes' and now you can reply manually your e-mails again.
-- Plan meetings --
A useful function in Outlook 2003 is planning meetings. First you think about who has to participate the meeting, you select these persons from the list, you look for the availability of these persons and you plan the meeting after which these persons automatically receive an invitation for this meeting which can be accepted or refused.
The person who arranges the meeting receives an e-mail which persons accepted the invitation and which refused it.
If the meeting is accepted it will be inserted in the calendar automatically. If later the meeting has to be replaced for some reason, again every invited person has to accept or refuse the new time and after acceptation the meeting is also automatically be replaced in the calendar.
How to plan a meeting?
Step 1:
Click 'Calendar'.
Click 'New'.
The next screen is shown.
Step 2:
In this screen you can enter a subject, a location, date and time and also some extra information about the meeting.
Then click 'Scheduling'.
The next screen is shown.
Step 3:
In this screen you can add the persons which have to participate the meeting. You can add them on the left pane by typing their names or by clicking the 'Add Others' button to select them from the contact list.
After you have added every person you simply click 'Send' and the invitation for this meeting is send to the persons which you just added.
If the invitation is being accepted the meeting will be inserted in the calendar.
As shown in the picture below.
-- Signature for outgoing e-mail --
In Outlook 2003 you can set a signature which can be placed under every outgoing e-mail. For example you can set a signature like:
Yours faithfully,
Mike McDonald
Quality ProductsT: 0123456789F: 0987654321E-mail: mmcdonald@qualityproducts.com
By setting a signature you don't have to type these standard lines each time you send an e-mail.
How to set a signature for outgoing e-mail?
Step 1:
Click 'Tools' in the menu.
Click 'Options'.
Step 2:
In this screen you click the 'Mail Format' tab.
The next screen is shown.
Step 3:
In this screen you click on the 'Signatures' button at the 'Signatures' area.
The next screen is shown.
Step 4:
In this screen you click on the 'New' button to create a new signature.
The next screen is shown.
Step 5:
Here you can enter a name and optional a template. And click 'Next'.
The next screen is shown.
Step 6:
Here you can type the signature which has to be placed under every outgoing e-mail. It can for example be something like my example above. You can also edit this signature by changing the font.
If your signature is ok,
Click 'Finish'.
Click 'Ok'.
Click 'Apply'.
Click 'Ok'.
Now if you want to write a new e-mail and you click 'New e-mail', the signature is already written so you only have to write the body of the e-mail.
If you don't want to use this signature anymore or you want another signature being written under particular e-mails, you repeat step 1, 2 and 3 and you select at the 'Signatures' setting the signature you want to use. Select 'None' if you don't want to use a signature.
If you want to remove a signature you repeat step 1, 2, 3 and 4 and you select the signature you want to delete and click the 'Remove' button.
-- Junk mail --
If junk mail is bothering you, you can protect yourself against it by configuring junk mail in Outlook 2003. For example it can be that you receive junk mail all the time from one and the same sender with advertisements, porn or other junk mail.
In Outlook 2003 you can block these e-mails so they will not come into your inbox. Using such a configuration you don't need to delete every day all these junk mails from your inbox.
How to configure Outlook 2003 for Junk mail?
Step 1:
Click 'Tools' in the menu.
Click 'Options'.
The next screen is shown.
Step 2:
In this screen you click the 'Junk E-mail' button.
The next screen is shown.
Step 3:
In this screen you see 4 tabs. I will describe each tab.
- Options On this tab you can choose for a level of junk e-mail protection.
- Safe Senders
- Safe Recipients
- Blocked Senders
You choose 'No automatic filtering' to 'Safe List Only' to configure what to do with junk e-mail. What each level means you can find at the description at the levels.
Further more you can choose if the junk e-mail has to be deleted permanently or that these e-mails have to be stored in a special folder.
Here you add e-mail addresses of domain names which are safe and never may be treated as junk e-mail. The addresses which you think are safe you can manually add by clicking the 'Add' button or to import these from a file by clicking the 'Import from File' button.
Here you can configure about the same as at the 'Safe Senders' tab.
But now you can configure it for the recipients in stead of the senders.
On this tab you can add or remove senders which needed to be blocked. E-mails from these senders are being deleted or being placed in a special folder called 'Junk E-mail' and they will not come in the inbox.
-- Archive e-mail --
After you have worked quite a long time with Outlook 2003 and you have send and received many e-mails, your mailbox is often full.
When you are in a company network there is also often a limit on the mailbox and you receive more and more often an e-mail which says that your mailbox is almost full.
But you don't want to delete many e-mails because they contain important information, but you also want to empty your mailbox.
This is possible by archiving your e-mails. Archiving e-mails is the storage of your e-mails on the local hard drive in stead of leaving them on the Exchange Server or on the server of your e-mail provider.
When the e-mails are archived you can open them the same way as you did before but now they be read from your local hard drive.Using archiving you can store as much e-mails as you wish (until your hard drive is full).
How to archive e-mails?
Step 1:
Click 'File'.
Click 'Archive'.
The next screen is shown.
Step 2:
In this screen you can select which folder you want to archive to your hard drive and where you want to store the archive file. (I recommend you leave the path as it is).
Now if you have selected a folder you click 'Ok'.
In the left pane now you see there is a change. The change is the 'Archive Folder' as shown in the picture below.
Now you see that these folders are added to the 'All Mail Folders' area.
-- What is the size of my mailbox? --
If you receive an e-mail that your mailbox is almost full you ant to delete or archive some large e-mails. But you don't know how to find these large e-mails. What to do is to get the size of each folder so you know where to search for the large e-mails.
How to see the size of my mailbox?
Step 1:
Click in the left pane below the buttons 'E-Mail', 'Contacts', etc. on the icon for the 'folder list' view.
Step 2:
Now there is a change in the left pane and you see a link 'Folder sizes'.
Select 'Personal Folders' and click on the 'Folder sizes' link.
The next screen is shown.
In this screen you can see which folder contains large e-mails.
You can see the total size of the Inbox for example. Or at the send items. These folders are often quite large.
Now you can return to the folder which is quite large and to search for the large e-mails to delete them or to archive the complete folder.
-- Show full menus --
Standard there are small menus when there is clicked on it once. For example when you click 'File' in the menu, only few options in that menu are being showed. The options which are being showed are the options recent used. The full menus are being showed after you double click a menu item or when you hold the mouse on it for a few seconds.
Now there is a possibility to configure Outlook 2003 so the full menus are showed after a single click on the menu.
How to show full menus in Outlook 2003?
Step 1:
Click 'Tools'.
Click 'Customize'.
The next screen is shown.
Step 2:
Here you see 3 tabs. Click on the 'Options' tab.
Check the checkbox 'Always show full menus' and click close.
Now you have enabled the full menus and when you click just once on the menu the full menu is being shown.
If you want to disable the full menus just repeat the steps above and remove the √ from the checkbox again.
-- Customize reading pane --
If you have e-mails in your inbox and you click on one once the e-mail will standard open in a pane below or near the inbox. If you click twice on an e-mail it will be opened in a new window.
How your screen must be divided when you click once on an e-mail you can configure yourself. So you can choose to open e-mails below the inbox, near the inbox or you can choose to do nothing at a single click.
Further more you can configure when an e-mail must have the status of being read. For example when you single click on another e-mail the previous must get the status of being read.
How to edit the reading pane?
Click 'View'.
Click 'Reading Pane'.
Here you can choose for 'Right', 'Bottom' or 'Off'.
When is an e-mail marked as being read?
Step 1:
Click 'Tools'.
Click 'Options'.
The next screen is shown.
Step 2:
In this screen you click the 'Other' tab.
On this tab you click on the 'Reading Pane' button.
The next screen is shown.
Step 3:
Here you can choose when an e-mail has to be marked as being read.
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