Productivity with Outlook 2003

This is not a campaign for Microsoft. But I definitely need to talk about productivity improvements after moving to Outlook 2003. I read reviews about Outlook 2003 sometime back and was waiting for the time I can get started on using this. Outlook 2003 matched my expectations and provided exact features I was looking for.

1. Group by Date: Default view of Outlook message now comes with Date Grouping and hence you can group messages with timeline. Today, Yesterday, Last Week, 2 Weeks Ago etc are default views. This is exact view I was always interested in. It makes us more focused on the e-mails we need to attend to.

2. Keep track of follow up e-mails: All of us needs to follow up e-mails we send out. Outlook 2003 allows to flag any message and keep track of all such messages. There is a special folder called Follow up and this is quite handy.

3. Sorting by Size: Outlook 2003 also provides a default view called Large Mails. This view automatically sorts all messages by size and allows you to control mail box size

4. Configure multiple e-mail accounts. Earlier this option was available only in Outlook Express. Now Outlook also allows configuring multiple pop accounts and manage e-mails. I have now stopped using Outlook Express and moved all my accounts to Outlook.  You can also configure to view Hotmail account through Outlook. 

As I stated in one of my earlier e-mails, I synchronize my outlook tasks and calendar with Palm. For two days after upgrading to Outlook 2003, I could not synchronize. But immediately found upgrade of HotSync Manager and I have no problems now. 

There are lot many productivity features in Outlook, but the above are most important for me. 

You can find more useful tips on Outlook 2003 at the following URL

http://office.microsoft.com/home/office.aspx?assetid=FX011052481033&CTT=98