Microsoft Outlook

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Microsoft Office Outlook

Screenshot of Outlook 2003.
Developer:	Microsoft
Latest release:	2003 Service Pack 2 / October 2003
OS:	Microsoft Windows
Use:	Personal information manager
License:	Proprietary EULA
Website:	The Official Microsoft Outlook site

For the e-mail and news client bundled with certain versions of Microsoft Windows see Outlook Express

Microsoft Outlook or Outlook (full name Microsoft Office Outlook) is a personal information manager from Microsoft, and is part of the Microsoft Office suite.

Although often used mainly as an e-mail application, it also provides a calendar, task and contact management, note taking, and a journal.

It can be used as a stand-alone application, but can also operate in conjunction with Microsoft Exchange Server to provide enhanced functions for multiple users in an organization, such as shared mailboxes and calendars, public folders and meeting time allocation.

1 Different versions
2 Security concerns
3 Upcoming releases
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Different versions

Versions of Microsoft Outlook include:

Outlook 97 (released January 16, 1997)
Outlook 98 (released June 21, 1998)
Outlook 2000 (also known as "Outlook 9", released June 7, 1999)
Outlook 2002 (also known as "Outlook 10" or "Outlook XP", released May 31, 2001)
Office Outlook 2003 (also known as "Outlook 11", released October 21, 2003)
Office Outlook 2007 (released to manufacturing on Nov. 30, 2006, also known as "Outlook 12")

(release dates for U.S. product launches)

Outlook 98 and Outlook 2000 could be installed in one of two configurations:

Internet Mail Only or IMO mode: A lighter application mode with specific emphasis on POP3 accounts and IMAP accounts and including a lightweight Fax application.

Corporate Workgroup or CW mode: A full MAPI client with specific emphasis on Microsoft Exchange accounts.

Microsoft also released several versions of Outlook for the Apple Macintosh; however, most mail features were disabled after Office 98. After Office 98, Entourage replaced Outlook on Macintosh systems, although in 2001 Microsoft released Outlook 2001 for Mac to allow Classic users to access Exchange servers. Over the past few years, Microsoft has improved Entourage to provide Mac users with a Mac OS X-compatible Exchange client, though it does not have the entire functionality provided by Outlook.

Outlook Express is a slimmed-down e-mail, newsgroup, and contact management application that Microsoft makes available at no charge, in conjunction with the Internet Explorer web browser. Other than the similar name there is no connection between the two products and originate from different divisions of Microsoft. While both offer access to POP3 and IMAP4 e-mail accounts, only Outlook offers client access (MAPI) to Microsoft Exchange. Outlook Express is replaced with Windows Mail in Windows Vista.

[edit] Security concerns

One of Microsoft's goals is for the e-mail client to be easy to use. However, the embedded automation and lack of security features compared to competitors have been repeatedly exploited by malicious hackers using e-mail viruses. These typically take the form of an e-mail attachment which executes on the user's machine and replicates itself by mass-mailing the user's or Exchange server's address list. Examples of such viruses are the Melissa and Sobig worms. Other programs have exploited Outlook's HTML e-mail capabilities to execute malicious code or confirm that e-mail addresses are valid targets for spam. The notoriety of the worms and other viruses has gained Outlook a reputation as a highly insecure e-mail platform.

Unix programmer Bill Joy has suggested that Outlook is insecure largely because it was written in C, making it easy to write programs to exploit it. He also believes the widespread use of Outlook is a major contributing factor in the proliferation of spam ^[1].

As part of its Trustworthy Computing initiative, Microsoft took corrective steps to fix Outlook's reputation in its latest incarnation, Office Outlook 2003. Among the most publicized security features are that Office Outlook 2003 does not automatically load images in HTML e-mails, and includes a built-in Junk Mail filter^[2]. Service Pack 2 has augmented these features and adds an anti-Phishing filter ^[3]. The base code is also said to be much more secure.^{[citation needed]} Outlook 2003 was also awarded a Good Housekeeping award for best Junk Email filter.

This most recent release has been well received, and regarded as the primary driver of Office upgrades among business users. Instances of new worms have slowed significantly, however, due to the release of numerous security updates and Service Packs which have corrected the known vulnerabilities exploited by previous viruses.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Upcoming releases

Outlook 2007 has been released to manufacturing and will be available in retail stores by the end of Jan 2007. A trial is available for download on Office Online. ^[4]. Features include ^[5]:

A to-do bar added to the shell UI that shows a snapshot of the user's upcoming appointments and active tasks for better time and project management.
Improved calendar views that display the tasks due below each day on the week view and supports overlaying multiple calendars.
Integrated RSS aggregator
'Instant Search' through a context indexer based search engine with Windows Desktop Search
Enhanced integration with Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server
New programmability features [1]
Ability to publish calendars in Internet Calendar format to Microsoft Office Online or to a WebDAV server