Hello Readers, Many of you have posted comments on our previous posts asking for help with specific features or questions with Outlook 2010. While we enjoy hearing your thoughts about Outlook, we cannot support individual users via blog comments. That’s why we want to introduce you to answers.microsoft.com , a community forum where you can post questions and receive responses from other users, Microsoft MVPs, and support personnel. Best of all, support from answers.microsoft.com is free! If...

Last week I needed to send an email to a contact at Contoso, a company we partner with on marketing materials. Unfortunately, I had not emailed my contact in about a year and I couldn’t remember her name, let alone her email address. Since we had only exchanged a few emails I had neglected to add her to my Outlook contacts. However, with Outlook 2010 I was still able to find her email address quickly using Suggested Contacts. Suggested Contacts automatically keeps track of everyone you send...

During the summer season, I like to travel and visit my family and friends. Before I leave the office for my trips, I share these important dates with my colleagues so they know that I won’t be around the office. Instead of sending an email message to my colleagues with a list of dates, I prefer to include a visual representation of my calendar. On the Insert tab, in the Include group, click Calendar. I choose which calendar that I want to include in my message. After I click OK , my calendar...

Following the release of the Outlook Social Connector (OSC) version 1.1 and the availability of new and updated providers , we have released a set of updated and expanded content for developers. The Outlook Social Connector 1.1 Provider Reference incorporates content from OSC 1.0 with new additions for OSC 1.1. If you’re developing a provider for the OSC, here is a quick guide to the new provider reference on MSDN: Getting Started with Developing an Outlook Social Connector Provider helps you...

Outlook is the premier communications tool to stay connected with colleagues, friends, and family. Your email messages, even from multiple accounts, are in one place. Connections and communication also happen on websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Windows Live. Through these sites, you find new contacts and reconnect with old ones. You can share who you are, what you think, what you are doing, and what you like or don’t like. So, it makes sense that you can now add your friends...

A few weeks ago, I posted about the new contact card in Outlook 2010 and how useful it is when you want to find out more about someone in your organization. Perhaps even more useful is the way that the contact card enables you to contact people quickly from Outlook. In order to use these features your organization must be using an instant messaging client that integrates with Outlook using the Microsoft Office 2010 Presence Integration API. You may remember Jed from my first contact card post . After...

Our friends in Office Labs have recently released a new version of the Forgotten Attachment Detector. This Outlook add-in reviews your email message before it is sent to make sure that if you’ve mentioned an attachment, there actually is one. The Forgotten Attachment Detector can be used with Outlook 2010, 2007 and 2003. This updated version includes support for Arabic, German, and Japanese. To try the Forgotten Attachment Detector, check it out on the Office Labs blog . Alessio Roic Microsoft...

Over the past few months, we have shared our excitement about the new features of Outlook 2010, such as Quick Steps, Conversations, and the Contact Card. Our team is proud to announce that Outlook and the rest of Office 2010 are available in retail stores and online today. Thank you to the millions of you who downloaded and tried our Beta and provided feedback. Get a trial or buy it today at www.office.com ! The Outlook 2010 Team

I am pleased to announce the availability of the PST File Format SDK . The PST File Format SDK provides a cross-platform C++ library for reading files using the Outlook Personal Folders File Format (.pst) Structure Specification . This announcement represents another important step in the Outlook team’s commitment to the Microsoft Interoperability Principles . Why does this matter to me? If you are a developer building a solution that accesses Outlook Data Files (.pst), this SDK provides a...

Have you ever received an email message from someone that you don’t know and struggled desperately to figure out who they are? Luckily, when your organization upgrades to Microsoft Outlook 2010 you’ll have quicker access to information about your co-workers without leaving your Inbox . The other day, after lunch, I returned to my desk and found an urgent email from another Microsoft employee, Jed, asking if I could pass along the design research data from an Outlook study I conducted...