Microsoft Outlook 2007

Tim ReynoldsAmanda Pirner

The Good Points

The GoodConsistency

The same glossy blue background and layout is used throughout Outlook just like in all the other Microsoft Office 2007 products

Can be easily recognizable as a “Microsoft Product”

The GoodConsistencyUse of the “Microsoft Office Fluent User

Interface”“The Ribbon”

The message editor “looks” just like MS Word in terms of: MS Office Button Use of Contextual Tabs

The GoodUse of Shortcuts

Ctrl+1 – Switch to MailCtrl+2 – Switch to CalendarCtrl+3 – Switch to ContactsCtrl+4 – Switch to Tasks

Other Useful shortcuts:Ctrl+SHIFT+M – Creates new messageCtrl+SHIFT+C – Creates a new contactCtrl+R – Reply to message

The GoodSimple, clear, and natural dialog in error

messages

The Bad Points

The BadWhen typing the email address of the

recipient, it only auto-completes for addresses recently used.

Doesn’t appear to auto-complete for people in contacts list.

“Check Names” button which seems overly complicated.

Or, if you type part of the name and click “To…” If you click “To…” You are presented with a popup that seems overly complicated.

The Bad No obvious “Save to Drafts” option when sending email. If you

want to “Save to Drafts” you try to exit and then are presented with the option.

“Inbox” is not at the top of the navigation options even thought it seems like it would be the most commonly used. There is a “Favorites Folders” section, to solve this issue, but it seems unnecessary to have multiple instances in the left hierarchy. It may be more useful to have them ordered by frequency of use, and not by alphabetical order.

Everything is done through the menu options, not always as expected. I did not expect the “High Priority/Low Priority” buttons to stay highlighted when clicked. It is somewhat odd to set it up so that when you select one, the other becomes un-highlighted. Perhaps a different visual signal would be more clear.

The ribbon can be easy to forget about… and can take longer to parse visually since the options do not appear to be available in list form.

It would be nice to be able to drag and drop emails to different folders intuitively in addition to the “Move to Folder” option which requires more clicks and time.