Email Guides and Essays
by Kaitlin Duck Sherwood,
including

Overcome Email Overload

Differences Between Outlook 2000/2002 and Outlook 97/98

I've only just started taking a detailed look at Outlook 97 and 98, so I don't have all the tiny details on the differences. I have some trouble figuring out what the differences are because I don't have Outlook 97 or Outlook 98 readily available.

If you use Outlook 97 or Outlook 98 and would be willing to help me figure out what's different, please, send me email!

Regardless of what email program you have, there is material in my book that can help you. About 60% of the book deals with non-technical strategies for getting through email faster. For example, you are less likely to get a response to one of your messages if you end your message with "No Reply Needed."

For the technical features that help you overcome email overload, Outlook 98 is not very different from Outlook 2000. Outlook 97 is a bit more limited. On this Web page, I'll talk briefly about what the important features are (since they are common to Outlook 97 and Outlook 98). After that, I'll look at Outlook 98 and Outlook 97 in more detail.

Rules

One of the most important features of Outlook for getting through your email faster is rules. With rules, you can configure Outlook so that it will take specified actions when certain conditions are met. For example, you could set up a rule to assign all incoming messages that have "xxx" in the subject line to a category called JunkEmail.

Views

Once you've set up your rules to categorize messages, you need to set up a View that groups by Category. I presume that Outlook 97 and Outlook 98 can make Views grouped by category, but I haven't verified that yet.

Outlook 98

Outlook 98, Outlook 2000, and Outlook 2002 all have a Rules Wizard for setting up your rules. The Rules Wizard for Outlook 98 might not have as many rules as Outlook 2000, but from what I've read, it has the important ones. Some of the user interface might be slightly different, so the pictures in my book might not match your software exactly, but it should be very close. (More information to come. Updated 21 June 2001.)

Outlook 97

Outlook 97 does not have a built-in Rules Wizard. It does have something similar called the Inbox Assistant which creates rules for use on Exchange servers, and you can download and install a Rules Wizard separately. Note that you can't use both the Inbox Assistant and the Rules Wizard at the same time. (More information to come. Updated 21 June 2001.)

Kaitlin Duck Sherwood
Updated 21 June 2001.