Читать книгу Outlook 2016 For Dummies - Dyszel Bill - Страница 6

Outlook has many unique features, but it also has lots in common with other Windows programs: dialog boxes, pull-down menus, Ribbons, and so on. To be productive with Outlook, you need to understand how these features work and recognize the conventions I use for describing these features throughout this book.

Dialog boxes

You deal with more dialog boxes in Outlook than you do in many other Microsoft Office programs. You can call dialog boxes forms. Email message forms, appointments, name and address forms, and plenty of other common functions in Outlook use dialog boxes to ask you what you want to do. The following list summarizes the essential parts of a dialog box:

✔ Title bar: The title bar tells you the name of the dialog box.

✔ Text boxes: Text boxes are blank spaces into which you type information. When you click a text box, you see a blinking I-beam pointer, which means you can type text there.

✔ Control buttons: In the upper-right corner of most dialog boxes, you find three control buttons:

● The Close button looks like an X and makes the dialog box disappear.

● The Size button toggles between maximizing the dialog box (making it take up the entire screen) and resizing it (making it take up less than the entire screen).

● The Minimize button makes the dialog box seem to go away but really just hides it on the taskbar at the bottom of your screen until you click the icon on the taskbar to make the dialog box open again.

✔ Tabs: Tabs look like little file folder tabs. If you click one, you see a new page of the dialog box. Tabs are just like the divider tabs in a ring binder; click one to change sections.

The easiest way to move around a dialog box is to click the part you want to use. If you’re a real whiz on the keyboard, you may prefer to press the Tab key to move around the dialog box; this method is much faster if you’re a touch-typist. Otherwise, you’re fine just mousing around.

Ribbons and tabs

Outlook features a colorful strip across the top called the Ribbon. It’s adorned with festive-looking buttons. Many of those buttons are labeled with the names of the things that happen if you click them with your mouse, such as Save, Follow Up, or Delete. A row of tabs appears just above the Ribbon, with each bearing a label, such as Home, Send/Receive, or View. Clicking any of those words reveals an entirely different Ribbon full of buttons for a different set of tasks.

This arrangement came about because people frequently call Microsoft and ask the company to add features to Outlook that don’t need to be added because they’ve been there all along. The Ribbon is supposed to make those mysterious, hidden features more obvious. I think a better solution is to get more people to read this book. As a public service, I’m doing what I can to make that happen. I hope you’ll join the cause.

Keyboard shortcuts

Normally, you can choose any Windows command in at least two different ways (and sometimes more):

✔ Click a button on the Ribbon or in the Navigation pane.

✔ Press a keyboard combination. An example is Ctrl+B, which means holding down the Ctrl key and pressing the letter B. (You use this command to make text bold.)

✔ Press the F10 key to reveal a shortcut key and then press that key (way too much trouble but possible for those who love a challenge).

One rather confusing Outlook feature is the way many commands are hidden within the tabs on the Ribbon. If you don’t know which tab has the button you need, you have to click every tab until you find the command you want. That’s fine if you’re a speed-reader, but hunting for rarely used commands slows down most of us. Fortunately, after you’ve done a task once, you can usually find your way back to do it again.

Another fast way to get at your favorite Outlook features is the Quick Access Toolbar – a tiny strip of icons in the upper-left corner of your screen. In Chapter 10, I describe how that works and how to make it do what you want.