Microsoft Outlook

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Microsoft Outlook or Outlook (full name Microsoft Office Outlook since Outlook 2003) 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, a journal and web browsing.

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.

[edit] Versions

Outlook replaced Microsoft's previous scheduling and mail program, Schedule+ and Exchange Client.

Versions of Microsoft Outlook include:

(release dates are for U.S. product launches)
The version numbers follows the Office numbers.

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 they 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 has been replaced with Windows Live Mail.

[edit] Internet standards

Outlook is an integrated application for email, calendaring, tasks, contacts and much more. However, it does not fully support other calendar programs for calendaring or contacts such as iCalendar, CalDAV, SyncML and vCard 3.0. Outlook 2007 claims to be fully iCalendar compliant; however, it does not support all core objects, such as VTODO, VJOURNAL. Also, Outlook supports vCard 2.1 and does not support multiple contacts in the vCard format as a single file. Outlook has also been criticized for having proprietary "Outlook extensions" to these Internet standards. Also, for Outlook 2007, Microsoft has replaced the more standards-compliant Internet Explorer-based HTML editing/viewing engine with the one from Microsoft Office Word 2007.

Outlook encourages top-posting by placing the cursor above the quoted text. A proponent of bottom-posting has created an application known as Outlook-QuoteFix to change this default to bottom-posting. It works for all OL's but 2007. For OL 2007, a Visual Basic add-on (QuoteFix Macro) can be used.

[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 Office Outlook 2003. Among the most publicized security features are that Office Outlook 2003 does not automatically load images in HTML e-mails or permit opening executable attachements by default, and includes a built-in Junk Mail filter^[2]. Service Pack 2 has augmented these features and adds an anti-Phishing filter ^[3].

This release was well received, and regarded as the primary driver of Office upgrades among business users.^{[citation needed]}. However, it still uses Internet Explorer as its renderer of HTML content, a product whose security flaws are well documented and ongoing. Some defects in IE can be exploited by malicious emails. Outlook 2007 has switched to using the Microsoft Word HTML renderer to avoid this - although the change created its own problems.

[edit] Latest release

Outlook 2007 was available in retail stores at 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

[edit] HTML rendering

Outlook 2007 was the first Outlook to switch from IE HTML rendering to Microsoft Word HTML rendering (Word 2007 in Outlook 2007's case). This means a number of HTML and CSS items are no longer supported due to security reasons.

The consequence of this mostly affects those publishing newsletters, which frequently use intricate HTML and/or CSS to form their layout, for which existing code will not render correctly. For example, the removal of a "<form>" tag means that forms can no longer be embedded in e-mail.

This switch can be seen to mark a change in philosophy on the Outlook product, making it intentionally incompliant so that only the most basic of presentational elements remain.

[edit] See also

• Comparison of e-mail clients
• List of personal information managers
• Outlook Express
• Outlook Web Access
• Windows Calendar
• Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format

[edit] References

1. ^ Fortune Magazine interview with Bill Joy
2. ^ Microsoft Office 2003 editions comparison
3. ^ Microsoft 'Security at Home' website
4. ^ Try the 2007 Microsoft Office system
5. ^ Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 product overview

[edit] External links

• Official Microsoft Outlook site
• Outlook Developer Portal
• Tips for Microsoft® Outlook users

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