Microsoft Outlook 2003 [OLD VERSION]

Other products by Microsoft

Product Features

• Access, send, and receive e-mail messages from multiple accounts -- including work, personal or Web-based accounts
• Outlook 2003's Reading Pane, now on the right side of the screen, displays twice as much content, with reduced scrolling
• Group messages by date, size, conversation, subject, importance or other criteria for easy retrieval
• Quick Flags let you flag messages by priority or time sensitivity
• New Navigation Pane easily accesses Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, Folders, Shortcuts and Journal

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0000AZJVF
• Item model number: 543-01904
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 12, 2003
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,723 in Software (See Bestsellers in Software)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #5 in	Software > Business & Office > Communication > E-mail > E-mail Clients
  #25 in	Software > Business & Office > Schedule & Contact Management

Product Description

From the Manufacturer
Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 provides an integrated solution for managing e-mail, schedules, tasks, notes, and more. Key enhancements include the new cached mode, automatic grouping of messages, junk e-mail handling, and improved reading views.

Features:

• Manage and prioritize communications: Flag messages by priority or time sensitivity. Use the new navigation pane to access your contacts, calendar, tasks, folders, and more.
• Put Outlook 2003 to work for you: Improved junk e-mail filters help protect you from unwanted e-mail. Enhanced rules and alerts help you stay organized and on schedule.
• Print less, read more: the improved reading pane displays twice as much content, making reading more comfortable and reducing scrolling when you read long messages online.
• Save time and find messages faster: Group messages by date, size, conversation, subject, importance, and more. Save the results of commonly used e-mail searches as search folders.

Product Description
Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 provides an integrated solution for managing and organizing e-mail messages, schedules, tasks, notes, contacts, and other information. Organize information better to save time and increase productivity! Powerful Junk E-Mail Filter Cached Exchange Mode downloads Outlook data to your computer so you can remain productive during network downtime (requires Exchange Server 2003) Research task pane brings up dictionaries, thesauruses & online research sites Handwriting support with optional Tablet PC

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Be careful before you buy this., November 7, 2003

By	Sidney R. Goodman "cassstreet" (San Diego, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I like the new interface, but Outlook 2003 will not use Word as the text editor unless you also install Word 2003. Once you uninstall Outlook 2003 you have to reinstall your entire Office program to get your old Outlook back. WHY DON'T THEY WARN YOU ABOUT THIS IN ADVANCE? But Microsoft will refund your purchase price if you call 800-360-7561.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not Disappointed, March 14, 2004

By	Bryce Conner "web designer" (Syracuse, NY) - See all my reviews

I read that Outlook 2003 is the only office application worth upgrading from Office XP, and I wanted the additional features, such as spam filter so I decided to buy it. I'm not disappointed with the software especially with the easy on the eyes interface.

The upgrade from Outlook 2002 was seamless. Even my RSS News Feed Reader, NewsGator, integrated seamlessly with the new 2003 version without having to do anything.

The one bad thing about having a news feed reader is that when I go to unread messages, I no longer get my unread messages, because the first time I went there I had over 65536 messages that were old news and it took about an half an hour to count up all of the messages. I was not able to mark all of these messages as read (right click, "mark all read"), and even after I marked each folder as read manually, my unread mail folder is still stuck, so I removed it from my favorites list.

I like the spam filters, but there is no way to mark a spam message as being read and just leave it in the spam folder. You have to delete the message before the message count goes down.

About certain file extensions being blocked. If you really need to send a certain file extension that is blocked, you can rename the file to use another extension. For example rename program.exe to program.exeREMOVE. You may have to ask some people to rename their files before sending them, but it's better than getting a virus that is newly out in the wild because you thought it was trustable.

Also, I didn't see any ads in the program, so I'm not sure why someone would say it's adware.

The lack of integration with Word 2002 is not a problem since when word starts up as the email editor in Outlook 2002, it takes too long anyhow. I prefer the standard editor and just tell it to check spelling before sending instead of getting spelling tips while I type. You can still format a document using fonts and bold/italics with the standard editor. I never found any extra utility in having Word as the editor.

2003 version has a much better rules wizard. Right click on an email and select "create rule", and you get a cleaned up version of 2002's email rules interface that is easier to use.

The one annoying thing about Outlook 2003 is that whenever a message comes in, it appears above the icon tray on the task bar, and whenever it prepares a view and takes too long, a pop up dialog ala windows update says "Outlook is Preparing the Requested View". Since I don't like the cartoon dialog boxes popping up from my tray constantly I find this to be extra annoying.

Is it worth the price? Probably not, compared to other products, but on the other hand, it is better than Outlook 2002 and probably worth upgrading.

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Outlook 2003, November 6, 2003

By A Customer

Limited integration of standalone Outlook 2003 with word or office 2000.
*The following from Microsoft Outlook 2003 deployment site:
"If users upgrade to Outlook 2003 before upgrading to other Office applications, they will not be able to use Microsoft WordMail as their e-mail editor. The version of Microsoft Word must match the version of Outlook in order for WordMail to be available as the editor in Outlook."