The most obvious change when you look at Microsoft Office Outlook 2013 is the austere appearance. Outlook, just like the rest of the new Microsoft Office suite, the interface has been redone to match the Windows 8 aesthetic. The design goal is to have one design that works just as efficiently on big desktop machines as it does on a ultrabook or other type of mobile system. Many people are fans of this new design and some people criticize it, but this is the direction Outlook and Windows 8 are going so we have to live with from now on.
After giving your eyes a moment to acclimate to the uncluttered Outlook window, you will see many familiar elements:
The ribbon across the top.
The Navigation Pane on the left side of the window.
The Mail Pane just to the right of that.
The Reading Pane on the right side of the window.
But the icons used to navigate between views are no longer in the renamed Navigation Pane. Instead, there's a Navigation Bar that runs across the bottom of the window
One big change is that the icons for switching views are no longer in the Navigation Pane. Instead, there's the new Navigation Bar across the bottom of the window (unless it has been compacted back into the Folder Pane).} This bar provides direct access to the Mail, Calendar, People, and Tasks parts of Outlook 2013. Other sections of the program are accessible when you click the ellipsis (...) that appears on the bar.
Once you get past the visual level, certainly the largest update to Office Outlook isn't to the most used sections (Mail or Calendar), but affects the Contacts section, which has been powered-up and transformed into People. People (or the People Hub as it is also known) which is meant to serve as the central location for up-to-date information associated with your contacts.
To make that possible, the People Hub can show info beyond the usual information you get from Outlook. The People Hub can connect to social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn, to keep you up to date on what your contacts are doing.
One of the slicker updates is named Peeks. Have you ever felt the need to sneak a peek at for example the Calendar while you are working with Mail view? For that matter, wouldn't everything be easier if you had the ability to sneak a quick look at the useful information in other sections of Outlook 2013 without leaving the current view?
Peeks make exactly that possible. Hover the mouse pointer over one of the icons that appears on the Navigation Bar for a moment. A peek will pop up. Refer back to our example above, imagine that you're working with your mail, and have to examine your calendar and ensure you have nothing more important scheduled you should be doing instead.
The old way of doing this required putting aside whatever you were up to, finding your way into the Calendar, perusing your scheduled events, switching back to Mail view, then trying to figure out what you were doing before.
Outlook 2013 delivers quite an elegant resolution for this problem. hover the mouse pointer over the Calendar icon in the Navigation Bar. After a moment, Outlook displays a peek at the current month's calendar. It even let's you know if you have anything in your calendar for today. I'm sure you will agree this is a much faster, more elegant way to sneak a peek at another part of Outlook.
It's clear there is clearly plenty of stuff in the new Outlook 2013. And we have not even touched on the biggest change to affect the entire suite: Outlook is now touch-enabled. Microsoft redesigned the entire Office 2013 product suite to function with a wide variety of touch-enabled systems while still working well on traditional desktop and laptop computer.
Labels: Outlook 2013
