In this section, I'm going to go over the outlook screen, including the main tabs and ribbons, the contextual tabs, and then we're going to end on the key tips. Let's begin by reviewing the many components that make up the outlook screen. So let's go ahead and go to Outlook. I'm going to start in the upper left, and work my way down to the bottom right. So if we go to the very top on the left, we've got the Quick Access Toolbar. This allows you to add commands to the main screen for easy access at any point while you're working within the various apps or modules of Outlook.

We'll discuss this in greater detail in a later module. But just keep in mind, it's a great time saving feature. If we move below the Quick Access toolbar, we have our tabs and ribbons. commands are organized under various tabs called ribbons. And instead of organizing the options at a drop down menus, they're organized horizontally on ribbons for easier access and viewing. If we move over to the right from the tabs and ribbons, we've got the help or the tell me what to do.

Area. This is a text field where you enter words or phrases about what you want to do next, or to quickly get to features you want to use or the actions you want to perform. You can also use this feature to find what you're looking for, or do use a Smart Lookup for further research. This is great for when you forget where to find the commands you need, you just type it in and your results will appear. So for example, if you want to create a contact and you're not sure where to go, you click on the tell me what to do field and type create contact. As soon as you type in your information, it's going to give you options.

The top part is going to give you action plans, how to create a contact, go to contacts new items below that is going to give you the ability to get help on create contact, and also do a Smart Lookup on create contact. Now because I actually want to create a contact, I'm going to use my action and go to new contact. Once I click on that it's going to open up the dialog box to create my new contact So I can fill in my information and click the Save button to save my contact. So it's a great feature if you don't know where to go to find your information set assembling around looking for it just used to tell me what to do. If we go above to tell me what to do, we've got the title bar. This is going to tell you what app or module you're in.

And it's also going to give you your email account. So for instance, I'm in my inbox, so it's going to list inbox and my email account, if I switch to calendar, the title bar will switch to calendar in my email account. So let's go back to our mail. Going further, over to the right we have the ribbon display options. When we click on it, it gives us our three options, our auto hide ribbon, show tabs, and show tabs and commands. The auto hide ribbon, if we click on that, it's going to do exactly what it says it's automatically hiding the tabs and ribbons.

So we've got more real estate available on our screen to bring it back. Go to the very top and click, and it will bring them back down for you. We click again, and we go to show tabs does exactly that, it's going to show us the tabs, but it's not going to show us the commands within the tab that we have highlighted. Click again, show tabs and commands. This one's going to show us the tabs and the commands within the tab that we have highlighted. Going further over to the right, we have our minimize our restore down and our close.

We come all the way to the bottom, we've got our status bar, this is going to show us current information about the app that we're in. Because we're in our email at this point, it's going to show us the amount of items we have in there and it's showing us the reminders too. If we switch to our tasks, it's going to tell me I have a filter applied and it still shows me my reminders and I do have a filter applied here. I'm just showing my active tasks right now. We switch to our calendar shows us that we We have two items on our calendar for today, we'll go back to our email. And if we come over to the right, it's going to tell us all of our folders are up to date, and we're connected to Microsoft Exchange.

Further over to the right, we've got our views, we're in the normal view, right, now we can switch to reading view. And then we can also zoom in and out. If we do a right click on our status bar is going to give us all the options that are available to us. So if we wanted to turn off any of these, we would just click on them because they're a toggle on and off, everything checked is on clicking on it will turn it off. So if I didn't want to see the number of reminders I had, click on there and it will remove it. At this point, let's take a broad overview of the tabs and ribbons.

We go to the very top. We've got our home tab. This is our default tab. This is what's going to open every time you come into Outlook. And because email is our default app, when we go into Outlook, it's going to take us to the Home tab for email Just like the other applications within Microsoft Office, the Home tab is going to contain the most used functions and features. If we come over to the left and click on File, it's going to take us in our backstage.

So it's the only ribbon that's a little bit different within Microsoft Office. Instead of taking you into a ribbon and showing you commands it's going to take you to backstage. And additionally, it doesn't deal with individual components within Outlook, it deals with Outlook as a whole. This is where you would set up your rules and alerts. And this is where you would set up auto replies and you would import or export information from here as well. To leave backstage and go back into Outlook.

Just click on the circle with the arrow in it, it'll take you back. One tab over we've got our send and receive and this is where you would come to force a manual send and receive a messages. Next tab over his folder. This gives you access to various folder commands. We click one more Oh We've got our view. And this is where we could change our views or windows that are available.

There are a couple other things that I wanted to show you within the tabs and ribbons themselves. And one of them is the more or the show gallery box. So for instance, if we come to the arrangement group, and click on the down arrow here, this is the more or show gallery option. And what it does when you click on it is it does exactly what it says it shows you more information, it gives you a gallery of options that are available to you. If we come back over to the Home tab, the other one I want to show you is the dialog box launcher. When you've got a box with a little arrow in it in the lower right corner of your group, clicking on it is going to launch a dialog box and it's going to give you more options that are available for it as well.

When you're looking at the commands within your ribbon, you'll notice that they're broken up into sections and each section is grouped. So for instance, on the Home tab, you've got your new email and new items under the New groups. So each group has a name, we've got a delete group respond. quick steps move, groups find an add ins within the home tab on this ribbon. Now let's change our focus to the main outlook window itself. If we come all the way over to the left here, we've got the navigation pane.

The navigation pane appears in all views by default, and the Navigation Pane can be resized it can be minimized and it can be hidden. The contents displayed in the navigation pane will vary depending on what view you're working in, such as mail right now, or if we switch over to our calendar, the Navigation Pane we'll switch to our calendar, we come back over. If you wanted to hide the navigation pane. You could come up here where you've got your little arrow and it's going to minimize or hide the Navigation Pane over on the side. To bring it back, click on the arrow and click on the pushpin and it will bring it back into place. Down at the very bottom, we've got the area where we can switch between our apps or views.

So if we wanted to go to the calendar, this is where we would come to switch to it, want to go to our tasks, and so forth, we would switch from here. Now you notice we've got some ellipsis buttons here. And that's because it can't show us all the information on the bottom. When we click on it, it's going to give us the rest of the options that are available. So if we wanted to go to our notes, we can do that from there. Our middle column is called the message list.

And this is where it's going to list our information. So for instance, I'm in my inbox and it's going to list all my messages within my inbox here. If I come over to the right further, I've got my reading pane. The reading pane gives you a preview of items without actually having to open them. I'm in my inbox, I've got this message highlighted. So it's going to give me the reading pane view of it or a preview of that message.

So I could read the message from here. I could click on any of the hyperlinks within here. If there was In attachment, I could click on it to open it as well. I could also look at follow up information. If it was a meeting request. I could do a response from here and so forth without actually having to open up the message.

We're going to stop here for now in the next lecture, we'll pick up on the contextual tabs and then following that will go into the key tips.