Let's Get Started
It’s time to blog about Outlook 12! This space will be dedicated to sharing news of the upcoming release of Outlook, part of the Office 12 suite. I’ll talk about what we did, what we didn’t do, how it fits with the rest of Office, and some of the process we’re using to build Outlook.
First, let me introduce myself. I started at Microsoft in 1991 as a programmer on Microsoft Word. I was the development manager for Outlook 2002 and Outlook 2003, and I’m currently the General Manager of the Outlook team. By some odd quirk of fate, I’m also the acting lead of the Outlook design team, which handles the feature design for the product. (These feature designers are called “program managers” inside of Microsoft.)
But enough about me. Outlook is the star here.
I hear from customers (and my friends, relatives, co-workers…) all the time about how they spend tons of time in Outlook. Clearly it’s a widely-used app. It’s a huge thrill to work on it every day, but it comes with a bunch of responsibility, too. Our job is to be super careful to deliver features that will really solve customer problems.
In Outlook 12, I hope we’ve done just that. There are three major themes to the work we’ve done in Outlook 12:
- Manage your time & information
- Connect across boundaries
- Remain safe & in control
Over the next few weeks I’ll discuss each of these areas and the features we’ve done to support each one.
I hope that by the time Outlook 12 ships that I’ll get a chance to discuss work we’ve done with the Outlook Calendar, RSS subscriptions, Tasks, Search, SharePoint synchronization, new user interface, attachments, Exchange Server, account configuration, the offline experience, IMAP improvements, sharing, electronic business cards, etc. It’s a long list.
By the way, I’m going to try really hard NOT to use the word “user” when I refer to people who use Outlook. (I remember hearing 20 years ago that only two industries have “users:” drugs & computers.) I’ll try to use the term “customer” since these are indeed the people who buy our products. Please forgive me if I slip up and user the u-word.
With my next post, I’ll start talking about some of the specific problems we’re trying to solve with Outlook 12.
Comments
Anonymous
November 15, 2005
users = customers + pirates
Seriously, welcome! Looking forward to reading more about Outlook 12.Anonymous
February 22, 2006
I've been using Microsoft's sharedfolders to coordinate tablet and desktop. the .PST file is humongous and ugly. I hope outlook might borrow from Onenote the idea of breaking up stuff into smaller folders.Anonymous
May 23, 2006
Ill be checking out this blog (and maybe actually becoming a fan of blogs).
However, one thing that I think needs to be brought up is where users of Beta 2 can leave feedback...Anonymous
April 15, 2010
fine thinks to Manage your time & information Connect across boundaries Remain safe & in control regardsAnonymous
April 18, 2010
me also Looking forward to reading more about Outlook 12. Thx for the InfoAnonymous
April 18, 2010
i agree with your ideas. thanks for your infos. hope theres something new about the performance with the exchange server. best regardsAnonymous
April 19, 2010
Big thx @ WillKennedy for your nice work regardsAnonymous
April 30, 2010
Manage your time & information is the best think in Outlook 12 regardsAnonymous
May 04, 2010
Outlook is the star here :-) I use Windows Mail is this the same?Anonymous
May 05, 2010
Me also Looking forward to reading more about Outlook. King Regards!Anonymous
May 09, 2010
Great post! , truly excellent information about Outlook. Your blog is really awesome. thanksAnonymous
May 12, 2010
thanks for this article. Its really a very good topic. Its so interesting and attractive. regardsAnonymous
September 20, 2010
I am on a list and someone is using Outlook 12 and every link she sends is cut off at about 76 characters. The description goes on, but link is not continued. Is this a wrap problem and how can it be corrected?