I say "thankfully" because Outlook 2002 (Figure) completely hosed my current PST file several times on different installs. In the end, I had to completely rebuild my Contacts, Inbox, Calendar, and Tasks folders, from scratch, before I could use Outlook 2002 daily. And though this might seem like a damning introduction to this product, fear not: Overall, my experiences have been mostly positive. And in speaking with others that have upgraded from Office 2000 to Office XP, I seem to be the only one that's experienced this problem. So I'm going to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt on this one.

But man, were my upgrade experiences horrible. In the end, I had to import my contacts and email into Outlook Express and then later import them into a fresh install of Outlook 2002. For Calendar and Tasks, I played with exporting to bizarre comma separated files for a while, but ended up just re-doing it all manually. So I lost my previous scheduling information to PST backups, but that's not tragic. And once I started to use Outlook 2002, I realized that it wasn't a bad upgrade, though in many ways it's less dramatic than some of the other Office XP applications.

An Outlook overview
So what is Outlook, you ask? Outlook is Microsoft's integrated messaging and PIM application, which is to say that it is an email client and personal information manager rolled into one. Outlook's email support has been wonderful since Outlook 98, and this release eliminates the previously separate Corporate and Internet email only modes, which to my mind is the single biggest new feature (Figure). In the past, you could choose to use Outlook with an Exchange Server or not, and while you could change your mind after the fact in Outlook 2000, it was always a one or the other affair. Now, you can add different kinds of email accounts as you will, and mix and match, all in the same program. It works well.

But it is Outlook's PIM functions that are indispensable. If email is all you're after, Outlook Express works very well. But the scheduling and collaboration tools in Outlook really make this product, and I've found it to be irreplaceable for managing my sometimes hectic schedule. Outlook can bring up reminders at specified intervals, and synch with handheld devices and smart phones. Outlook 2002 continues this tradition in fine fashion.

So what's different? Well, Outlook incorporates the new Office XP look and feel, which looks curiously tan in Windows XP for some reason (Figure). Web integration is much more usable in this release, and I actually find it possible to use Outlook as a Web browser and move back and forth between my Inbox and the Web site I'm currently visiting (Figure). This feature was completely unusable in Outlook 2000. Other than that, in general, Outlook 2002 behaves much like its predecessor. So in the next few sections, I'll take a look at the good and bad of what's changed in each of the major components.

New email features
Comparing Outlook to Outlook Express has always been a bit stressful. In a perfect world, Outlook would be a true superset of its freebie relation, but that's never been the case, and it's not now either. Outlook 2002 does a better job of incorporating the best features from Outlook Express, but it's still missing a few of the more useful ones, and it still doesn't have an integrated news reader.

In Outlook 2002, Microsoft has added auto-complete addressing (Figure), which has been available in Outlook Express for some time. But the auto-complete in Outlook 2002 is less friendly in my opinion, because it adds email addresses that aren't in your Contacts list. Let's say I've got a Contact named Paul Thurrott (thurrott@win2000mag.com) and I've given him the nickname paul. When I type p and then pause in the "To" line of a new email message, paul should auto-complete for me. And it does. But if I recently emailed someone with an address like paul@thurrott.com , that address will show up in the auto-complete drop-down box too, even though I may never have intended to use that address again. So even though I have set up a nickname called paul, this other address will haunt me until I reinstall Outlook. It's frustrating.

UPDATE: Sue Mosher tells me that you actually can delete these annoying non-contacts: When the auto-complete drop-down box appears as you type a name, use the arrow keys to select it and then press DELETE. Nice!

Outlook 2002 does finally add support for Hotmail accounts, a feature that's also been in Outlook for some time (Figure). Hotmail accounts are handled a bit differently than POP and Exchange accounts, in the sense that you have a local store and then the remote store, which are separate. But Outlook does out-do its freebie rival in one way: Unlike Outlook Express, you don't have to deal with a banner ad when you access Hotmail, presumably because Outlook is fairly expensive. And again, like Outlook Express, Outlook users can now easily choose which account they'd like mail sent from, a nice touch.