Outlook 2003 vs. 2007

Users accustomed to the toolbar in Microsoft Office 2003 (and previous versions) are often intimidated by the ribbon toolbar introduced in Office 2007. However, Outlook 2007 features many improvements over Outlook 2003 that may make an upgrade worthwhile.

Attachments

In Outlook 2007, you can preview attachments directly in the email message. There is no need to use an external program to view Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations or images.

Out of Office

You can schedule a date when you will be out of the office (OOF) in Outlook 2007. In Outlook 2003, you need turn on the OOF feature before you leave the office.

RSS

To use RSS feeds in Outlook 2003, you need a plugin. In Outlook 2007, RSS support is built-in.

Message Delivery

In Outlook 2007, you can schedule a convenient time to actually send out an email no matter what email provider you use. In Outlook 2003, this feature is available only if you use Microsoft Exchange Server as your email provider.

Email Postmarks

Outlook 2007 introduced a feature called "email postmarks" that helps to eliminate unwanted spam.

References

• Microsoft: The Microsoft Office Fluent User Interface Overview
• Microsoft: View, Open and Save Attachments
• Microsoft: Delay or Schedule Sending a Message
• Florida International University: Comparison Between Outlook 2003, 2007 and Outlook Web Access 2007
• Microsoft: How Outlook E-mail Postmarking Helps Reduce Spam