Rating: 
Summary: Need to fix PCS
Review: Generally good, but two bugs remain from before:
1) Outlook PCS, which offers the only hope of exchanging with a PDA contact date organized into subfolders, is so buggy as to be unusable. A little effort by MS could make it great.
2) Appointments still get totally screwed up if you change time zones on the computer. Have to work around by pretending that you're in your home time zone when you travel, but just change the clock time.
Rating:
Summary: Need to fix PCS
Review: Generally good, but two bugs remain from before:
1) Outlook PCS, which offers the only hope of exchanging with a PDA contact date organized into subfolders, is so buggy as to be unusable. A little effort by MS could make it great.
2) Appointments still get totally screwed up if you change time zones on the computer. Have to work around by pretending that you're in your home time zone when you travel, but just change the clock time.
Rating: 
Summary: Not goof for multiple e-mail accounts
Review: I do like the layout and the fact that it will give you a short pop-up in the corner telling you when you get e-mail and who it is from (no matter what program you are running on top) is a great feature, but I can't get it to run multiple e-mail accounts simultaniously.With Outlook 97 and 2000, we could set up our exchange server and internet mail accounts to run together, but with 2003 you have to create two different profiles, one for each e-mail account. In 97 and 2000, you had to set the internet mail account as the default account and then it would send/receive those first and then your exchange account. In 2003, if you do that, your exchange account will not send/receive. However, if you set the exchange account as default, the exchange account will work, but your internet will not. You can receive them and even reply to them, but if you try to create a new outside e-mail, it will always return undeliverable. What is odd about this is that you can receive outside e-mails and even respond to them! Microsoft has no solution to this problem yet. My advice is that if you use both exchange and internet e-mail simultaniously, then hold off on this until they resolve the issue.
Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended.
Review: I got Outlook '03 from a preview copy of Small Business Server 2003 and I can say it is worth the upgrade from ANY previous version (I am using Outlook XP now.) It will be, however, the only office 2003 product I will upgrade from the time being. Just the Anti-Spam feature (one of the best I haved used) is worth its price tag. I currently use "I hate Spam" (it sucks!) and Norton Anti-Spam (better but not quite there yet) but Microsoft's is more atune and I would say it works at a 90% efectiveness (it is very good indeed.) Also, Microsoft finally got it that it is easy for everyday work to see your messages in readable date formats like "Yesterday" or "Last week." I mean, let us be honest, how many of us remember what day it is or how long you have left that mail from your accountant in the inbox folder? Fonts are bigger in the message list and the preview pane has been moved to right hand side (from below) so now you have a complete view of the Folder List, Message List and preview pane. Nicely done. Supposedly most of your Message rules (e.j. move all Jokes from Ed to the deleted folder) will now work on the server (not just on your machine) but I have not yet tried this one out. One thing that is just hands down the best thing Microsoft has produced this year is the new Outlook web access in their mail server 2003 software. It will be really hard for you to distingish Outlook 2003 from this OWA. The difference between the new version and the previous one is like comparing windows 95 and Mac OSX. It also has much of the features of Oulook in the browser version as well, a highly missed feature in Exchange Server 2000's OWA. Do tear down your IT Manager's door until they get you this one. You owe it to yourself to try this one out (there is an public online trial version of OWA on microsoft's site by the way: exchangetrial.com). That's it, now press one-click and enjoy.
Rating: 
Summary: Still Looking For A Better Mouse Trap!
Review: I have always given Outlook a second chance every time Microsoft comes out with a new version and some reason or another I end up switching back to something else.
I really like the concepts of having an "all-in-one" package for email, contacts, appointments, etc; But Microsoft needs to start paying more attention to detail on email functionality.
After using Outlook 2003 for about a year now, here are some annoyances that are driving me away from this product.
1.) Cannot add my own email filters and filter rules. This feature should be a given and my biggest complaint. Why do I need to rely on Microsoft to update Junk Email filters for me? Other email clients (Such as Netscape) allow me to add a filter for certain key words and an action such as "send to trash" if it encounters those key words.
2.) Junk Email features are a joke. Again, anchored on my 1st complaint, if junk email arrives in my inbox, I have to add the sender to the block senders list. This is fine if the sender always uses the same return address, but as you know with spammers, this is never the case. Also, Outlook waits to inform me that the email is junk AFTER I've opened the email.
3.) Too much security, and no control. Is there such thing as too much security? I believe there is if I can't control what I want enabled and disabled without a bunch of registry hacks.
Instead of Microsoft making the decision for me of what I can view or cannot view as an attachment, I would prefer to make that decision for myself.
4.) Favorite Email Folders is a stupid and useless feature and you can't get rid it. This window is just useless clutter, but yet again, we have no control of what's displayed in the outlook window. Enough said.
5.) Forwarded messages arrive as attachments, no way to change this. Another big complaint of mine. If a message was forwarded 3,4 or more times, I have keep drilling down through the attachments for each time the message was forwarded just to get to the original message. Ultimately you end up with x number of useless windows open cluttering up your taskbar and x number of windows I have to close once I'm done reading the original message. If a message was forwarded 4 times before it got to me, that's 4 times I have to double click an attachment and 4 extra windows open. It would be nice to have the option to have all forwarded messages contained within the same message body instead as an attachment.
Rating: 
Summary: Be careful before you buy this.
Review: I like the new interface, but Outlook 2003 will not use Word as the text editor unless you also install Word 2003. Once you uninstall Outlook 2003 you have to reinstall your entire Office program to get your old Outlook back. WHY DON'T THEY WARN YOU ABOUT THIS IN ADVANCE? But Microsoft will refund your purchase price if you call 800-360-7561.
Rating:
Summary: Worth the cost of the upgrade? Buyer beware.
Review: I like the new layout of the panes in the Outlook 2003 window but is it worth the price of the upgrade? Probably not.
I have run into a few problems since I first rated this product.
I read a couple reviews of the Office 2003 upgrade and found that others felt the Outlook 2003 upgrade is the only part of the new Office suite that is worth the cost and hassle to upgrade. I decide to take their advice (and save $) and only upgrade OL.
Two problems have arisen since then.
1. The Office Shortcut bar is no longer a part of the Office suite. This is a great disappointment to me because this is one of the great efficiency tools that Windows has to offer. Luckily, Office XP is still installed as Word/Excel/PowerPoint so I still have the bar but the buttons which applied to OL 2003 are no longer available. If you are dependent on this feature as I have become, don't upgrade the full suite or it will disappear.
2. Because of the conflicting versions of the Office suite that I am using, there isn't full functionality between the programs anymore. For example, I can no longer send the body of a Word/Excel document as the body of an email by simply clicking the "E-mail" on the toolbar in the application. This is more trivial than the first issue.
Rating:
Summary: This is a terrible product
Review: I ordered Outlook 2003 with great confidence. However, I was unable to load it on my Dell running Windows 2000 with 256 MB of ram, even after reinstalling it several times. Worse, when I removed it and tried to reinstall Outlook 2002 (from the Office XP suite), that would no longer work. After spending several hours with technical support over several days and being bumped up to a supervisor, I was finally able to revert to my older Outlook. The supervisor told me that other staff had told him that Outlook 2003 had problems as a stand-alone product because it shares code with Word 2003. Now they tell us..... I'm sure it's a great product if it can be made to work, but I was unable to make it work.
Rating:
Summary: Not Disappointed
Review: I read that Outlook 2003 is the only office application worth upgrading from Office XP, and I wanted the additional features, such as spam filter so I decided to buy it. I'm not disappointed with the software especially with the easy on the eyes interface. The upgrade from Outlook 2002 was seamless. Even my RSS News Feed Reader, NewsGator, integrated seamlessly with the new 2003 version without having to do anything. The one bad thing about having a news feed reader is that when I go to unread messages, I no longer get my unread messages, because the first time I went there I had over 65536 messages that were old news and it took about an half an hour to count up all of the messages. I was not able to mark all of these messages as read (right click, "mark all read"), and even after I marked each folder as read manually, my unread mail folder is still stuck, so I removed it from my favorites list. I like the spam filters, but there is no way to mark a spam message as being read and just leave it in the spam folder. You have to delete the message before the message count goes down. About certain file extensions being blocked. If you really need to send a certain file extension that is blocked, you can rename the file to use another extension. For example rename program.exe to program.exeREMOVE. You may have to ask some people to rename their files before sending them, but it's better than getting a virus that is newly out in the wild because you thought it was trustable. Also, I didn't see any ads in the program, so I'm not sure why someone would say it's adware. The lack of integration with Word 2002 is not a problem since when word starts up as the email editor in Outlook 2002, it takes too long anyhow. I prefer the standard editor and just tell it to check spelling before sending instead of getting spelling tips while I type. You can still format a document using fonts and bold/italics with the standard editor. I never found any extra utility in having Word as the editor. 2003 version has a much better rules wizard. Right click on an email and select "create rule", and you get a cleaned up version of 2002's email rules interface that is easier to use. The one annoying thing about Outlook 2003 is that whenever a message comes in, it appears above the icon tray on the task bar, and whenever it prepares a view and takes too long, a pop up dialog ala windows update says "Outlook is Preparing the Requested View". Since I don't like the cartoon dialog boxes popping up from my tray constantly I find this to be extra annoying. Is it worth the price? Probably not, compared to other products, but on the other hand, it is better than Outlook 2002 and probably worth upgrading.
Rating:
Summary: Not Disappointed
Review: I read that Outlook 2003 is the only office application worth upgrading from Office XP, and I wanted the additional features, such as spam filter so I decided to buy it. I'm not disappointed with the software especially with the easy on the eyes interface. The upgrade from Outlook 2002 was seamless. Even my RSS News Feed Reader, NewsGator, integrated seamlessly with the new 2003 version without having to do anything. The one bad thing about having a news feed reader is that when I go to unread messages, I no longer get my unread messages, because the first time I went there I had over 65536 messages that were old news and it took about an half an hour to count up all of the messages. I was not able to mark all of these messages as read (right click, "mark all read"), and even after I marked each folder as read manually, my unread mail folder is still stuck, so I removed it from my favorites list. I like the spam filters, but there is no way to mark a spam message as being read and just leave it in the spam folder. You have to delete the message before the message count goes down. About certain file extensions being blocked. If you really need to send a certain file extension that is blocked, you can rename the file to use another extension. For example rename program.exe to program.exeREMOVE. You may have to ask some people to rename their files before sending them, but it's better than getting a virus that is newly out in the wild because you thought it was trustable. Also, I didn't see any ads in the program, so I'm not sure why someone would say it's adware. The lack of integration with Word 2002 is not a problem since when word starts up as the email editor in Outlook 2002, it takes too long anyhow. I prefer the standard editor and just tell it to check spelling before sending instead of getting spelling tips while I type. You can still format a document using fonts and bold/italics with the standard editor. I never found any extra utility in having Word as the editor. 2003 version has a much better rules wizard. Right click on an email and select "create rule", and you get a cleaned up version of 2002's email rules interface that is easier to use. The one annoying thing about Outlook 2003 is that whenever a message comes in, it appears above the icon tray on the task bar, and whenever it prepares a view and takes too long, a pop up dialog ala windows update says "Outlook is Preparing the Requested View". Since I don't like the cartoon dialog boxes popping up from my tray constantly I find this to be extra annoying. Is it worth the price? Probably not, compared to other products, but on the other hand, it is better than Outlook 2002 and probably worth upgrading.
| 
