What is Microsoft Outlook in Office 365 and how do I use it?
What is Microsoft Outlook in Office 365?
Microsoft Outlook is an anchor app within the Office 365 productivity suite. Office 365 is a cloud-based collaboration platform that includes a suite of products, accessible via one convenient login, that caters to small businesses and entrepreneurs. Tech News offers different subscription plans for Office 365, depending on your unique needs — all paired with Tech News’s world-class customer support.
Each plan includes Outlook email, which is professional email that uses your domain.
With email being crucial for business communications — and something we’ve all come to rely on — having a way to sync and access your emails is a priority. With Outlook in Office 365, regardless of your platform or device, you can log in and access a robust productivity solution no matter where you are.
Related: Benefits of professional email for business
Benefits of Outlook in Office 365
With Microsoft Outlook in Outlook 365 you get a suite of email and productivity tools all for one affordable monthly fee. All Office 365 plans include automatic updates to the software at no additional charge. It’s much easier than having to deal with conventional software licenses that can be expensive and hard to manage.
Rather than using Outlook only on your local computer, simply browse to your Outlook 365 login panel, and check your email.
No matter where you are or what device you are using, all you need is an internet connection and you can tap into your email and related productivity apps.
You’ll discover Outlook in Office 365 is popular because it isn’t just an email program. Outlook has several components that allow you to be more organized and keep your business schedules and activities available on all your devices.
Related: How to supercharge productivity using Microsoft Office 365 tools
Outlook 365 features
Microsoft Outlook in Office 365 includes these outstanding productivity features:
Mail is the webmail component of Outlook in Office 365. While viewing and reading your email you have the option to pin, sweep and archive messages. You can also utilize the richer image-editing features. There is also a feature called Actionable Messages, which lets you complete a task from within that email — like retweeting or adding a meeting date in your calendar.
Related: What is email archiving and how can your business benefit?
Contacts
Also called People, this functionality lets you search and edit existing contacts, and create new ones. Contacts can be organized into folders and duplicate contacts can be linked from multiple sources such as LinkedIn or Twitter.
Pro tip: You can create a contact by clicking on a sender, which then displays a contact card with an add button. You then add that contact to Outlook People.
You can easily import or place into a list the contacts you want to send email. Friends and connections lists on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter can also be easily synced with People. Now you can organize all your various contacts regardless of platforms all in one place via Outlook People.
Related: How to use Outlook Customer Manager to better manage customer relationships
Tasks
We all have tasks we need to jot down to make sure they get done. In Outlook in Office 365 you can create tasks, put them into categories, and move them to a specific folder. You also have the ability to set due dates, and sort and filter your tasks according to those criteria.
Pro tip: Organize by fields such as subject, start and end dates, percent complete, priority, and how much work was put into each task.
Rich editing features like bold, italic, underline, numbering and bullet points are also available. Your tasks can be edited and categorized according to how you need them to be sorted to create an organization structure that works for you.
Calendar
Photo: Microsoft OfficeWhat is Microsoft Outlook without a calendar? Outlook will automatically create birthday and holiday event calendars. You can easily share your calendars with others, too. You will have the ability to add your calendar details using HTML and rich-text editing if you so choose.
Pro tip: Attach files to calendar events and appointments to make sure you have the documents you need for each event.
Choose the view that you prefer from the multiple available views such as day, week, month, and today. For business calendars choose the work week view, which includes Mondays through Fridays in the calendar view.
Now that we now know about all the things you can do with Microsoft Outlook in Office 365, let’s dive into getting you set up.
How to set up Microsoft Outlook in Office 365
Now that we’ve explored the benefits and features of Microsoft Outlook, let’s look at how to get it set up.
Once you’ve purchased your Office 365 plan from Tech News, you’re ready to connect your domain and set up your Tech News Office 365 email address.
- Locate your Tech News Office 365 receipt email in your inbox, click Get Started.
- Choose your domain and click Continue.
- Complete the Office 365 Email form by entering the requested information in each field.
- Click Create. You’ll get a confirmation email sent to the address you provided.
Follow these instructions to set up your Office 365 email on your mobile phone.
Want to move your old email to Office 365 from Tech News? Here are step-by-step instructions.
Related: Standout tools — Office 365 email migration
Note: Office 365 does not support Outlook 2007 or earlier versions of Outlook. You will want to update your version of Outlook before signing up for Outlook in Office 365.