Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)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.
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Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 provides an integrated solution for managing and organizing e-mail messages, schedules, tasks, notes, contacts, and other information. Organize information better to save time and increase productivity!Powerful Junk E-Mail FilterCached Exchange Mode downloads Outlook data to your computer so you can remain productive during network downtime (requires Exchange Server 2003)Research task pane brings up dictionaries, thesauruses & online research sitesHandwriting support with optional Tablet PC
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