25 Discontinued or changed features in Outlook 2007

It's always good to know what to expect when deciding if you're going to upgrade. I believe that it's better to go into an upgrade with eyes wide open, and knowing what you'll be losing is just as important as what you'll be gaining. This article describes the discontinued features and modified functionality in Outlook 2007.

If you are familiar with Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 or earlier versions of Microsoft Outlook, the following list describes features and functionality that have been discontinued or changed in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007.

I welcome your comments at the bottom of this page. What features do you miss the most? What missing features completely took you by surprise? What features are you happy to see go away? What enhanced functionality has got you jumping for joy?

1. Outlook native e-mail editor

Office Outlook 2007 uses an editor based upon Microsoft Office Word 2007. In earlier releases, you could turn off Word as your editor and use a native editor that was included with Outlook.

2. Online meeting support

Calls that use Microsoft Windows NetMeeting or that specify a NetMeeting type of online meeting are no longer supported. The ability to convert a meeting request into an online meeting by using the This is an online meeting using list has been removed. Microsoft Exchange Conferencing, Microsoft Windows Media Services, and NetMeeting are not supported in Office Outlook 2007. We recommend that you use Microsoft Office Live Meeting as a replacement. Office Live Meeting offers greater functionality.

3. Personal Address Book

The Personal Address Book is no longer supported. This address book was replaced by Contacts in Microsoft Outlook 97. Personal Address Book entries are stored in a file that has a .pab extension. All of the contacts in the Personal Address Book are migrated to the default Outlook Contacts folder. You can choose to move these to a separate folder, or to cancel the migration and import the .pab file at a later time. The .pab file continues to exist in the file system, but the Personal Address Book is removed from Outlook. The .pab file does not support Unicode, and it cannot roam to multiple computers that you might use.

4. E-mail Accounts Wizard replaced by Account Settings dialog box

Many e-mail accounts can be automatically configured in Office Outlook 2007. You can still manually configure e-mail accounts, if you want to. The E-mail Accounts Wizard has been replaced by the Account Settings dialog box. The Account Settings dialog box provides access to e-mail account configurations, data files, RSS Feeds, address books, and SharePoint subscriptions.

5. Task Pad

You can no longer see the Task Pad in the calendar, or the Task Pad menu options on the View menu. The Task Pad is replaced by the new To-Do Bar.

6. Meeting updates

A person who creates a meeting can no longer change the time or location of the meeting without sending an update. Similarly, an organizer can no longer cancel a meeting or send a cancellation request without sending an update. However, a meeting organizer can still change the body, subject line, and reminder time without sending an update.

7. Out-of-date meeting requests

You can no longer forward an out-of-date meeting request. If you attempt to forward an out-of-date meeting request, Outlook now automatically sends the most recent copy of the updated meeting. This new behavior prevents the sending of incorrect information to other people.

8. For Follow Up Flags

For Follow Up Flags, introduced in Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, are replaced by task flags and color categories. You no longer see colored flags in the Mail view. If you flagged items in the earlier version of Outlook to indicate that they were important or that they belonged to a particular group, you should now use color categories instead. If you used flags to indicate the time at which you were to take action on an item, you should now use task flags. This change is being made to increase the functionality of flags. With task flagging, you can place an item in the overall task management system, allowing you to see your tasks in the To-Do Bar, Daily Task List in Calendar, and in the Tasks view. By categorizing an item, you can easily scan your Inbox for categorized items, the same way that you might previously have scanned your Inbox for flagged items. You can also find categorized items in the Categorized Mail Search Folders.

9. Color categories in e-mail messages

By default, categories cannot be sent in e-mail messages. In earlier versions of Outlook, categories could arrive in incoming e-mail messages and automatically be applied on replies and forwards of the categorized messages.

10. Free/Busy bar

The Free/Busy bar is removed on calendar items if the item is marked as busy. This change is one of several improvements to calendar legibility. The Free/Busy bar does appear if the item is marked as Free, Tentative, or Out of Office.

11. Meetings icon in Calendar

The meeting icon has been removed from calendar items. This change is one of several improvements to calendar legibility.

12. Follow Up button

The Follow Up button and the Flag for Follow Up dialog box are replaced by a drop-down menu. The Flagging feature has been enhanced. You see this change the first time that you click the Quick Flag column. Changing the behavior of the Follow Up button is part of the overall improvement in the time and task management system within Outlook.

13. Symantec ACT! and Microsoft Schedule+ support

Importing of ACT! and Schedule+ information is no longer supported in Office Outlook 2007. You can import ACT! Information into Microsoft Office Outlook Business Contact Manager. Schedule+ is no longer a supported Microsoft product.

14. Link menu on Contacts

The Link command is no longer available when you right-click a contact in Office Outlook 2007.

15. Navigation buttons in Address Book

The left and right navigation buttons in the Address Book dialog boxes have been removed. Navigation buttons are no longer needed, because more than one contact can now be opened simultaneously.

16. Hyperlinks in SharePoint items

Previously, the bodies of SharePoint items were read-only, and a hyperlink pointed to the Web browser version of the item, so that you could make changes. Now, the bodies of SharePoint items in Office Outlook 2007 can be updated within Office Outlook 2007, and can be kept synchronized to the SharePoint item. The hyperlink is not available, and is replaced by the View on the Web toolbar button. Clicking the toolbar button opens the SharePoint item in your Web browser.

17. Sending messages when your mailbox is full

Previously, when your mailbox was full and you were using Cached Exchange Mode, all outgoing messages were sent to a folder (located on the e-mail server) that checked your mailbox size to find out whether you were able to send the messages. In Office Outlook 2007, if your mailbox is over its size limit during submission, you receive a message to that effect.

18. Flags on IMAP e-mail messages

You can only turn on or off Flag for Follow Up for an e-mail message that is received in an IMAP e-mail account. This change was made to improve compliance with the IMAP protocol.

19. Signatures from an HTML file

Signatures are now created in the Signature dialog box in Office Word 2007.

20. CDO.DLL not included

CDO.DLL is no longer included in Office Outlook 2007. Collaboration Data Object (CDO) is an extensibility library that is provided by Microsoft Exchange and used with the MAPI protocol. Customers of third-party applications that require CDO.DLL now receive a message informing them that an object could not be found. CDO must now be installed from the Internet. Third parties must change their instructions about installing CDO from using the Office CDO to installing from the Internet. Exchange provides a download of CDO.DLL.

21. Resource scheduling

When an Exchange Server 2007 e-mail account is used in connection with the new Exchange Calendar Assistant, the Resource Scheduling feature that Outlook uses to automatically respond to meeting requests on behalf of resources does not work. (The Resource Scheduling feature should not be confused with the Direct Booking feature, which still works.) The reason that the Outlook autorespond feature for resources does not work on Exchange Server 2007 is that the Exchange Server 2007 Calendar Assistant automatically processes all meeting requests, precluding the need for the Outlook autoresponse feature. When you use Office Outlook 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 together, you cannot use the Resource Scheduling feature (Tools menu, Options command, Calendar Options command, Resource Scheduling command) to manage conference rooms. You must now use a new Exchange Server 2007 feature called the Resource Booking Assistant. This feature provides all of the functionality of the earlier resource scheduler.

22. Administering Exchange Server Scripts

Administration of Exchange Server Scripts in Office Outlook 2007 has been removed. The scrptxtn.dll file is no longer supported by Microsoft. The Event Service from Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and earlier is not included in Exchange Server 2007. This Exchange Server functionality was deprecated in August 2000 at the release of Microsoft Exchange Server 2000, and the feature was disabled by default in Exchange 2003. Exchange administrators can no longer maintain Exchange Server Side Scripts. The scripts are not recommended by Exchange.

23. Exchange Security Form

The Exchange Security Form in Office Outlook 2007, a custom form for administering Outlook security options when Outlook is connected to an Exchange mailbox, is available in Windows Server Active Directory Domain Services group policy. This modification was made because public folders are optional in Exchange Server 2007, and Outlook previously used public folders for some settings.

24. Sharing command

The Sharing command has been removed from the Navigation Pane shortcut menus for e-mail folders. You can still access the sharing properties by using the Properties command, and then clicking the Permissions tab.

25. Security settings

The security settings now appear in the new Trust Center. This change was made for consistency across multiple Microsoft Office programs, and to combine all security settings in one location.