The day we've all been waiting for has finally arrived -- Office System 2003 is officially available at your local retailers. The kick off is a launch party in New York City, and yours truly is present at the festivities. Bill Gates and Jeff Raikes, Vice President in Microsoft's Productivity and Business Services Group, are the keynote speakers and many members of the Office development team are here as well.

Along with the release of the Office family of products, including Project, Visio, FrontPage, InfoPath, and OneNote, Microsoft is also officially releasing Exchange 2003 and SharePoint Server today.

Without a doubt, Outlook 2003 has the most changes over it's predecessors and is well worth the investment. Among the features I'll be covering in more detail in coming weeks are Outlook's Search folders, Quick Flags, and anti-spam handling help you keep track of items you need while removing the spam from your inbox. We can't forget the new Navigation pane and Reading pane which offer a more efficient way to work with email or the ability to view multiple calendars side by side.

You can order trial versions of the Office System 2003 applications at http://www.microsoft.com/office/editions/prodinfo/trial.mspx (this page has been down a lot, probably because everyone's trying to get into it). The cost is $7.95 for the first kit and $4.95 for an additional kit. This price includes shipping and handling worldwide. Each kit can be installed and activated on up to four computers and provides you with a 30-day trial period for the core applications and 60 days for OneNote and Project. If you decide you want to continue using Office System 2003 after the trial period ends, you won't need to do a complete uninstall and reinstall, all you'll need to do is run setup from your retail copy and enter the product key when prompted.

Office System 2003 is not the only product launching today. My new book "Teach Yourself Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours (SAMS)," shown in Figure A, is among the many new titles officially released today that cover the various Office programs. It's available online or look in your local bookstore for a copy.

FIGURE A


We at OutlookPower are very proud of Diane for writing such an excellent book! Roll over picture for a larger image.

If you have a specific question about Outlook 20003 you'd like answered, send me an email. While I can't guarantee I'll send a personal reply, I will try to answer the question in an upcoming column.

Diane Poremsky is the president of CDOLive LLC and a Microsoft Outlook MVP. She's author of Teach Yourself Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours (Sam's, 2003) and coauthor of OneNote 2003 for Windows (Visual QuickStart Guide). For questions or suggestions for future columns, write her at outlook@cdolive.com.