You can also include notes that are pertinent to that account such as certain times to call, business hours, whether you need an appointment to visit your contact person, and much more. Outlook allows you to include certifications, additional contacts for the same company, networking addresses, and a great deal more. You also have the option to sort your contact list by first or last name.

Separate your lists
If you're new to email, you might not have known you can create separate contact lists. This is especially helpful if you are a telecommuter and use the same email address for home and business. You can create separate contact lists for personal and business, and open the one that is relevant to what you are doing at the time.

This makes it both convenient and time saving so that you can look at your personal and business contact lists individually. You may even choose to create separate contact folders for vendors and customers to make it easier to find a particular company, or for simplicity.

With the ability to create contacts within your email program, you now have the ability to create databases or spreadsheets of the information and sort it in ways that will be relevant to your business needs.

With the popularity of the BlackBerry today, your contact list can go on the road when you travel. If you travel frequently on business, you can even create separate contact lists for different states or regions. While on the road traveling, that makes it easy for you to access what you need in a hurry and know where you need to go.

More fun with contacts
Outlook also gives you the ability to map out your directions based on the information that you entered for that contact. You can also print your entire contact list in business card style or phone directory style. You also have the option to print only certain names in your contact list.

With contact lists in Outlook, life is much simpler for the business owner or anyone within a company who has the need to work with vendors or customers on a regular basis. With information as close as the click of your mouse, the timesavings is substantial. The need to carry a business card holder is no longer necessary, because everything is on your computer, and if you own one, accessible on your Blackberry, PDA, or Smartphone. Having pertinent business information so readily available makes you appear more of a professional to your vendors and customers, something that will help you generate more business for your company.

If you haven't yet made the move to the new technology and purchased a mobile phone that will allow you access to all of the office programs, you want to make the investment that will help your business grow even faster. OutlookPower's sister publication, Computing Unplugged Magazine regularly reviews new PDAs, handheld devices, and Smartphones.

With current tech, the database you laboriously created in Access will be able to go on the road with you as will the Excel spreadsheet with all of the products that your customers customarily buy. As we move farther into the future and see new technology evolve, we will find more uses for the contact list in our business dealings.

Whether you are involved in a sales or service area, your email contact list will help you to be the best company representative that you can be whether you work for yourself or someone else.

Brenda Coxe is a freelance writer from Newark, Delaware. She started writing in high school and has been doing it full time for the past 1-1/2 years.