This tip is about how to create and use icons on the desktop or your Quick Start toolbar that start new Outlook items like new e-mail message or new appointment item.

With Outlook, you can send a copy of a contact item in vCard format, a standard format for exchanging contact information. This allows the recipient to import the contact data into a contact management program, assuming that the recipient's program supports the vCard standard (as most do).

Outlook offers you the capability to schedule an e-mail to be sent at the specified date and time in the future.

When you enter text into an e-mail, Outlook recognizes certain values, such as Web and UNC addresses (such as a network resource), and automatically makes them hyperlinks. However, after you enter a space, Outlook stops creating the hyperlink because it has no way of knowing whether you've finished the address and are now typing another word or whether the address contains spaces.

Sometimes you just need to have a quick preview of an email before deciding whether to open it. Outlook provides a feature called AutoPreview that shows the first few lines of your emails.

Search Folders let you to access the information in your mailbox more quickly, because, unlike the ordinal folders, they do not dictate that message should belong to a single folder.

In order to increase the speed of opening e-mail messages and reduce risks involved with opening of unsolicited messages, you can switch Outlook to the plain text reading mode.

In Outlook 2016 you wouldn't find a distribution list because it's called now Contact Groups, for more details see how to import a Contact Group sent you as an attachment.

When you need as much space as possible on the screen to view messages, events, or contacts in your Outlook, you can collapse (or minimize) the Ribbon and then restore it quickly.

The default settings minimize Outlook to the Taskbar, but you can make settings to minimize it to the Tray.