Access.2007.VBA.Bibl..

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utlook is the Office component that is used for communicating via

email, maintaining a calendar, and storing contact and task informa-

tion. For email and appointments (a set of appointments in a folder

is called a calendar), the Outlook interface is so superior that I recommend

not trying to replicate its functionality in Access, but instead to export Access

data to Outlook, creating email messages, appointments, or other Outlook

items as needed.

Way back in Access 2.0, I created a database to manage tasks, allowing me

to assign them priorities, start and due dates, and notes, and order them by

any of those priorities or dates. Of course, when Outlook was introduced

in Office 97, my Tasks database was no longer needed, because Outlook

includes its own Task List (or To Do List, as it is labeled in Office 2007). All

the features I wanted were built in to the Outlook Task List, so I moved all

my tasks to Outlook and managed them with Outlook’s tools. Because

Outlook does such a good job with tasks, there is no need to store task data

in Access, though in some special circumstances you might need to do this,

and then perhaps export the data to Outlook.

Outlook’s rarely used Journal component, which records the creation of

selected Outlook items, as well as user-entered items, also has little need for

connecting to Access. If you find this component useful (I have used it as part

of my Time & Expense Billing application, to store time slip data), you can

set up the Journal to record various types of Outlook items, and add manual

entries to the Journal as needed. However (as with tasks), there may occasion-

ally be circumstances in which you would need to export Access data to

Outlook journal items, and I describe one of them later in this chapter.

IN THIS CHAPTER

Creating Outlook appointments

and tasks from Access data

Writing Access data to the

Outlook Journal

Creating emails to contacts in an

Access table

Organizing and

Communicating with Outlook