O
utlook has a great interface for working with calendars, contacts,
and tasks, as well as for sending email messages. But Outlook is a
relative newcomer to Office (it was first introduced in Office 97),
which means that if you have been using Access for longer than that, you
probably have calendar, contact, or task data stored in Access tables in data-
bases that were created many Office versions ago. (I have some that were
originally created in Access 1.0!)In the case of contact information, there is another reason that many users
prefer storing data in Access: Access is a relational database, allowing you to
set up one-to-many links between companies and contacts, contacts and
phones, contacts and addresses, and so forth. Outlook, in contrast, isn’t a
relational database; it stores all of its data in a flat-file MAPI database. That’s
why you will see slots for three addresses on an Outlook contact, and a large
(but finite) selection of Phone and ID slots. If you need to enter four
addresses for a contact, you are out of luck. If you need to enter a type of
phone number or ID that is not one of the available items, you can’t do it.But if you store your contact data in Access, you can create linked tables of
addresses, phone numbers, and IDs, letting you enter as many phones and
IDs as you need per contact, and you can give them whatever identifiers you
wish. And with a one-to-many link between companies and contacts, you
can change a company’s address or main phone number once, and the
changed information will be picked up through the link for all of that com-
pany’s contacts. In Outlook, by contrast, if you have 10 contacts for a com-
pany, and the company’s address or main phone number changes, you have
to make the change separately on all 10 contacts.IN THIS CHAPTER
Linking to Outlook foldersLearning about the Outlook
object modelWorking with Outlook
appointmentsWorking with Outlook tasksWorking with Outlook mail
messagesWorking with Outlook contactsWorking with
Outlook Items