Discontinued Features and Modified Functionality in Outlook 2007
Applies to: Microsoft Office Outlook 2007

Outlook Native E-mail Editor
Office Outlook 2007 uses an editor based upon Microsoft Office Word 2007. In earlier releases, you could turn off Word as your editor and use a native editor that was included with Outlook.

Online Meeting Support
Calls that use Microsoft Windows NetMeeting or that specify a NetMeeting type of online meeting are no longer supported. The ability to convert a meeting request into an online meeting by using the This is an online meeting using list has been removed. Microsoft Exchange Conferencing, Microsoft Windows Media Services, and NetMeeting are not supported in Office Outlook 2007. We recommend that you use Microsoft Office Live Meeting as a replacement. Office Live Meeting offers greater functionality.

Personal Address Book
The Personal Address Book is no longer supported. This address book was replaced by Contacts in Microsoft Outlook 97. Personal Address Book entries are stored in a file that has a .pab extension. All of the contacts in the Personal Address Book are migrated to the default Outlook Contacts folder. You can choose to move these to a separate folder, or to cancel the migration and import the .pab file at a later time. The .pab file continues to exist in the file system, but the Personal Address Book is removed from Outlook. The .pab file does not support Unicode, and it cannot roam to multiple computers that you might use.

E-mail Accounts Wizard Replaced by Account Settings Dialog Box
Many e-mail accounts can be automatically configured in Office Outlook 2007. You can still manually configure e-mail accounts, if you want to. The E-mail Accounts Wizard has been replaced by the Account Settings dialog box. The Account Settings dialog box provides access to e-mail account configurations, data files, RSS Feeds, address books, and SharePoint subscriptions.

Task Pad
You can no longer see the Task Pad in the calendar, or the Task Pad menu options on the View menu. The Task Pad is replaced by the new To-Do Bar.

Meeting Updates
A person who creates a meeting can no longer change the time or location of the meeting without sending an update. Similarly, an organizer can no longer cancel a meeting or send a cancellation request without sending an update. However, a meeting organizer can still change the body, subject line, and reminder time without sending an update.

Out-of-Date Meeting Requests
You can no longer forward an out-of-date meeting request. If you attempt to forward an out-of-date meeting request, Outlook now automatically sends the most recent copy of the updated meeting. This new behavior prevents the sending of incorrect information to other people.

For Follow Up Flags
For Follow Up Flags, introduced in Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, are replaced by task flags and color categories. You no longer see colored flags in the Mail view. If you flagged items in the earlier version of Outlook to indicate that they were important or that they belonged to a particular group, you should now use color categories instead. If you used flags to indicate the time at which you were to take action on an item, you should now use task flags. This change is being made to increase the functionality of flags. With task flagging, you can place an item in the overall task management system, allowing you to see your tasks in the To-Do Bar, Daily Task List in Calendar, and in the Tasks view. By categorizing an item, you can easily scan your Inbox for categorized items, the same way that you might previously have scanned your Inbox for flagged items. You can also find categorized items in the Categorized Mail Search Folders.

Color Categories in E-mail Messages
By default, categories cannot be sent in e-mail messages. In earlier versions of Outlook, categories could arrive in incoming e-mail messages and automatically be applied on replies and forwards of the categorized messages.

Free/Busy Bar
The Free/Busy bar is removed on calendar items if the item is marked as busy. This change is one of several improvements to calendar legibility. The Free/Busy bar does appear if the item is marked as Free, Tentative, or Out of Office.

Meetings Icon in Calendar
The meeting icon has been removed from calendar items. This change is one of several improvements to calendar legibility.

Follow Up Button
The Follow Up button and the Flag for Follow Up dialog box are replaced by a drop-down menu. The Flagging feature has been enhanced. You see this change the first time that you click the Quick Flag column. Changing the behavior of the Follow Up button is part of the overall improvement in the time and task management system within Outlook.

Symantec ACT! and Microsoft Schedule+ Support
Importing of ACT! and Schedule+ information is no longer supported in Office Outlook 2007. You can import ACT! information into Microsoft Office Outlook Business Contact Manager. Schedule+ is no longer a supported Microsoft product.

Link Menu on Contacts
The Link command is no longer available when you right-click a contact in Office Outlook 2007.

Navigation Buttons in Address Book
The left and right navigation buttons in the Address Book dialog boxes have been removed. Navigation buttons are no longer needed, because more than one contact can now be opened simultaneously.

Hyperlinks in SharePoint Items
Previously, the bodies of SharePoint items were read-only, and a hyperlink pointed to the Web browser version of the item, so that you could make changes. Now, the bodies of SharePoint items in Office Outlook 2007 can be updated within Office Outlook 2007, and can be kept synchronized to the SharePoint item. The hyperlink is not available, and is replaced by the View on the Web toolbar button. Clicking the toolbar button opens the SharePoint item in your Web browser.

Sending Messages When Your Mailbox is Full
Previously, when your mailbox was full and you were using Cached Exchange Mode, all outgoing messages were sent to a folder (located on the e-mail server) that checked your mailbox size to find out whether you were able to send the messages. In Office Outlook 2007, if your mailbox is over its size limit during submission, you receive a message to that effect.

Flags on IMAP E-mail Messages
You can only turn on or off Flag for Follow Up for an e-mail message that is received in an IMAP e-mail account. This change was made to improve compliance with the IMAP protocol.

Signatures from an HTML File
Signatures are now created in the Signature dialog box in Office Word 2007.