As anyone who travels knows, time zones and Outlook doesn't always work together the way you wished they did. When you create an appointment for a time in another time zone while in your home time zone, you need adjust the times to reflect the time zone differential. If you don't, when you change the time zone on the computer, your appointment will have the wrong time. Most frequent travelers are used to it and use Outlook's dual time zone feature or other methods to avoid problems.

One feature request we hear often is the ability to select the time zone when the appointment is created. IE, you are in the eastern time zone and receive an email setting up an appointment for 10 pacific time. When you create the appointment on your calendar, you need to adjust the time to Eastern time, either by using dual time zones or adding 3 hours to the start time.

Outlook 2007 makes this so much easier: just click the Time Zone button on the appointment form and you can set the appointment for 10 am PT and let Outlook do the calculating. Not only can you set the time zone for the start of the appointment, you can set a different zone for the end time, which will make many air travelers happy. Yes Virginia, Microsoft does listen to you.

The other time zone problem which gets a lot of complaints is still a problem in Outlook 2007: All day events will become 2 day events when the time zone changes. I'm not expecting this to change before Outlook 2007 is released, but they know it's a problem and are working on a solution for it.

There are several "known issues" affecting Outlook 2007 when connected to Exchange server which you should be aware of before installing Outlook 2007 beta.

As I mentioned in a previous issue, Microsoft Outlook 2007 won't connect to Microsoft Exchange 5.5. Microsoft made the decision to intentionally prevent Outlook 2007 users from accessing Exchange 5.5 and released this statement:

"Microsoft continuously strives to provide a consistent and predictable end-of-life-cycle experience for all of its products. In accordance with standard Microsoft life-cycle policies Exchange 5.5 ended extended life-cycle support on January 10th, 2006. As a result, Outlook 2007 will not support Exchange 5.5. Because neither the Outlook or Exchange team is supporting this combination we will not discover and/or fix issues that crop up as the result of innovations in both products . Rather than subjecting customers to potential serious issues like data loss or frequent server downtime we choose to prevent Outlook from connecting to these older and now unsupported servers. Our research has shown that there is a relatively small set of customers who want to upgrade their desktops to the latest and greatest versions of Office and run server technology as old as Exchange 5.5. There are clearly exceptions but they don't seem to be the norm."

While I don't necessarily agree with the decision to block the ability of Outlook 2007 to connect to Exchange 5.5, I do know using Outlook 2007 against Exchange 5.5 has the potential for problems and even if we discover a hack to get around this prohibition, anyone using it may suffer data loss. If you absolutely must use Outlook 2007 and Exchange5.5, set it up for IMAP access. You'll lose access to Calendar, Contacts and Tasks folders, but will be able to send and receive email.

There are a few reports coming in where users are using Exchange 2000/2003 but Outlook thinks it's Exchange 5.5 and refuses to connect. This could be because there is an Exchange 5.5 server still running in the network or where Exchange server was upgraded. Regardless of the reason for this error message, if Outlook 2007 was not prevented from connecting to Exchange 5.5 this problem would not exist.

RPC over HTTP ("Outlook Anywhere") connection isn’t working - Outlook won't connect.

The cause: There is a bug that causes the settings to get cleared. If your server supports automatic configuration, click the Repair button in Tools, Accounts and restart Outlook. If this does not automatically refresh your settings, you will have to re-enter them manually. The bug that clears settings may affect other accounts as well, so anyone having problems sending or receiving email would be wise to check and reset their settings.

Exchange account is configured to deliver to a PST file but you're not getting any new mails to download, and get an error every minute.

The cause: Due to some data loss bugs, Exchange mail delivery to a PST file is not supported in Beta2. I suspect more than a few Exchange administrators are hoping this is one bug that doesn't get fixed, as PST = BAD when you're using an Exchange mailbox.

As always, before installing any beta software you should read up on known issues. The Office 2007 known issues can be found at http://officebeta.iponet.net/en-us/products/FX101517941033.aspx#16.  If you don't have Office 2007 installed, you'll need an active x control installed. You can get the control from http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/beta/deploy.mspx. 

Along with the information at Microsoft, you can check out the slipstick.com coverage of Outlook 2007 at http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/ol2007/index.htm.

Unless you are in the technical beta program, the options for reporting bugs are limited to posting the problem in the Microsoft public newsgroups or asking a technical beta tester to submit the bug. Office 2007 adds a new way for any user to report feedback, good or bad about the applications: the Smile tool.

The Smile tool is a small application that resides in the notification area and transmits your comments and a screenshot back to Microsoft. Use it to send smiles for features or changes you like and frowns for bugs or features you don't like. For more information, see http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/05/26/607768.aspx 

You can download the Send a Smile tool from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=A2E1F4E2-BC0F-4403-B09F-7A677D55F274.