Introduction to Outlook 2007 - Design and Use Electronic Business Cards

The exchange of business cards is a time-honored ritual in the world of business. Microsoft chose to honor that common practice by adding electronic business cards to Outlook 2007. This brings them in line with most other modern email and contact management products.. These cards, created using the industry standard vCard (.vcf) format, not only look good on the screen, but can be exchanged easily with most any other modern email or contact management program.

That said, please be aware that while Outlook makes it easy to work with electronic business cards, designing quality cards is a whole different story, and the province of the corporate marketing folks. This puts the art of designing quality electronic business cards outside the scope of this article. So we'll talk only about how you create and use electronic business cards. It's up to you, in compliance with corporate policy, to come up with a design you are proud of.

How to Create an Electronic Business Card

Whenever you create a contact, Outlook automatically creates a very basic electronic business card to go with it. These cards are nothing more than lists of the basic information you entered for that contact, such as their name and address, along with whatever picture, if any, you have assigned to that contact. The procedure that follows is a very basic set of instructions for creating fancier cards to that replace these basic default cards.

To design a better electronic business card for any given contact, follow this procedure:

1. Open the contact you're going to design a new card for. The current electronic business card for this contact appears on the right side of the contact window.
2. Right-click the current version of the card, then click Edit Business Card. This opens the Edit Business Card dialog box.
3. You'll see numerous options and controls for editing the business card. Microsoft really made our lives easier here. They've included an image of the contact's card that changes as you make changes to the controls in this dialog box. That means you can see the results of each change right away. That also means you can undo changes you don't like and allows you to freely experiment with all the design options.
4. Once you have selected and formatted the fields you want to appear on the card, move over to the top of the Card Design section and work your way down. Experiment with the settings to find a design you like, or follow the directions from corporate to give your card the approved look. To include an image other than the photo associated with the contact, click the Image button and insert it. Click Background to apply a background color to the card.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 as many times as necessary to get a design you like. Click OK when you're done designing.

Using Your Own Electronic Business Card

Your new business card design will now be visible in Business Card view and whenever you attach it to a message you're working on. To attach the card to a message you're writing, first position the cursor in the message at the location where you want the business card to appear. Then click Insert Business Card in the Include section of the ribbon while you're editing the message. The card appears in the body of the message at the location specified by the cursor. The card is also attached to the message in .VCF format so the recipient can easily save it.

Learning how to create and use electronic business cards is just one of the subjects covered in the fourth lesson of the 6-week online course, Introduction to Outlook 2007. If strengthening your Microsoft Outlook 2007 skills in this time of uncertain job prospects makes sense to you, I suggest you visit http://IntroToOutlook2007.info to learn more