Windows 8 deep dive: Get to know the Mail and Calendar apps - dotsonposelver
E-mail and calendar apps may non live much amusing, but they're of the essence if you intend to live on the grid, interacting with other weak beings. Enter Microsoft's new Windows 8 Mail and Calendar apps, each of which takes a prominent position along the new Start screen out. Naturally, deal of competitors offer basic netmail and calendar functionality, so if Microsoft is going to enter this sphere, it had better give users some real introduction.
Calendar syncs with Hotmail, Expectation, and Google accounts to bring together all your sundry events on one monumental test for light viewing. Chain armour taps intoHotmail, Outlook, Google, AOL, Yahoo, and your have private IMAP and POP accounts; the app also aggregates all your messages from these various accounts on a single screen.
Pretty touchstone stuff, right field? Actually, no: Email and calendar apps are never as simple as they seem. That's why some are awful, and others downright stink.
What Calendar does well
When your busy days all seem to run conjointly, keeping everything unbent can be tough. And the spot gets even worsened if you purpose multiple accounts with multiple calendars to eyeball meetings, personal events, and those pesky birthdays that keep unavowed functioning on you. How are you supposed to separate all of your business sector engagements scheduled on Google from your personal commitments scheduled on Mentality?
Fortunately, Calendar provides a great, full-CRT screen view of whol your calendars in one place. Scrolling through with the months, weeks, and days is simple with a primary swiping gesture. Visual perception different events, even when they overlap, is easy thanks to color-cryptography unique to from each one calendar, and overall the interface is designed to help keep you from overscheduling yourself.
The Calendar app is great for tracking the birthdays of every your social contacts as well. When you sync varied social accounts to Masses, you also sync them to your Microsoft Invoice, which Calendar pulls from. So if your friends and familiy have their birthdays recorded in their social media profiles, they will come along in the Calendar app as well.
Where Calendar waterfall short
Calendar may be too simple for its own good, however. Case in gunpoint: At PCWorld we use an categorization of shared Google calendars to track events. We use of goods and services these calendars to see when period meetings are held, when our editors are present trade shows, and when the deadlines are approaching for for each one week's battery of feature stories.
The end result is a single calendar eyeshot full of meetings, plans, and deadlines, only that's how we stay organized and spend a penny for certain that nothing slips through the cracks. Unfortunately, the Windows 8 Calendar app supports only one main calendar per account; it doesn't superficial secondary calendars and shared calendars. And then to receive the full spectrum of PCWorld's daily events, we have to get around the Calendar app entirely, and hit our Vane browsers as an alternative.
Hiding specialised calendar items is also impossible, as a calendar is either exposed or secret, with no compromises in between. For example, if you wishing to by selection remove the birthday of someone you get into't really care about—say, a birthday that's present only thanks to People app integration—you'atomic number 75 out of luck. The solitary way to excise it is to hide everyone's birthday, a shotgun approach that's simply non stabilizing. I suppose Microsoft figures it's ameliorate to have too much info than none in the least.
What Ring mail does well
I hate having three different browser windows open just soh I can monitor all of my inboxes at once. Mail makes a courageous try out to save users the ail of shift tabs and resizing browsers to keep up with their e-mail. The user interface is arrow-shaped and clean, and funnels all of your email accounts into a single, unified view.
Emoticons may seem frivolous to some people, but Mail has more of them than you could ever hope to use. In fact, Mail has so numerous emoticons that Microsoft seems to be challenging us to author a detailed, comprehensible email message made wholly of these little pictures. One of the emoticons is a slice of pizza. Enough said.
Where Mail waterfall short
In most email clients, text-editing options reside happening an easy-to-use toolbar at the top of the substance. For the Mail app, though, be prepared to do or s digging: Everything from heroical to undo is located in the Options BAR, which you access by right-clicking or swiping up from the bottom of the screen. Fortunately, highlighting some text automatically brings up the menu, saving yourself a twain clicks. But this is something you find by fortuity—which is the case with umpteen Windows 8 features.
Considering the amount of emoticons that Mail has disposable, I half expected to see as many another fonts as in Word. Nevertheless, the Mail app falls quite a deficient in this regard: Only eight fonts are available, and whol of them are drilling. I hazard the limitations help to keep you from accidentally sending an important email in Humourous Sans.
IT Crataegus laevigata be a elfin overmuch to ask, simply having Mail and Calendar act together with greater efficiency would be a blessing. When dates and times muster in an email, it would be important to have the option to add the result to the Calendar right from Mail. Unluckily, you need to add IT in manually.
Key options and settings
For Mail…
First, let's dive into the Settings available within the Charms bar when the Mail app is active.
Accounts: This setting allows you to impart any number of mail accounts from Hotmail, Outlook, Google, AOL, and Yahoo. Clicking on an added calculate produces a plethora of email-related options, so much American Samoa the account's identify, your name, when to download new get off, display settings for old chain armor, whether to automatically download images, using and editing an email signature, and any technical email-waiter options.
The rest of the settings include Help (which takes you to Microsoft's FAQ varlet), About (which has specialized information about the app), Feedback (which allows you to provide feedback along the app), Permissions (which holds the different things you have agreed that Mail can use), and Rate and Reappraisal (which takes you to the Windows Store to follow-up the app).
For Calendar…
In real time Lashkar-e-Toiba's cause the same for the Calendar app and look through and through the Settings in the Charms barroom.
Accounts:This mise en scene allows you to add any number of calendars from various sources. Prefer Add an write u and select Hotmail, Outlook, or Google. Enter the email address and associated password, and savor a newly synced calendar and account. Selecting an already added account will throw you options nearly identical to those for mail, including naming the account, when to download new email, the types of content to synchronise (contacts, email, and calendar), and the option to polish of the account.
Options: Here you can choose a few rudimentary options for your calendar. You prat select which accounts' calendars are visible, likewise every bit choose a specific color for each of their entries.
As with Mail, the rest of the settings include Serve (which takes you to Microsoft's FAQ page), Most (which offers technical information about the app), Feedback (which lets you give feedback on the app), Permissions (which has the different things you have allowed Calendar to use), and Rate and Follow-up (which takes you to the Windows Store to review the app).
We'll now take a look at Mail's main options through the different areas, since the options are all discourse.
From Mail's main screen…
Starting the Options bar from this screen door gives you Sync, 'Tholepin to Start', Move, and 'Cross off uninformed' options. Sync communicates with your mail guest and automatically syncs the account. 'Pin to Start' pins the current folder you're in to the Start menu (discussed below). Movement allows you to shift an email message to a different folder. Finally, 'Mark unread' simply marks the highlighted email as a modern message.
When you add multiple accounts, they will beryllium free as tiles in the bottom-left corner of the screen, allowing you to transposition accounts apace.
In the top-right corner are three buttons that correspond to creating a new message (the advantageous sign), replying to or forwarding the highlighted substance (the envelope with the arrow), and deleting a message (the trash can).
From the 'Create a new message' screen…
Accessing the Options bar while you'Re writing a unprecedented message brings up the options 'Save draft' and 'Attachments' (the latter of which allows you to add an attachment from the system), also as editing tools for applying bold operating room italics, changing the baptistry, changing the textual matter people of colour, selecting an emoticon, and putting things into bulleted or numbered lists.
Two icons on the height-justly of the screen tally to sending the message (the air envelope) or canceling (the X), which gives you the option to save surgery delete your on-going draft.
At once let's give the same treatment to the Calendar app, and look through the nook and cranny of the options.
From Calendar's main screen…
Opening the Options block u on this screen produces a few calendar-viewing options (such as day, hebdomad, operating theater month views) also as Today, which centers and highlights the calendar on the current day, and New. Selecting New brings in the lead an effect-creation screen. From hither you can set a date, time, event distance, and location, likewise as which calendar should get the item. If you select 'Show much', you can set the frequency if information technology's a recurring event, arrange a reminder alert up of the event, indicate what your registered status will be during the event (such as out of the office or busy), add people to the event if you have saved contacts, and make the event private. You just ADD a title and description, and click Save, to finish mise en scene up the event.
You will realize color boxes with event titles and times along the days for which you give birth scheduled events.
Tips and tricks
For Mail…
- Pinning a mailbox to the Start screen creates a tile that offers a direct path to it folder. If you want quick entree to your marked Beaver State starred mail, navigate to that brochure, right-click or swipe up from the bottom, and click Pin to Start. Name it whatever you'd like, and a roofing tile will be created.
- Chain armor's experience tile displays how many new messages you have, a brief excerpt of your latest subject matter, and the name of who sent it. When there's no new mail, the live roofing tile won't demo anything.
- Highlight text while composition an email message mechanically opens the Options bar to the editing options.
- When creating a new message, you prat select the '+' (plus-sign) symbol next to the contacts list to launch the Hoi polloi app and select a contact from the list (provided that your recipient has a public email address listed).
For Calendar…
- Clicking or tapping the day spell in Month sentiment takes you directly to the event-instauration screen for that mean solar day. If you are in Week surgery Day view, clicking on a certain clock also opens the event-creation screen, with the time you selected as the default set off time for the result.
- Calendar's live roofing tile cycles through the Day's upcoming events, showing you what your day has in computer memory without your having to launch the app. Each event likewise appears connected the lock screen with its call and time.
An Alternative to Send and Calendar
Not too long ago, we famed in another article that the best alternate to the Mail and Calendar apps is to continue using the tools that you know and love. For us, the best choice is to use a Google account as a comprehensive mail and calendar guest. From one Google screen you bum switch from mail to the calendar quickly and see a comprehensive aspect of all your calendars, rather than stay limited to extraordinary. Sure, keeping additive browser windows open can be a pain; merely to get a smooth and complete experience, I think it's worth the effort.
Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/455595/windows-8-deep-dive-get-to-know-the-mail-and-calendar-apps.html
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