USE THE WINDOWS ADDRESS BOOK

Not everyone uses Outlook to organize his or her working lives and integrate e-mail. Sometimes all that's needed is a rudimentary contact card system on their PC to store telephone numbers and other contact details. If this describes the needs of any of your users, then they probably don't need to use Outlook Express' Contacts feature or any other third-party contact manager for that matter. You may find that Windows has a ready-made solution.

Click Start | Run, type wab, and click OK. You'll see the Windows Address Book, which is, in fact, the address book that's used by Outlook Express. (You can also create a shortcut on the desktop to Wab.exe.) If the user needs to progress to Outlook later, he or she can click File | Export within Windows Address Book and select Address Book. This step saves the contact details in Personal Address Book (.pab) format, which can then be imported into Outlook.