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Outlook is a very flexible program for reading and distributing email and similar items, and can be configured in many ways. As a result, it is impossible to show exactly how Outlook will appear on your screen. This is a typical layout: more complex that the default, less so that my normal configuration.
Click on any part of the layout for more information. You may find it useful to have Outlook running in another window while you read these pages, so you can see the results of actions directly.
The Menu Bar, at the top of the Outlook display, gives you access to many Outlook features. Clicking on a menu will open a dropdown list of the features on that menu. Outlook may only display a short selection of the most commonly-used features at first, with a double down-pointing chevron at the bottom to indicate that more are available. The menu will expand after 5 seconds, or clicking on the chevrons will open it. Some of these items (starred in the lists below) are themselves menus, and clicking on the arrow by them will open a sub-menu (and some sub-menus themselves have sub-menus). The features available on each menu are as follows:
The Message Area is where Outlook displays an overview of your currently accessible items. As shown, it is displaying some of the emails in the folder I am currently using. The information it gives me about these is configuarable from the the View menu, and their order from the Field bar. Were I looking at items in one of my calendars, a similarly-configurable view of the calendar would appear instead.
The Reading Pane allows you to take a quick view of the contents of an email without actually opening it. This is such a useful feature the Service seems perverse in recommending you not to use it. Nonetheless, ISS recommends that the Reading Pane be not used. This is for security reasons: to generate the contents of the Reading Pane, Outlook must read the item; and, if it is an executable item, such as a piece of HTML, then it must execute it. This can allow viruses or other malware onto your system
The Folder List contains a schematic of your folder hierarchy, showing all folders available to you (including Public Folders, other users' mailboxes you have added to your profile (after they have given you permission, of course) and any Private Folders you may have defined). The top-level of the hierarchy starts at the left hand side of the frame, each level of sub-folders being indented further. Not all levels are shown at once: if a folder has sub-folders, a box is shown next to its name: with a plus sign if the sub-folders are not shown, and minus sign if they are. Clicking in this box will show unshown folders, or hide shown ones. Clicking on a bottom level folder opens it in the message pane.
Outlook is more than an email reader. It also allows the storage and distribution of calendar events, email directories, etc. The Navigation Pane divides your stored information into types:-
Not all types need be displayed at all times. Clicking on the bottom left icon allows you to control which are displayed. Clicking on an item type will change the folderlist and message area to the selected type.
The Control Bar contains a series of icons for the most commonly-done mail actions: Reply, Forward, Move to Folder, and so on. Some icons are accomanied by text saying what action they control, others are more gnomic. But in each case, leaving your cursor over the icon will bring up a small box saying what the icon does. The icons include
If an icon is not relevant to the current situation (such as the Reply or Forward icons when you do not have any email selected), then it will be grayed-out. Some icons only appear in specific folders: there is a not Junk icon, that only appears if you are in the Junk folder. And some icons work differently in different folders: using the Delete icon from any folder except the Deleted Iems folder causes the item to be moved to the Deleted Items folder; with that folder, it deletes the item from your mailbox entirely.
The Favourites Area, above the Folders List, is a 2nd copy of the link to selected folders. This allows you to have important folders permanently displayed, even though they may not currently be showing in the Folders List because of scrolling. Any folder may be put into the Favourite Area: right-click on the selected folder in the Folder List, and select Add to Favourites Folder from the menu that appears. A similar process removes them.
The Field Bar at the top of the messages pane shows which fields or flags are displayed in the messages pane. The fields shown, and their order in the line, is configurable from the View menu: click on view, Arrange by, Current View, Customize Current View, and finally on the Fields button. This gets you a graphic such as
The large pane on the left shows what fields are available to be displayed, that on the right those currently selected to be displayed. To transfer fields between these panes, click the field (it will be highlighted), and use the Add or Remove buttons. The order of fields in the right pane are controlled by the Move Up and Move Down buttons.
The Field Bar also controls the order on which messages are displays within the message pane. Clicking on a field will sort messages by that field (a triangle appears in the field header, showing how the entries are sorted. Clicking in the field again will sort in reverse order: showing the earliest email at the top of the pane, instead of the latest, for example. The triangle will then appear inverted. Note that the field selection applies only to the current folder.
Inadvertently clicking in the field bar can give the impression that mail has been lost, as the re-sorting may take items down the list and out of sight. So if you think you have lost mail, the first thing to check is how you are sorting mail. The 2nd is to check the Current View, in case you are filtering displayed mail somehow, for example only showing email for the last 7 days, or only unread items)
One convenient use of sorting by different fields, is to find large emails quickly if you are reaching you email quota. Outlooks Advanced Find allows you to search for large emails throughout your mailbox, but having the Size field displayed in your Inbox and Sent Items folder lets you quickly search these first. Click in the Size field, twice if necessary, and the largest items appear at the top.