Outlook.com: Learn How People Works

We get a lot of questions about Outlook.com every day. One of the things many of you find confusing is the People tile. That’s what contacts are called now and many of you seem to have some trouble navigating this new set-up. That’s a shame, because it really does a lot. So I thought I’d give you a tour and talk about some of the features.

To get to People, you click the drop-down arrow next to Outlook.com at the right of your inbox.

A window will pop up giving tiles with the choices of Outlook.com, People, Calendar or SkyDrive. Select People.

Your screen will look like this. There are quite a few features available. So let’s take a look at what each of them are and how they can help you.

To the right, you’ll find your contacts. Depending on your settings this may include e-mail addresses, Facebook friends, LinkedIn associates and people you follow on Twitter.

We recently published an article about managing your contacts in Outlook.com that you might want to check out as well. Click here to read that.

In the center of the screen, you’ll see options of import contacts from Google, Facebook and Sina Weibo or from a file of contacts you’ve exported from another e-mail service.

To the far right, you’ll see icons indicating which social accounts, if any, Outlook.com is connected to. This account is connected with Skype, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Click on the smiling square in the upper right.

And you’ll have the options to chat via Facebook, Skype, Google and Messenger. You can use any or all of the services from one location.

Click on your profile to decide if you wish to be available for chat.

Near the top center of the page, you’ll find the option to add new contacts or groups.

Next to it are the tools to manage your contacts. Clean up contacts will remove duplicate contacts, Restore deleted contact will do just that and Export will allow you export your contacts as a data file. You can also invite people via Messenger.

Limit access give you the option of limiting what certain contacts can view about your profile.

If you select the settings icon, a drop-down menu will let you filter your contacts. You can choose to include or exclude social media accounts and arrange how your contacts display.

When you want to get back to mail, just click the arrow next to People in the left corner.

There are really a lot of nice features available in the new Outlook.com, the trick is learning how to navigate the new layout. I hope this tour has helped.