To coincide with the new version of Exchange, Microsoft will make some cosmetic changes to the Outlook email program. Outlook will sport a new look, with Microsoft moving the window that previews the text of an email from the bottom of the screen to the right-hand side, Bernardo said. Another new feature is the ability to group email based on when messages arrived. "It will provide some visual cues and better navigation of what's important and timely in my inbox," he said. "You can group messages from when they came in -- today, yesterday, last week, two weeks ago." Outlook will also feature improvements in sorting mail, including new multicolored flags that people can use to determine each email's importance. Computer users can then put flagged email in multiple folders in their inbox. If they forget where they put the flagged email, they can do a search to find all their important messages all at once, Bernardo said. In addition, Microsoft plans to spruce up its stripped-down, Web-based version of the Outlook email program, adding new features to make it as comprehensive as the regular version, he said. The new version of Exchange will also be more powerful and handle more users and allow network administrators to more easily store company email by taking regular "snapshots" of the data, Bernardo said. The new version of Exchange will also have Microsoft's Mobile Internet Server built in, allowing companies to more easily send email and calendar information to mobile devices, such as cell phones. Mobile Information Server was previously sold as a standalone product.
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