The Ribbon is visible each time you create or edit something in Outlook. Specifically, you'll encounter the Ribbon when you create or modify e-mail messages, calendar items, contacts, tasks, or journal entries.

Why did we switch to this new system? We did a lot of research about how people use commands in Outlook. Based on this research, we made some commands more prominent and organized common commands so that they're displayed and grouped in ways that make them easy to find and use.

Note    If you've used Microsoft Office Word 2007, the Ribbon for Outlook messages will be familiar to you. Because the Outlook 2007 editor is based on Word 2007, many of the commands and options that are available in Word are available when you create messages in Outlook.