By: Alex Harmon

Microsoft recently opened access to the beta version of Office 2010, so of course I couldn’t resist downloading it. While most of the programs and features appear to be similar if not identical to their Office 2007 counterparts, Outlook 2010 has seen some overhaul in both the look-and-feel department and in how the software handles email accounts and stores.

A few things I’ve noticed so far:

• An option to define a default mail store for an account in the account creation wizard, simplifying the Internet mail account creation process significantly.
• Creation of a new .PST mail store for each and every new account added. The created mail store seems to take on the name given to the account. For instance, if I add an Internet email account for the address jdoe@domain.com and leave the account’s name at the default value, I’ll get a .PST file named jdoe@domain.com.pst. While this behavior is possible in earlier versions of Outlook, it’s nice to see it as default behavior in Outlook 2010 Beta.
• Storage of mail stores in a different path. The .PSTs are now stored in: C:\Users\username\Documents\Outlook Files\. This may be something that e-discovery vendors performing email collection may need to keep in mind.

Note that these observations apply to the Office 2010 Beta build I downloaded on December 10, 2009, and installed on my Windows Vista machine, and may be subject to change. My tests are just starting and I’ll keep you posted on any other interesting items I find.

Alex Harmon is a technology manager at Blank Law + Technology. He manages the firm’s network and systems infrastructure and provides computer forensics and electronic discovery services.