Working with Electronic Business Cards

The exchange of business cards is a time-honored ritual in the world of business. Starting with Outlook 2007, Microsoft aligned itself with that tradition (and with other email products) by adding simple, user-friendly support for electronic business cards. These cards, created using the industry standard vCard (.vcf) format, not only look good on the screen, but can be exchanged easily with most any other modern email or contact management program.

That said, please be aware that while Outlook makes it easy to work with electronic business cards, designing quality cards is a whole different story, and the province of the corporate marketing folks. That side of things is clearly out of the scope of this article. So we'll talk only about the mechanics of creating electronic business cards here. It'll be up to you to come up with a actual look and layout of your cards.

Creating an Electronic Business Card

As soon as you create a new contact, Outlook automatically creates a very basic electronic business card for it. These are simply lists of the basic information you entered for that contact, such as their name and address, along with a copy of the contact's picture (if you have one). The procedure that follows is a very basic set of instructions for creating better cards to that replace the plain and frankly dull default ones.

To create an electronic business card for any given contact, follow this high-level procedure:

1. Open the contact you want to work on. The current electronic business card for this contact appears on the right side of the contact window.
2. Right-click the current version of the card. In the shortcut menu that appears, click Edit Business Card to open the Edit Business Card dialog box.
3. You'll see numerous options and controls for editing the business card. Fortunately, Microsoft has simplified things by including an image of the business card here. That image changes as you make changes to the controls. This allows you to see the results of each change as you make it. That also means you can undo changes you don't like and allows you to freely experiment with all the design options.
4. Once you've finalized what information you want visible on the card, move over to the top of the Card Design section and work your way down. Experiment with the settings to find a design you like, or follow the directions from corporate to give your card the approved look. To include an image other than the photo associated with the contact, click the Image button and insert it. You can apply a background to your card simply by clicking the Background button & using the dialog box that appears.
5. Repeat the previous two steps in any order to refine and tweak your card design until it's exactly the way you want it. Click OK when you're done designing.

Your new business card design will now be visible in Business Card view and when you attach your electronic business card to messages you send.

Including Your Electronic Business Card in a Message

1. Position the cursor in the message at the location where you want the business card to appear.
2. Click Insert Business Card in the Include section of the ribbon.
3. The card appears in the body of the message at the location specified by the cursor.

Adding You Electronic Business Card to Your Auto-Signature

If you want to add your business card to your auto-signature (so the card gets attached to each message automatically) follow these instructions:

1. On the Tools menu, click Options to open the Options dialog box.
2. Click the Mail Format tab. When the Mail Format tabbed page appears, click the Signatures button to open the Signatures and Stationery dialog box. Make sure the E-mail Signatures tab is selected.
3. Select the signature you want to add the business card to. (If you haven't created an e-mail signature yet, you'll need to do that first by clicking New).
4. In the Edit Signatures section of the dialog box, click Business Card and select a card you want to use from the list. If the card you want isn't visible, click New Card from Contact, and select the contact that has the card you want to use.

You should now be all set to use Electronic Business Cards.