Outlook Tips

We’re seeing a lot of complaint from Hotmail Connector users  - they  have empty messages in Outlook while the messages are fine online: “many e-mails appear to be downloaded, ie show a time but there is no header, or body of message that can be viewed.  The messages are on the server.  I can view them with Live Mail or going online via Hotmail.  They seem to be corrupted only via Outlook.”

This usually happens because an antivirus scanner is scanning incoming email. The best fix is to uninstall the antivirus email integration but if this doesn’t help, you can fix it by upgrading to the new connector.

For Outlook 2003, 2007, 2010:
Outlook Connector 14 Beta 32-bit: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=3d003da0-f684-4f4d-a9c8-8d15b84f60d1  

Outlook Connector 14 Beta 64-bit (Outlook 2010 only): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=16bab660-54d8-4129-91c3-d86ff0d996e9

When you import contacts, their birthdays are not automatically added to the calendar as they are when you create a new contact manually or edit existing contacts.

You have three options:
1.     Open and save each contact
2.     Use VBA code (http://www.outlookcode.com/d/code/remindbday.htm)
3.     Use a utility: Put Anniversary in Calendar (http://www.rsoutlook.com/us/prods/prod05.html)

From Adding Birthdays and Anniversaries to the Calendar http://www.slipstick.com/contacts/addbirthdays.asp

Surprisingly, things are pretty quiet today. We’re usually bombarded with questions about wrong appointment times right after DST begins and ends. Maybe this is a good sign that everyone has the DST updates installed and the correct time zone and DST settings on their computer. 

If your appointments are off an hour, see http://support.microsoft.com/gp/cp_dst and verify that Window’s time zone updates are installed.

If you need to move appointments created in another time zone (either because the computer was on the wrong time zone or because you moved to a new time zone), use the Microsoft Office Outlook Tool: Time Zone Data Update Tool for Microsoft Office Outlook (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e343a233-b9c8-4652-9dd8-ae0f1af62568&displaylang=en)

You can also use Import and Export to fix times. Set the time zone so the appointments are correct, export them to Excel or CSV format. Delete everything in the calendar folder then set the time zone so its correct and import. This will convert recurring events to individual events and affect meeting requests so we recommend this method only when the time zone tool fails and you have too many appointments to change by hand.

Warning! This registry hack will disable the Junk email filter in Outlook 2007 and 2010, including the blocked list, and disable the Junk email options button.  
The ‘no automatic filtering’ setting in Outlook’s Junk email options disables the junk email filter but continues to apply the blocked senders list to incoming email. Some users complain that the filter continues to work after setting it to no automatic filtering and with the blocked list empty. This registry hack will completely disable Outlook’s built in filtering.  It will not affect third party spam filters.

Go to the following key (use 14.0 if you use Outlook 2010) – if the key does not exist, add it.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\office\12.0\outlook
And add:
DWord: DisableAntiSpam
Value: 1 (Hex)
Value of 1 disables the junk filter, 0 enables it.

You need to restart Outlook for it take effect. The Junk email folder will remain (but should not be created if you make a new default pst file) – you can delete the junk folder using OutlookSpy or MFCMAPI.

You can also disable RSS: see http://www.outlook-tips.net/archives/2008/20080829.htm

Anyone who is debating between getting Office 2007 now or waiting for Office 2010 can get 2007 now and 2010 when it comes out -See http://office2010.microsoft.com/en-us/tech-guarantee/ for details.

If you do get 2007, make sure you get the copy of 2010 when its available - I've heard a few people say they did this with Office 2003/2007 and thought it meant they could get 2007 free at any time - years later. You need to order the upgrade by Oct 31 2010.

Also, our March poll is live:
Do you sync your mailbox with a smartphone or pda?
http://forums.slipstick.com/showthread.php?t=39473

If you use Outlook on Windows 7 and open email attachments, you have probably seen the dialog that asks if you want to open or save the attachment after double clicking on the attachment. The option to disable the dialog (and always open attachments) is grayed out, so you can’t get rid of the dialog.

The ‘always ask’ option is grayed out due to security restrictions and User Access Control (UAC). You can Run Outlook as an administrator and answer the dialogs - open all the common file types you get by email, deselect the ‘always ask’ option and restart Outlook using normal permissions.

To run Outlook with Administrator permissions, close Outlook then type Outlook.exe in the start menu’s Search field. Right click on Outlook.exe and choose Run as Administrator.
You can also edit the registry to remove the dialog. See Disable "Always ask before opening"  for more information.

An Outlook user asked: “When I click on "To" to select who I am sending an email to, the "Select Names" dialog box pops up, with "Show Names From The" "Contacts" by default.

The list of contact is sorted "First Name Last Name" how do I reverse this ?

In "Tools / Options / Contacts / Contacts Options" I already have "Last First" selected in both boxes.”

The Contacts Options controls how names are parsed when you type in new contacts. Try the Address Book's Tools, Options dialog. Highlight the contacts list and hit the Change button then you can change the sort order.

For more information on the various contact and address book options, see http://www.slipstick.com/tutorials/contacts/contacts.htm

The behavior of recurring tasks and reminders confuses a lot of users – when a reminder for a task is dismissed, all that happens is the reminder is dismissed on the current occurrence. The task is not marked complete and the next task is not generated. If the task is later marked complete, the next occurrence will not have a reminder set.

In order to generate a new task with a reminder, mark the task complete – this will dismiss the current reminder and generate next recurrence.

To mark the task complete, right click on the reminder and choose Mark Complete or open the task and set the Status to Complete.

Earlier today, Microsoft released a social connector for Outlook 2003/2007. This adds a “people pane” to the bottom of the reading pane and displays email, attachments, and meetings associated with the sender of the current message (or the people it was sent to). If you have a contact and a picture on the contact for the selected person, you’ll see the picture in the people pane.

The connector released today also replaces the connector included with Outlook 2010 32-bit Beta. Users will need to uninstall the connector from Outlook 2010 Beta and install the new connector if they want to use the LinkedIn connector, also released today.

With the social connector installed, users can download the LinkedIn connector. This will pull feeds from senders who are linked to your LinkedIn account.

Outlook Social Connector for Outlook 2003/2007 (Beta)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c87e257c-d76f-4785-a09b-af36babd6e32&displaylang=en

LinkedIn for Outlook
http://www.linkedin.com/outlook

Anyone who saves email in HTML format knows Outlook creates a folder containing “junk files” (in their opinion). The folder can’t be deleted – it’s linked to the HTML file and breaking the link, while possible, takes several steps.

Although you can’t prevent the creation of these folder, you can make it easier to delete them. Open Windows Explorer, go to Folder options (Look on the Tools menu in older Windows versions and the Organize button in Windows 7 and Vista.)  Go to the View settings and change the Managing pairs of Web pages and folders to Show both parts and manage them individually. Now the folder are unlinked from the HTML file and can be deleted.

See http://www.outlook-tips.net/howto/save_html_folder.htm for screenshots and complete instructions