Outlook Tips

Tip 521: Printed Calendar Time Scale

outlooktips — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:27:00 GMT

If you need to print a daily calendar with a 15 minute time scale, you’ll need to reduce the hours printed - 8am - 5 pm should use 15 min scale. 7am - 7pm uses 30 min.

Tip 520: Minimize Ribbon

outlooktips — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 06:24:00 GMT

Joe asks: “I’m a new user of Outlook 2007. I was just getting used to the new 'Ribbon' when somehow I turned it off. Can you tell me what I did and how to turn it back on?”

Look at the right side of the Quick Access Toolbar (the row of icons top left in the Title Bar) and you'll see a tiny downward pointing arrow. Click this and a menu appears. At the very bottom is an item saying 'Minimize the Ribbon'. If it has a tick next to it, click it again to restore the ribbon.

Keep in mind that Outlook only displays the ribbon in a New or opened item window – the main Outlook interface uses the old menu bars.

Tip 519: "Sending 1 of x"

outlooktips — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 06:22:00 GMT

The following question comes up often: "The 'Sending' message dialog comes up although nothing is in the Outbox. It's now progressed sequentially from 'Sending' 1 message to 'Sending 1 of 4'. It takes ages for 'real' messages to be sent."

It's a bug. Outlook has a problem counting. It counts each account it checks for new mail as a message. In the case of "1 of 4", it means there are 4 accounts in the profile it’s checking.

Until a fix is released, try putting the accounts in different send /receive groups so each is checked at a different time. (Press Ctrl+Alt+S to open the Send/Receive dialog).

Tip 518: WordMail

outlooktips — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 04:58:00 GMT

Office has a feature called "Send to Mail Recipient" which puts the document in the message body, rather than attaching the document to the message. This is often referred to as "word mail" and while it sounds like a cool feature, reality is that few people had a need for it or used it and its not exposed on the menus in Office 2007.

The capability was not removed from Office and if you need it, you can add the Send to mail recipient to the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT).

From the Customize Quick Access Toolbar menu, More Commands dialog, choose All commands from the 'Choose Command from' dropdown and add the ”Send to mail recipient” command to the QAT.

Tip 517: Reminder Times

outlooktips — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 03:26:00 GMT

As many users have discovered, setting reminders for all day events using the default times in the reminder selector means they may go off at weird times (like midnight), which can be a problem if you sync with a PDA.

If you want them to go off at a certain time (like noon), type half days in the reminder field: 3.5 days or 5.5 days. Use .25 days for 6 pm or .75 days for 6 am.

You can also type any number of hours (43 hours) but that requires too much thought about what time the reminder will go off. :)

Tip 516: Address Book Sort Order

outlooktips — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 03:24:00 GMT

Having problems alphabetizing your address book by last name?

Go to Tools, E-mail accounts, View or change existing directories or address books, Outlook Address Book, Change, to set your sort order. (In Outlook 2007, you’ll go to Tools, Account settings, Address Books tab. Select the Outlook address book and click Change.)

Note that your only options are to sort by "First, Last" or by "File As." So if you want your Outlook Address Book to sort by "Last, First" you must have your Contacts' File As fields configured that way.

Tip 515: Folder List Tooltips

outlooktips — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 03:23:00 GMT

When the mouse hovers over folder names in the navigation pane or folder list, Outlook pops up the full name in a tooltip. This tool tip often obscures the folder below and provides little useful information for most users. Can it be turned off?

There is not a switch or option to turn it off, but you can prevent these popups if you either use shorter file names or make the navigation pane section wider – the tips only display when the folder name is too long to be completely visible.

Tip 514: Search and Calendar View

outlooktips — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 03:57:00 GMT

A reader asks: “I conducted a search, looking for an event now I can't get back to the calendar view, all I see are the events that I searched for.”

Outlook displays the search result in list format, not in day/week/month view (so you can see them without browsing through the months). It should return to the day/week/month view when you clear the search If not, you need to apply the day/week/month view - View, Current View, Day/Week/Month.

To clear the search: click the little x on the right of the search field in Outlook 2007 or the Clear button in older versions.
If clearing the search does not restore the Day/Week/Month view, make sure you have all the latest updates installed and start outlook using the /cleanviews switch.
Help with switches: http://www.outlook-tips.net/beginner/switches.htm

You could use Advanced find (Ctrl+Shift+F) instead - it opens a new window for the search results.

Tip 513: Move Data to Other Fields

outlooktips — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 19:03:00 GMT

A user asks: “I'd like to take all the data listed under Home Phone and move it to Primary Phone. Or maybe just rename the Home Phone column as Phone, but that doesn't appear to be possible. I don't see any way to select the entire Home Phone column and copy/paste it to the Primary Phone column.”

You won’t be able to change every field in one move but you can enable in-cell editing and can them copy and paste data between individual fields. It's under Other settings in the Customize View dialog.

You can rename the column in a view but not on the contact form. Right click on the row of field names and choose format columns, select the field that needs renamed. This method is not a permanent change to the fields though – it just changes the name you see in the current view. You’ll either need to do one record at a time or export to Excel and make the changes to the row names and import if you want the data moved to a new field.

Follow up to a previous tip – a video tutorial for Change Reminder Times is now available at
Change the Reminder on Several Appointments at Once

Tip 512: Yearly Recurrence

outlooktips — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 01:49:00 GMT

Outlook 2007 – with the lasted update installed – now supports multi-year recurrences. This means you won’t need to use 24 months to create appointments which recur every 2 years. Sorry, that is the only change to recurrence patterns. Maybe next time we’ll see quarterly appointments. I don’t think we’ll ever see fifth week in a month because making Outlook handle it correctly when there is not a 5th week in a month would be too difficult.

An update is available for Outlook 2007 that improves Internet Calendar functionality and improves compatibility with IMAP servers
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=950219