Unofficial Outlook Stuff

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Mail Excel

2010-03-03T03:44:00.000-08:00

VBA + sample

Excel Guru Ron de Bruin has put together the VBA code needed to send Excel via email.
He has also included the sample workbooks for those that are not VBA literate.

Also:

". . . a new add-in named RDBMail for Excel/Outlook 2007-2010
http://www.rondebruin.nl/mail/add-in.htm

The add-in create a new tab on the Ribbon named RDBMail with a lot of mail options.
You have the option to send as workbook or PDF for every mail option."

Code to send mail from Excel

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Stuck in the Outbox

2010-02-22T03:00:00.000-08:00

Steps to try

Some suggestions about how to empty your outbox and speed your greatest thoughts on their way.

How to troubleshoot messages stuck in your Outbox

Outlook Troubleshooting Tips

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Custom QAT

2010-02-18T03:31:00.000-08:00

Access additions

Applications put most of the most-used commands on the Home tab's Ribbon, not everything is there. You may want to add Close, Close All, or Print commands, for example.

In the upper Left corner is the Quick Access Tool bar.

To update the QAT:
Click the down-pointing arrow to the right of the QAT.
Choose any common commands (New, Close, Print, etc.) by checking the option.

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Display Order

2010-02-14T03:44:00.000-08:00

What’s on top

Outlook allows you to rearrange how information is displayed in your email list.

(Outlook 2010)

HowToGeek.com

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Order on the Right

2010-02-05T03:26:00.000-08:00

Context Menu

Eric Legault shares the VBA code that can be used when "Organizing Your E-mail Using Custom Item Context Menus in Outlook 2007".

May appear to be daunting, but if you have had some exposure to VBA, it's not that bad.

OfficeZealot

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Command Reference

2010-02-04T03:13:00.000-08:00

2003-2007-2010

Those of you that are just now making the switch to the Ribbon world, will find this valuable.

ComputerWorld.com

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Office Training

2010-02-02T03:56:00.000-08:00

Suggestions

TechRepublic lists a number of areas that you might explore when training is needed for a new Office version.

Here are a few:

LINKS TO TIP SHEETS AND ARTICLES
"Instead of telling your users to go out to Microsoft.com and do a search, put hyperlinks to the printer-friendly version of tip sheets and articles on your company’s main portal page. Providing links to information you know they need will help you cover the training bases. And presenting the links on an internal web site they already use will show your users that it’s okay to go outside of their four firewalls to learn something new. Include your favorite hyperlink in your signature line so it goes out in every e-mail you send."
ONLINE TRAINING
E-LEARNING
WEBCASTS
VIRTUAL TRAINING
MULTILINGUAL SCREENTIPS AND TRANSLATIONS
COMMAND REFERENCE GUIDES
OFFICE ONLINE AT WORK

10 ways to train your users on Office 2007 for free

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Stop Reply To All

2010-01-29T03:03:00.000-08:00

Macro magic

Scott Hanselman (who is ". . . an old fat guy with a Black Belt that used to fit") has a tutorial on how to disable "Reply to All".

How To Easily Disable Reply To All And Forward In Outlook

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Outlook Tips

2010-01-22T03:52:00.000-08:00

Suggestions

Outlook-Tips.net was put together by Diane Poremsky. While it covers Outlook 2003, the advice is still good.

Outlook-Tips.net

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Customize Your Calendar

2010-01-14T03:21:00.000-08:00

Do it your way

. . . you can view your days and weeks in increments of 5 minutes, 60 minutes, and a variety of periods in between. You can adjust the view of your calendar according to your work week and work day; for instance, you can display Sunday through Thursday and show a normal day as being 11 in the morning to 7 in the evening if you like. Use different color schemes, and show more or less detail in your calendar.

Office.Microsoft.com

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Signature Moves

2010-01-05T03:25:00.000-08:00

Sign it your way

Here is a tutorial about Outlook pre-set signatures:

"Signatures can be created in different formats and it can contain various elements. A basic signature will have just the sender's name. Along with the name you can include acknowledgments like "Thank you", "Yours Lovingly", etc. Official or business signatures will have company name, contact number, company address, website URL, etc. Company logo or any other relevant graphic can also be used. Any text in the signature can be hyperlinked. Sometimes electronic business card or scanned signature is also used. The text of the signature can be formatted to make it more attractive. Occasionally signature will also contain disclaimer blocks like stating, "If you are not the intended recipient of the e-mail then you should delete the e-mail".

Office-Watch.com

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Keyboard and Key Tips

2010-01-03T03:56:00.000-08:00

Finger it out

2007 apps look different because of the ribbon, but the keyboard can still be used to speed up tasks.
Microsoft has an online course that may help

After completing this course you will be able to:
Accomplish tasks by using sequential shortcut keys, known as Key Tips, shown on the Ribbon.
Navigate around the Ribbon using the TAB key and arrow keys.
Accomplish tasks by using key combinations — keys you press at the same time - exactly as you've done in previous versions of Office.

Office.Microsoft.com/Training

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Moving PST

2009-12-23T03:49:00.000-08:00

Instructions

It is sometimes necessary to move Outlook .PST files to a different drive on your local computer.

Here are Microsoft's instructions:

How to Move your Personal folders

You may be tempted to move the file to a network drive, but Microsoft advices against it:

Why Outlook .PST files are unsupported over a LAN or WAN link

How to manage .pst files in Outlook 2002 and in Outlook 2007

Slipstick.com has this to say about how
To move a Personal Folders .PST file

and

Moving Outlook .PST files to a new machine

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It's Policy

2009-12-16T03:30:00.000-08:00

Set your own

It's best to make your email rules available and well known:

" Email is a quick, cheap and easy means of communication. This makes email a great business tool, but at the same time a potential threat for employers. Email threats such as confidentiality breaches, legal liability, lost productivity and damage to reputation cost companies millions of dollars each year.
How can a company protect itself from these threats? The first step in securing your company is to create an email usage policy. After you have created your email policy you must make sure it is actually implemented. This can be done by giving regular trainings and by monitoring employees' email using email security software. "

You may find it useful when trying to develop your own E-mail policy.

EmailRepies.com: Create an Email Policy

Business Link: Introduce an Email Policy

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Send Pictures

2009-11-26T03:35:00.000-08:00

Email Photos

If you have a photo on your computer, from a digital camera or something that has been scanned to produce a JPG, GIF, or PNG file.

Here are two choices for doing that:

Send the photo as an attachment to an email. It'll show up as an icon at the top of the email for the receiver to click and open in their picture viewer. This is the most common option.
Embed the photo into a HTML formatted message so it appears in the text of the message just like a photo in a newspaper article. This looks nicer for people who want to read the message and not necessarily work with the photo file. But there are compatibility issues to keep in mind.
Whichever way you choose, you need to keep an eye on the overall size of the message. With higher resolution cameras available it's easy to go over the recipient's limit for incoming messages.

There is a little more to it. Here is a link to a great newsletter that comes in handy again and again:
Office-Watch.com

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Download All Outlook Pictures

2009-11-20T03:38:00.000-08:00

The Good and the Evil

By default, Outlook 2003 blocks all HTML content that is referenced by an external location. Many junk e-mail senders put an image URL in the e-mail message. The image URL notifies the junk e-mail senders' Web server when you read or preview the e-mail message. This type of image URL is also known as a "Web beacon." An example of a Web beacon image URL is:

<img src="http://myserver/cgi-bin/program?e=your-e-mail-address-here" />

If you preview or open an e-mail message with this type of an image reference, this action may make you a target to receive more junk e-mail messages.

To prevent this type of Web beacon, where an HTML e-mail message contains references such as links and banners to an external URL, the Outlook 2003 HTML viewer does not automatically render the external content. Instead, when you view the e-mail message, areas in the e-mail message that should have a picture appear as a red X placeholder.

Also, you receive the following InfoBar message that indicates that the HTML content has been blocked:

Click here to download pictures.
To help protect your privacy, Outlook prevented automatic download
of some pictures in this message.

With all that warning, if you still want to do it:

Open Outlook
Click Tools menu
Select Options
Click the Security tab
Click Change Automatic Download Settings button
Select when you want pictures downloaded
Click OK OK

Download pictures automatically in Outlook In Outlook 2007 go to Tools>Trust Center Automatic Download

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outlook

New in 2003/2007

2009-11-17T03:40:00.000-08:00

Fresh look

When Office 2003 was released, the only application that showed obvious changes from the earlier version was Outlook.

Slipstick.com does a good job describing the changes and providing useful links.
Also Office System 2007

Here is the Microsoft Office 2003 Editions Product Guide

Here is Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 product overview

2010 adds the Ribbon.

There is an apocryphal story that when Outlook was first considered, it was a PDA, kind of an electronic date book.

One Microsoft manager, supposedly, questioned adding an e-mail reader, since any one who wanted to do that, could just do it on the Internet.

Another story was that Microsoft was a little slow recognizing the Internet, because their managers were too old. They were in their late 20's and when they went to school the net had not progressed that far from the Well in San Francisco.

When the young graduates entered the company, they were used to Internet access from their dorm rooms. MS woke up and swung the ship around almost overnight.

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Color News

2009-11-15T07:02:00.000-08:00

A multidiscipline subject

Here is a study about how color effects a reader's choice of concentration.

It was intended for newspaper publishers, but the same knowledge can be used in Web design, PowerPoint, or any other reporting application. Word and Excel will also benefit.

Color, Contrast, and Dimension in News Design

ColorProject

The Poynter Institute is a school for journalists, future journalists, and teachers of journalists.
Poynter.org

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outlook

Switch Controls

2009-11-12T03:39:00.000-08:00

Startup flags

Microsoft supplies switches or flags that can be used following a Command-Line start of an application
After the Executable allow a space and the enter the Switch.

The Microsoft Outlook Help file contains an entry that lists command-line switches, which you can use to start Outlook in a specific mode or with a specific form.
This article lists additional command-line switches that are not included in the Outlook Help file.

Search for "Switches".

Here's a good one:

/sniff: Starts Outlook, forces a detection of new meeting requests in the Inbox, and then adds them to the calendar

Command-Line Switches

HowTo-Outlook

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No Read Receipts

2009-11-08T03:53:00.000-08:00

Shut them down

Email that includes a Read Receipt request can be a bother. You could click no when Outlook asks to send the reply, or you can set up a more permanent solution.

Go to Tools>Options.
In the Options dialog box, select the Preferences tab.
Click the E-Mail Options button.
In the E-Mail Options dialog box, click the Tracking Options button.
Choose the option Never send a response.
Click OK.

(In 2007+ click the Office button and go to Options>Mail)

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Journal

2009-11-06T03:43:00.000-08:00

or not

When you are poking around in Outlook, you may click on the Journal icon.
A dialog box will appear asking if you want to turn Journal on:

Resist the temptation. Every Word/Excel/PowerPoint and Access file will be placed on a time line.

Every e-mail sent to a Contact will be indexed. This will slow down your machine. It is a massive overkill.

If you are involved in a project, you can use Journal to track specific documents.

Here is a Microsoft Knowledge Base article on how to Disable Journaling for All Users.

Here are some Journal Issues.

If you still want to use Journal, here are some references from Slipstick.com.

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outlook

What's in Your Header?

2009-10-24T03:07:00.000-07:00

See it all

There are ways to see an email header.

See:
Email Headers
Outlook-Tips.net shows a way to do it:

. . . you can view the header and source together in the options dialog, if you edit a registry key. This works on mail downloaded from Internet mail transports only, not Exchange server mailboxes. However, if you access the mailbox using an Internet transport, you'll see the full source.
Open the registry editor and navigate to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Options\Mail
Right click on the right pane and choose new DWORD:

Parameter: SaveAllMIMENotJustHeaders
Value: 1

Viewing Headers

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Re-search Research

2009-10-19T03:32:00.000-07:00

Look again

Outlook has a feature functionality for "Search Folders".

Henrik Walther, at Outlook Exchange, has written a description of how to use this tool:

Using Search Folders in Outlook

Search Folders are a kind of new user interface for the Advanced Find functionality, which has been with us through several Outlook generations. The thing that makes Search Folders new and unique is the possibility for defined search criteria to be saved and represented through a kind of virtual folder in the Outlook client. What this means is it gives us a virtual folder view of the content in one or more "normal" folders, for which a search criteria has been defined.

Also:
Office.microsoft.com:
Search Folders

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Access to E-mail

2009-10-14T03:03:00.000-07:00

What's the Outlook?

Garry Robinson from GR-FX Pty Limited of Australia and Scott McManus from Skandus, have a tutorial about:

Processing E-Mail Orders using Outlook and Access.

They have include sample database downloads and the code needed to make the engine work.

"Using Microsoft Access and Outlook together can reduce manual processing of Ordering emails very substantially. I know this because sometimes it would take up to 15 minutes to undertake all the little steps of saving customer details into tables and newsletter lists. Also without software, it was very difficult to explain to other staff members what to do when an e-mail arrived. Now we can process the orders in a couple of minutes when Outlook email arrives in the correct folder."

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