General Outlook Tips

Here are some general Outlook tips that I think you will find useful. About the only thing they have in common is that each helps you use the program better or faster, so please take the time to read about each one and try out any that look interesting to you.

The Unread Mail Search folder (usually just referred to as Unread Mail or the Unread Mail folder) is one of the cooler features Microsoft added to Outlook when they released Outlook 2003. It has persisted in basically the same form right up to Outlook 2010.

When you click the Unread Mail folder icon, Outlook 2010 conducts a search of all the mail folders in your Inbox, looking for any messages that are marked as "Unread." It displays all of these messages, regardless of which folder they are in, as if the messages were in the Unread Mail folder.

For current details on how this is done, go to this Unread Mail Folder page.

The Ribbon is a great addition to Outlook 2007. But it does take up a lot of screen space. You can make the Ribbon disappear and reappear with a simple keyboard shortcut.

Press CTRL-F1 (the CTRL key and the F1 key) to hide the Ribbon or make it reappear. Of course this won't work in places where you don't normally see the Ribbon, but you wouldn't really expect it to!

Just remember: press CTRL-F1 to make the Ribbon appear or disappear.

If you do a lot of switching between Outlook folders (Mail and Calendar, for example) this tip is for you. Clicking back and forth using the Navigation pane gets the job done. But you can open multiple Outlook windows at the same time to get the job done much faster.

With a Mail window, a Calendar window, and a Task window all open on the desktop at once, you can jump back and forth almost instantly using the ALT-TAB Windows keyboard shortcut. Plus, you can set up each window exactly the way you want it, position, size, options, etc.

For example, I keep the Navigation pane open in the Mail window and closed in the Calendar window. I also adjust the width of the various panes in the other windows for my convenience.

NOTE: This tip is even more useful when you want to change an item from one form to another. See Magical Transformations below for more information.

Opening Multiple Outlook Windows

To open multiple Outlook windows at the same time, do this:

1. In the Navigation pane, right-click the folder you want to open in its own window. A shortcut menu appears.


2. Click Open in New Window. The new window appears.


3. Adjust the new window to suit your tastes.


4. Repeat for any other windows you want to open.

Do you ever need to create a task based on a message you receive? Or turn a task (Set up physical) into an appointment (Dr. Appointment, Thursday at 9AM)?

You can do it by manually by creating the new item, copying information from the old into the new, then perhaps deleting the old item.

Or you can use Outlook's drag-and-drop abilities to save a bunch of work.

NOTE: Like many procedures in this complex program, there are actually several ways to get this job done. This general Outlook tip is a way that will work in all cases, but isn't always the fastest way to go.

The Reading pane is a fine tool for looking at messages without having to open them. To make it even more useful, you can move it around, resize it, or turn it off altogether. Doing exactly that is the subject of this tip.

You may be wondering why I'm talking about the Reading pane as a General Outlook tip. The answer is simple: you can use the Reading pane in other views than just Mail. The Reading pane isn't just for viewing the contents of a message. It is actually a general-purpose way to view at least some of the contents of any selected Outlook item without opening it.

Exactly what you see in the Reading pane depends on the type of item you have selected. It won't necessarily show you the entire item either. It will show you some useful information, whatever type of item you select.

For example, the Reading pane view of a distribution list shows the name of the list along with some of the individual contacts within the list.

Now that we're square on why this is a general Outlook tip, I suppose you want to see the actual tip. Here it is:

Positioning or Disabling the Reading Pane

You can position the Reading pane on the right side or the bottom of the Outlook window, or you can turn it off. You do this individually for each folder, so you can have the Reading pane on the right in Mail, the bottom for Contacts, and off for the others. Or any other arrangement that makes sense to you. Follow these steps:

1. Open the Outlook folder (Mail, Calendar, Contacts, etc.) you want to work with.


2. In the main menu, select View, then Reading Pane. A Reading Pane menu appears.


3. Select Right, Bottom, or Off. The Reading pane changes to match your selection.


4. If the Reading pane is now visible, resize it to suit your taste by dragging its edge.

That's all there is to it.

When you work with a large volume of mail in Outlook, using the mouse will often slow you down. You need to move your hand away from the keyboard, grab the mouse, point and click one or more times, then put your hand back on the right spot on the keyboard. You can end up doing this hundreds of times a day. Keyboard shortcuts make it possible to execute many commands without ever lifting your hands from the keyboard. Memorize the shortcuts for the commands you use most frequently to make a positive difference in the way you work with Outlook.

If you have previous experience with Outlook (or other Microsoft products), you may already know about the old style keyboard shortcuts. But when Microsoft introduced Outlook 2007, they added the Ribbon, which led to many new keyboard shortcuts. You can take advantage of the new shortcuts are available when the Ribbon is visible. To start entering a new style shortcut, you press and release the Alt key.

Exactly what you press next depends on what you are doing at the time. The length of a new-style shortcut varies, depending on how many levels down in the Ribbon the command appears, so you may have to press three or four keys to complete a command. Still, this is a far faster and more efficient way of getting things done than clicking your way through multiple levels of the Ribbon until you find the command you are after.

What follows are a few of the shortcuts available for editing messages:

• ALT, H, A, C - Center the selected paragraph


• ALT, H, A, O - Decrease the level of indentation of the selected paragraph


• ALT, O, F, Y - Display styles you can apply to the selected paragraph

As you can see, there's a huge variety of things you can do with keyboard shortcuts. It will definitely be worth your time to memorize a few of the more common shortcuts that you will use many times each day. The time and energy savings may not appear to be great, but multiply the savings by how many times you do it in a day, and it could add up to some real benefits. Now you just need to find a good resource to show you the best keyboard shortcuts to memorize.

The Living With Outlook website lists many of the top Outlook keyboard shortcuts. To see more, including an efficient procedure to send mail without the mouse, go to:

http://www.living-with-outlook.com/keyboard-shortcuts.html

It's time to learn how to change the font size Outlook uses. As you know, Outlook can get a vast amount of information onto your monitor. However, I know my eyes aren't as good as they used to be and the fonts Outlook uses in some places are too tiny for my taste. Maybe you're in the same boat as I am.

You can give your eyes a break by changing the fonts Outlook uses. Unfortunately, we're not talking about changing the font size of the text in messages you're reading. That's controlled by the person who creates the message and something Outlook won't let us change. What we're talking about here is things like changing the sizes of column headings and Subject lines.

Unfortunately, there isn't a single "Make the text bigger!" control you could set. Instead, you need to adjust various settings in each view.

The general process for changing fonts in your current view goes like this:

1. Open the Customize View dialog box. Typically you reach it by right-clicking an empty section of the view then clicking Customize Current View in the shortcut menu that pops up. You can also get to it from the View menu. In the menu bar, click View, then Arrange By, then click Custom.


2. In the Customize View dialog box, click Other Settings. This opens the Other Settings dialog box. This is where you customize the main fonts in this view.


3. In the Customize View dialog box, click Automatic Formatting to open the Automatic Formatting dialog box. This is where you enter settings for the various types of items in this view. These settings override the ones you made in the Other Settings dialog box.


4. Click Format Columns (if this option is offered) to open the Format Columns dialog box. Here you will adjust various characteristics of the columns that are contained in this view.

As you've surely noticed, changing the fonts in a view can be a real project. Your best bet is to only do so if it will make a real improvement in the way you work with Outlook. And if you do decide to go for it, only do so for views that that you spend the most time working in.

For detailed step-by-step guidance on changing fonts in Outlook Mail view, go to this page at http://www.living-with-outlook.com

Do you have a Yahoo Mail account you would like to or need to use with Outlook? If so, you've come to the right place. This article will show you the steps you need to follow to make Outlook and Yahoo Mail play nicely together.

Once you get this set up, You're really going to enjoy the pleasure of having all your email through one program. You'll like being able to use Outlook's familiar interface for everything, rather than the mish-mash of different tool you face when you deal with each email account.

You can only use your Yahoo Mail with Outlook if you have a premium Yahoo Mail account. In other words, you have to be using either:

• A Yahoo Mail Plus account ($19.99 per year)


• A Yahoo Business Email account ($9.95 per month)

If you don't have one of these account types, you cannot connect Yahoo Mail and Outlook. But its easy to convert a free Yahoo Mail account (the kind that most people start out with) to a Mail Plus account is simple. And don't worry. If you've already upgraded to a Yahoo Mail Plus account, the Mail Plus page will tell you that you don't need to upgrade.

The steps required to configure Yahoo Mail Plus and Yahoo Business Mail to work with Outlook are very similar. Before we go further with the configuration, there's one thing you should know. During the configuration process you will be telling the Yahoo mail servers not to keep copies of messages on the server once you view them with Outlook.

Once that happens, you won't be able to read them anymore using the Yahoo Mail web interface. This is most likely the way you want to set things up, since having more than one copy of a message in existence at one time will surely cause you confusion and frustration, and is something to be aware of.

With that out of the way, let's move on to the configuration process, The exact steps you follow during the configuration process depend on the particular version of Outlook you are working with. To make this as easy as possible, there are separate procedures, one for each Outlook 2010, Outlook 2007, and one for Outlook 2003. In the interest of saving space and allowing the procedures to be updated as needed, the procedures are listed on the website below rather than included in this article. They walk you through everything step-by=step, including upgrading your Yahoo Mail account to Yahoo Mail Plus.

If you want to make Outlook 2010, 2007, or 2003 work with your Yahoo Mail account, CLICK HERE

Outlook 2007 gives you the ability to zoom in or out on the text and images in the bodies of e-mail messages, calendar entries, tasks, and contacts. The ability to zoom like this can be a huge benefit for anyone who has trouble reading the text on the screen. The Zoom command is simple to use, and the benefits are obvious to anyone who has spent a day squinting at their monitor. It only takes a moment to learn how to Zoom, and doing so will let you eliminate one minor annoyance from your life.

But as always, there are a few things to be aware of when you use this feature.

When you start using Zoom yourself, you may notice that text and images in the body of a message, contact, etc. will zoom in and out, but the menus, toolbars, and the like don't change. Only the part of the item where you could enter large quantities of text and images is zoomable. So the body of a message, calendar entry, or task will zoom, and a contact's notes field. Nothing else changes when you zoom in or out. (But keep reading because there are things you can do to make menus and other interface elements more readable)

Here's what else you should know before you use Zoom:

• The item you want to zoom must be open in its own window. Zoom doesn't work in the Reading Pane.


• The cursor must be located in an area of the item that is capable of zooming. Clicking in that area enables the zoom ability. So if you want to zoom the body of a message, you point the mouse at a spot in the message body and click the mouse button to activate the Zoom command. If Zoom isn't available for the area the cursor is in right now, the Zoom menu option is dimmed.


• You will find the Zoom command in the Other Actions menu for messages, while it is in the Zoom group of the Format Text tab of the Ribbon for other Outlook items.

Zoom is definitely a great way to adjust one of Outlook 20007's zoomable areas. While you can't zoom things like column headings and menus, there is a way to modify these. just much more complicated and time consuming. So a good compromise that improves readability without too much work is to use the Zoom command wherever possible, and just accept minor annoyances like too-small column headings.

To learn more about using Outlook 2007's Zoom command, visit http://www.living-with-outlook.com/zoom.html

Even though Microsoft Outlook is a mature product, Microsoft continues to send out a stream of important updates. This is great news since it tells you that Microsoft is actively supporting Outlook by fixing bugs and protecting you against spam (junk email). But this means to get the full benefit, you have to be conscientious about installing each update when it comes out.

While Microsoft has tried to make this process easy and smooth, it still isn't intuitive or without quirks. Conceptually, the process is simple. You tell Outlook to check for updates, then download and install any of the available updates that you want. Right here is one place where people get confused.

There may be updates you don't want to install. One example would be updates for languages you don't speak. It's tempting to not install those. However, the best answer is to just install every update that comes along. It simplifies your life by eliminating the need to evaluate each update that comes along and decide whether you want it or not.

I recommend that you check for updates about once a week, ideally on Thursday or Friday to best work with Microsoft's usual release schedule. Patches normally come out only once a month, but if there is an emergency release, you won't want to be without it for long. It only takes a moment to do if there aren't updates available. If there are updates available, you want to get them installed as soon as possible. Setting up a recurring task is the best way to remember to do this.

NOTE: Your company may have formal policies on doing software updates that conflicts with the advice here. If yours does, you should always follow company guidelines instead of general suggestions like these.

While dealing with repeated Microsoft Outlook updates may be a pain in the neck, if you incorporate the updatesover time you will be rewarded with a better-running program and less junk email than you would have to deal with if you didn't install the updates. The reduced amount of spam alone makes installing updates worthwhile.

Here's an outline of the steps you need to follow to check for and install Outlook updates:

1. Go to the Microsoft Office Downloads home page.


2. Find and click the link that lets Microsoft scan your computer to figure out what updates you need.


3. Select the updates you want installed and download them.


4. Install the updates.

To get more detailed instructions on updating Microsoft Outlook, go to:

http://www.living-with-outlook.com/microsoft-outlook-updates.html

If you have the Taskpad visible, you can use the Date Navigator to see non-consecutive days side-by-side in the Calendar. Follow these steps to display up to 14 non-consecutive days side by side:

• In the Date Navigator, click the first date you want to display.


• Hold down the CTRL key on the keyboard, and click each additional date you want to see in the Calendar.

As you click each date, it appears in the Calendar. Couldn't be easier!

To see more Outlook Calendar tips, click here.

Here's an example of a way that Outlook is an improvement over earlier versions. It's the new ability to preview attachments in the Reading Pane. By that, I mean it is possible to see what's in an attachment without having to open the program the attachment works with. For example, if you send me a Word document as an attachment, this feature allows me to peek at the Excel spreadsheet without having to run Excel. In the bad old days before Outlook 2007, if you wanted to view a file attached to a message, you had to open the message, then open the attachment in the appropriate program.

Why is this new approach better? I'll give you to reasons why. First, you can preview attachments much faster and more conveniently than you can launch the right program for the attachment, then open the attachment in that program. Second, it is just a more natural way to do your work.

If you're wondering how you can preview attachments without using the programs the attachments work with, the answer is surprisingly simple. Outlook 2007 comes with a set of attachment previewers, little programs that can provide a limited view of the contents of an attached file. They don't have the ability to edit the file, and won't necessarily show the contents exactly the way they'll appear in the full application that normally opens the file.

Outlook 2007 comes equipped with attachment previewers for major Microsoft Office files, plus previewers for common image and text file types. Beyond what's provided by Microsoft, some other companies have also published downloadable attachment previewers for their own file types. So you should already have, or be able to download, attachment previewers for the majority of file attachments you are likely to receive.

Once the attachment previewer you need is installed, using it is simple. When a message containing an attachment is visible in the Reading Pane, Outlook automatically displays a set of buttons at the top of the pane. The Message button shows the body of the email message. Along with the Message button, each attachment gets its own button, showing the name of the attachment.

The button you click determines what appears in the Reading Pane. Click Message to see the contents of the email message. Click the button with the name of an attachment to get a preview of the attachment. Now remember that the attachment preview isn't guaranteed to look exactly the same as it would if you opened it in the program it normally works with (an Excel spreadsheet in Excel, for example). Even with this limitation (and a few other oddities), you will definitely attachment previewers to be incredibly useful if people email you a lot of files.

For more information on using attachment previewers, including a number of additional previewer oddities and gotchas, visit http://www.living-with-outlook.com/preview-attachments.html

And remember, for even more tips, visit the
General Outlook Tips page at my main Living With Outlook site.