outlook 2007
Work
Use An Outlook Macro To Stop Forgetting The Subject Line
4:00AM The How-To Geek | Windows only: Microsoft Outlook is a powerful tool —and with a little macro goodness, it will remind you to attach a subject line to your TPS Reports. More »
Work
Sender’s Time Zone Makes Outlook Better
4:00AM The How-To Geek | Windows only: Outlook Add-in Sender’s Time Zone makes easy work of dealing with recipients in multiple time zones—no more calculating times in your head. More »
Communicate
Xobni Integrates Contacts’ Facebook Feeds
9:30PM Kevin Purdy | Xobni, a pretty neat Outlook plug-in that’s just out of beta, now includes the latest updates from a Facebook users’ feed in a side panel, making it easier to know what’s happening with your contacts. While Facebook updates have been available for some time, the latest update gives full access to a users’ whole feed. Not seeing it in your Xobni? Clear your Internet Explorer cache and restart Outlook. [Xobni]
Work
2:55PM Angus Kidman | Transferring your Outlook mail from one PC to another might seem simple, but there’s a few tricks to ensuring you transfer all the information you actually want. Make sure you’re covered when you switch PCs (or when you need to make a comprehensive Outlook backup) with our guide. More »
How To Move Your Outlook Files From One PC To Another
2:55PM Angus Kidman | Transferring your Outlook mail from one PC to another might seem simple, but there’s a few tricks to ensuring you transfer all the information you actually want. Make sure you’re covered when you switch PCs (or when you need to make a comprehensive Outlook backup) with our guide. More »
Organise
Triage Your Email Inbox With Outlook Search Folders
4:00AM The How-To Geek | The Microsoft Office Outlook Team Blog writes up a guide to using Outlook’s categories and search folders to organise your messy inbox and prevent email overload. More »
Work
Create An Outlook Email Message From The Clipboard
2:00AM The How-To Geek | Windows only: Tutorial weblog Tech-Recipes writes up an interesting and useful feature in Microsoft Outlook—you can use copy and paste to create new emails pre-populated with information. More »
Organise
SaveAllAttachments Archives And Deletes Outlook File Attachments
4:00AM The How-To Geek | Windows only: Microsoft Outlook add-in SaveAllAttachments does just what its name implies; it saves all the attachments from selected messages to a folder of your choosing, optionally deleting them from the message. More »
Organise
OutlookDeck Cuts Through Busy Inbox Noise
2:00AM The How-To Geek | Windows only: Email search utility OutlookDeck brings a completely new interface to searching Outlook—multiple persistent search folders on the screen at a time. More »
Communicate
Missing Attachment Powertoy Reminds You To Attach Files
6:00AM The How-To Geek | Windows only: The Missing Attachment Powertoy for Microsoft Outlook 2007 reminds you when you forget to attach a file to an email—preventing an embarrassing situation with an important contact. More »
Organise
11:00AM Angus Kidman | When I posted my recent account of how I got my overflowing inbox under control, one reader pointed out that I could have also automatically converted some of the remaining emails into tasks by dragging them into my task list. As it happens, I like to use my Outlook task list purely for stuff directly related to my writing career (assignments and invoices), with email as a separate, more general to-do area. Also, I’m not big on dragging and dropping, and I find the feature is often buggy anyway (as the screenshot indicates).
Of course, I’m not everybody. But Microsoft really wants everyone to use this feature: so much so that it actually removed some other options to make it work. When I first began using Outlook 2007 shortly after its commercial release, I was irked to find that it was apparently no longer possible to sort tasks by subject in regular task view, an option that had existed for several versions before. That seemed like a major omission, so I hassled Microsoft about why that change had been made. Several weeks later, I got a reply which explained that the lack of sorting was because the previous Subject field had been replaced with a new ‘Task Subject’ field:
The Task Subject field was added to Outlook as part of the work done to support treating email items as tasks. It is auto-generated by Outlook. Since a sortable ’subject’ field was already available, the decision was made not to expend the resources to make this system-generated field sortable.
Me, I’m not convinced that this is much of an excuse (honestly, how hard is it to sort something?) — but it shows that Microsoft remains unafraid to break a perfectly good system just because it thinks it knows better. You can fix this limitation by creating custom views that use the existing Subject field, but I haven’t got around to it yet — and with my own system working, I don’t imagine I well in a hurry.
More »
The Downside Of Converting Outlook Emails Into Tasks
11:00AM Angus Kidman | When I posted my recent account of how I got my overflowing inbox under control, one reader pointed out that I could have also automatically converted some of the remaining emails into tasks by dragging them into my task list. As it happens, I like to use my Outlook task list purely for stuff directly related to my writing career (assignments and invoices), with email as a separate, more general to-do area. Also, I’m not big on dragging and dropping, and I find the feature is often buggy anyway (as the screenshot indicates).
Of course, I’m not everybody. But Microsoft really wants everyone to use this feature: so much so that it actually removed some other options to make it work. When I first began using Outlook 2007 shortly after its commercial release, I was irked to find that it was apparently no longer possible to sort tasks by subject in regular task view, an option that had existed for several versions before. That seemed like a major omission, so I hassled Microsoft about why that change had been made. Several weeks later, I got a reply which explained that the lack of sorting was because the previous Subject field had been replaced with a new ‘Task Subject’ field:
The Task Subject field was added to Outlook as part of the work done to support treating email items as tasks. It is auto-generated by Outlook. Since a sortable ’subject’ field was already available, the decision was made not to expend the resources to make this system-generated field sortable.
Me, I’m not convinced that this is much of an excuse (honestly, how hard is it to sort something?) — but it shows that Microsoft remains unafraid to break a perfectly good system just because it thinks it knows better. You can fix this limitation by creating custom views that use the existing Subject field, but I haven’t got around to it yet — and with my own system working, I don’t imagine I well in a hurry.
More » 