Update! See updated info at the bottom of this article.

Just curious. How many times a day do you open or maximize Outlook to read new email? How many times do you minimize Outlook to open your Internet browser? Or how many times do you access Windows Explorer to find a file? Did you know you can do it all right from within Outlook?

I provide a lot of technical support and spend much of my day with my face buried in Outlook, reading and answering tons of email. Because I concentrate on technical support, I often times have to jump on the web to look up some information, find a URL or do a little research to help someone out. I'm constantly switching between Outlook an Internet Explorer. Well, actually I guess I should say that I would be constantly jumping between these two applications all day long, were it not for the fact that I know a trick that saves me time!

I have my most frequently used web sites linked so I can open them quickly from within Outlook! A quick click and I can be on the web without having to close or minimize my email application. Another click and I'm back viewing my email. If I need to open a file on my hard drive, I can click the drive and locate the file through Outlook, too. If you use Outlook, follow along with me here and I'll show you how you can make your life a little easier when it comes to ferreting around your computer.

Accessing Web Pages from Outlook
There are various ways to setup your views in Outlook. We'll be concentrating on the Outlook Bar and the Folder View. For this article, I'm using Outlook 2002 from Office XP, so the screen shots may look a little different from your program. But you can also use Outlook 2000 to setup web page and drive access. Double click the View menu to instantly expand the menu so you can see all the options available on that menu. Notice the options for the Outlook Bar and for the Folder List. Make sure they're both turned on so you can follow along with this article.

If you're not familiar with these views, the Outlook Bar is a shortcut bar where you can easily add/remove items to which you might want quick access. The Folder List is a directory tree of all the actual Outlook folders and subfolders you've created.

Generally, I don't leave the Folder List open. I have it open in the image above, just to show you what it is and how to access it. We will need it open to use it to create web pages that will be accessible through Outlook. Normally, I just have my Outlook Bar visible along with my emails. If I'm reading an email and need to zip over to MouseTrax or Microsoft to look up a URL or some other information to pass along in an email reply, I don't need to close or minimize my email, I simply click the appropriate web page shortcut on my Outlook Bar and I'm at the web site I need.

Adding Your Own Web Links
Adding web pages to Outlook is easy! Make sure your Folder List is open and create a new subdirectory. To add a subdirectory, right click on Outlook Today (the topmost level in the directory structure) and click New Folder. I suggest you name this new folder WebPages.

Now that you have a subdirectory to keep your web pages organized, scroll down to the newly added WebPages subdirectory, right click it and select New Folder again from the mini menu to add the actual folder that will display our newly linked web page. I also suggest you name these new WebPages subdirectories the same name as the web page you'll be creating. Say you want to add a link to this magazine, TechTrax. Under WebPages, the new folder will be called TechTrax. In the image below, you'll see that I have my most frequently used sites listed. MouseTrax is my main support web site. TechTrax is this magazine. Then I have Microsoft and the Word MVP sites linked for quick access to these useful URLs. Finally, I have Google listed, which is my favorite web search engine.

Now you need to set the default view for each of your newly created folders to the appropriate web URL (web address). Right click one of the folders where you want a web page to be displayed. Select Properties from the mini menu that will appear. This will bring up the Properties dialog box for this particular folder. Select the Home Page tab. Check the option to Show home page by default for this folder. Now enter the URL to the site you want to appear inside that folder. Then click OK and you're set.

You can now click on that folder and the TechTrax home page will appear in your right window. But because I prefer to have the Folder List closed and out of my way, I've also added shortcuts to these web folders on my Outlook Bar. To add a folder to your shortcut bar, just right click on the folder you want on the bar and this time choose Add to Outlook Bar from the mini menu. The shortcut will appear at the bottom of the list. But you can easily click to select it and drag that shortcut up along the list to wherever you'd like it to appear.

To get back to your email, just click the Inbox shortcut, which is a default shortcut on the Outlook Bar. If you want to delete an item from the bar, right click it and choose Remove from Outlook Bar.

Adding a Hard Drive Folder to Your Outlook Bar
If you want to add shortcut access to a drive or particular folder on your hard drive, you need to right click within the space of the Outlook Bar. A mini menu will appear. Choose Outlook Bar Shortcut… to open the Add to Outlook Bar shortcut dialog box. Click in the Look in drop down and select File System. Your computer's hard drive folder structure will appear. Click on whichever folder you need, such as My Computer to open your drives. If you want to link a full drive, select a drive letter itself. If you prefer to link directly to a particular folder, ferret down to that folder and select it. Click OK to back out of this dialog. A shortcut to that folder will now appear at the bottom of the Outlook Bar list. Select and drag it to wherever you want it on the list.

Now you can quickly jump to your computer hard drive right from within Outlook, without having to open Windows Explorer. If you double click a file from this view, it'll recognize the file association and will open within the program in which it's associated. If you click, say, a Word doc, Word would open, outside of Outlook, and then pull up that file.

If none of this sounds like something you want to tackle because you like the opportunity to close down Outlook now and then to get away from email and get on with other projects within other applications, know that you can just hit the Windows + M key combo to quickly knock down all your open applications to access your desktop. This move also works great for hiding what you're doing when the boss walks up!

Update!
Big thanks to reader, Colin Gardom from the UK. After reading and using the tips from this article, Colin did a little experimenting. He discovered how to change the icons for his added web page links in Outlook, so they actually look like web page icons. This made it easier to find his web shortcuts versus all his standard folder links. He wrote to me to pass along online generic propecia the info and I initially planned to add that tip to this article.

But then, after more experimenting, Colin replied back with even an easier way to add web pages to your Outlook bar. He apologized for the fact that his latest tip would make much of the folder processing info in this article obsolete. But that's fine with me! Anyway to do the job faster and easier is always good news. So here's Colin's tip regarding how to more easily put web page links on your Outlook bar.

In Outlook, you should see an address input box, just like on your browser. See the image below and notice the label for Address and the input box now showing the URL to www.mousetrax.com, my support web site.

If you don't see the Address input box, you can click View/Toolbars and turn on the Web toolbar, which will also contain the Address input box. See the image below to find the Web toolbar.

Note! Be sure you are connected to the web before you attempt to click a web link!

Once you have entered a URL and hit enter to load that web page into your main viewing area, move your mouse over to the Outlook bar on the left. Right click on that area. Apologies to our blind users, as I can't find out how to do this same move without a mouse. If anyone knows, please forward that info to dian@mousetrax.com!

After you right click, you'll see a mini menu with an option for Outlook Bar Shortcut to Web Page. See the image below for details.

Click the shortcut option and the URL for the currently displayed site will be added to the bottom of your shortcut list in your Outlook bar.

And now to add one more tip of my own to this update. After I tried Colin's suggestion (which worked great, thanks again, Colin), I realized, as usual, I'm starting to accumulate too much junk in my Outlook bar. Even though I'm using small icons, which can also be set via the right click mini menu, I needed more room.

To solve this problem, I decided to create a new Outlook bar group just for my web links.

As you can see on that same mini menu in the image above, there's an option for Add New Group. I selected that and added a new group called Webs.

Now, as you can see in the image below, I can click on the Outlook Shortcuts to get back to my standard email folders, but I can also quickly click on the Webs group to see all my frequently used sites. With a quick link activation here, I can get to the site without having to minimize Outlook, open Internet Explorer and use a shortcut from there.

And since the majority of my day is spent switching between email and a browser to look up information or URLs for users, this will save me a ton of clicks a day!