August 13, 2008

Colorize your Outlook messages to identify e-mail from specific senders

  • Date: July 7th, 2008
  • Author: Susan Harkins

A simple but highly useful way to stay on top of important e-mail is to propecia does work have Outlook display messages from different people in different colors. Here’s a quick rundown of how to set this up.


Expecting important mail? Identify it as soon as it comes in by displaying it in a distinctive color. Start by select an existing message from the sender in question, if you have one. If you don’t, that’s okay; you can enter the sender’s name manually in a minute. Now follow these steps:

  1. In Mail, choose Organize from the Tools menu.
  2. In the Ways To Organize Inbox pane, click Using Colors on the left side (Figure A).

Figure A

  1. In the first condition statement (we won’t use the second), choose From in the first drop-down list (Figure B).

Figure B

  1. If you chose a message before starting, the sender’s name will appear in the text box to the right. If it’s the wrong name, enter the right name or the person’s e-mail address.
  2. Choose a color from the second drop-down list (Figure C).

Figure C

  1. Click Apply Color and close the pane.

Afterward, Outlook will display all messages, existing and new, from the person you specified in the color you selected.

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August 9, 2008

Use Outlook to send e-mail to a cell phone

  • Date: June 30th, 2008
  • Author: Susan Harkins

Outlook can call your cell phone! Now, you might wonder why you’d bother, but it’s a convenient way to send phone numbers, short messages, reminders, and other important stuff to your cell phone so you can store it or share it. For instance, you might send a new client’s phone number and address to your cell phone, just in case you get lost or stuck in traffic.

Of course, you don’t have to use Outlook to send e-mail to just your own cell phone. You can send e-mail to anybody, as long as their cell phone supports Short Message Service (SMS). Fortunately, it’s a truly simple process:

  1. Create a new e-mail message.
  2. In the To text box, enter the cell phone number using the following syntax: 10-digit-number@carrierdomain.com
  3. Create a message of 160 characters or less. Or attach a .jpg file, if the cell phone is propecia discount coupons also a camera phone.
  4. Send the e-mail.

Below is a list of the major carrier domains:

Alltel @message.alltel.com
Cingular/AT&T @txt.att.net
Nextel @messaging.nextel.com
Sprint @messaging.sprintpcs.com
SunCom @tms.suncom.com
T-mobile @tmomail.net
VoiceStream @voicestream.net
Verizon @vtext.com

If you don’t know the cell phone’s service carrier, visit whitepages.com or phonenumber.com/reverse-phone, and enter the 10-digit cell phone number using the reverse lookup feature. If you’re lucky, it’ll list the carrier. If the carrier’s domain isn’t listed above, check its Web site.

Keep in mind that text messages aren’t always free. The recipient might be charged for the message.

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July 1, 2008

Looking Out Through Outlook

by Dian Chapman, MVP, MOS
Skill rating level 2.

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.

Image showing the expanded View menu with Outlook Bar and Folder LIst toggled on for viewing.

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.

Image showing Office Assistant, Rocky pointing out the far left Outlook shortcut bar and Office Assistant, Links, looking over at the Folder lists.

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.

Image showing LInks the cat pointing out the Microsoft web shotcut on the Outlook Bar and the Microsoft web site appearing to the right of the bar, withing Outlook.

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.

Image showing the Outlook Today folder highlighted and the right click menu displayed, with New Folder highlighted on that menu.

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.

Image showing the new WebPages  folder with several subfolders listed.

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.

Image showing Home Page tab displayed on the Folder Property dialog box.

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.

Image of Rocky pointing to the TechTrax shortcut and the TechTrax web site in the right window.

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.

Image showing shortcut dialog box with the File System drop down showing and the directory tree in the lower box.

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.

Image showing C Drive on Outlook Bar, the hard drive folder list in the folder list display and files in the far right from within the selected folder.

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.

Image of Outlook with URL for MouseTrax typed into the address bar.

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.

Image of View, Toolbar, Web page menu expanded to turn web toolbar on.

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.

Image of the mini menu offering up a shortcut to this web page.

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!

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June 26, 2008

Create a custom Flags toolbar in Outlook 2003

Date: June 19th, 2008

Author: Susan Harkins

Outlook 2003’s Quick Flags feature is a handy tool — if you can develop a logical system for using it. One solution: A custom toolbar that makes it easy to flag and organize messages.


Quick Flags help you categorize your messages, usually by some level of importance or by task. For instance, you might use a red flag to mark messages that need a quick response and a blue flag to mark messages on which you’ve acted and are waiting for a response.The problem with Quick Flags is that there’s no way to customize their descriptions. Outlook identifies them only by color. You can’t change the name of Red Flag to Critical. Remembering what each color represents can become burdensome.

An easy way to remember what each flag represents is to create a custom toolbar that displays each flag with text that means something to you. Fortunately, the process is easy:

  1. From the Tools menu, choose Customize.
  2. On the Toolbars tab, click New (Figure A).

Figure A

  1. Name the new toolbar appropriately — for instance, you might name it Flags, as shown in Figure B — and click OK.

Figure B


  1. Still in the Customize dialog box, click the Commands tab.
  2. Select Actions from the Categories list box (Figure C).

Figure C

  1. Scroll down through the Commands list box to find the flag entries. Then, drag the appropriate flag color buttons onto your custom toolbar. (If you can’t find the toolbar, look behind the dialog box.)
  2. After adding all the flags you want, change the text for each flag button. Right-click a flag button on the toolbar and replace the Name setting, e.g., &Red Flag (Figure D), with something more helpful, such as Critical. Select the Image And Text option so that Outlook will display the button’s name on the toolbar (Figure E).

Figure D

Figure E

  1. Complete msd propecia steps 6 and 7 for each flag button in your new toolbar.

Figure F shows an example of the finished toolbar.

Figure F

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June 24, 2008

Outlook 2003 – Use the Inbox Repair tool

Applies to: Microsoft Office Outlook 2003

If you can't open your Personal Folders file (.pst) (Personal Folders file (.pst): Data file that stores your messages and other items on your computer. You can assign a .pst file to be the default delivery location for e-mail messages. You can use a .pst to organize and back up items for safekeeping.) or your Offline Folder file (.ost) (Offline Folder file: The file on your hard disk that contains offline folders. The offline folder file has an .ost extension. You can create it automatically when you set up Outlook or when you first make a folder available offline.), or you suspect that your .pst or .ost data file is corrupt, you can use the Inbox Repair tool (Scanpst.exe), to diagnose and repair errors in the file.

  1. Quit Microsoft Outlook if it's running.

  2. Double-click Scanpst.exe, located at drive:\Program Files\Common Files\System\MSMAPI\LocaleID folder – where LocaleID is the locale identifier (LCID) for the installation of Microsoft Office. The LCID for English – United States is 1033.

  3. In the Enter the name of the file you want to scan box, enter the name of the .pst or .ost file that you want to check, or click Browse to look for the file.

  4. To specify scan log options, click Options, and then click the option you want.

  5. Click Start.

  6. When the scanning is completed, and if errors were found, you will be prompted to start the repair process.
    To change the name or location of the backup file created during the repair process, in the Enter name of backup file box, enter a new name, or click Browse to look for the file.

  7. Click Repair.

  8. Start Outlook using the profile that contains the .pst file that you tried to repair.

  9. On the Go menu, click (Folder List: Displays the folders available in your mailbox. To view subfolders, click the plus sign (+) next to the folder. If the Folder List is not visible, on the Go menu, click Folder List.).

    In the Folder List, you may see a Recovered Personal Folders folder containing default Outlook folders or a Lost and Found folder. The recovered folders are usually empty, because this is a rebuilt .pst file. The Lost and Found folder contains folders and items that the Inbox Repair tool recovered. Items that are missing from the Lost and Found folder cannot be repaired.

  10. If you see a Recovered Personal Folders folder, you can create a new .pst file, and then drag the items in the Lost and Found folder into the new .pst file. When you have finished moving all items, you can low price propecia remove the Recovered Personal Folders (.pst) file, including the Lost and Found folder, from your profile.

Notes

  • If you are able to open the original .pst file, you may be able to recover additional items from your damaged .pst file. By default, the Inbox Repair tool creates a file called file name .bak, which is a copy of the original .pst file with a different extension. The .bak file is located in the same folder as your original .pst file. You may be able to recover items from the .bak file that the Inbox Repair tool could not recover. Make a copy of the .bak file, giving the file a new name with a .pst extension. Import the "bak.pst" file, and then move any additional recovered items to the new .pst file that you created.

  • A copy of the log file is written to the same location as the .pst file.
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