New version of OutlookTools released (30 April, 2009)

A new version of OutlookTools has been released. OutlookTools 2.2 has been released to comply with the changes in Office 2007 Service Pack 2. It is still compatible with previous versions of Outlook as well of course.

OutlookTools is a support and advanced settings tool for Microsoft Office Outlook created by HowTo-Outlook. It gives you easy access to Outlook settings and data folders and allows you to change settings that are normally only possible through the registry.

Main Program Features

• Easy access to Outlook settings and data folders
• Easy access to troubleshooting tools
• Start Outlook with a startup switch
• Clear the Most Recently Used lists
• Make the New Mail Alert stay up for longer than 30 seconds
• Unblock attachments

And note that OutlookTools is completely free!

Download: OutlookTools 2.2

     Slipstream Office 2007 setup with SP2 (29 April, 2009)

When you slipstream Service Pack 2 with your Office 2007 installer, Office 2007 will be directly installed at Service Pack 2 level saving you the trouble of applying it afterwards. All you need is Office 2007 Service Pack 2 and the installation CD of Office 2007.

     Office 2007 Service Pack 2 released today (28 April, 2009)

The wait is over; Office 2007 Service Pack 2 has been released today. After the KB articles for Office 2007 Service Pack 2 have been made public already earlier today, the download links for Service Pack 2 are now active as well.

When it comes to Outlook, Service Pack 2 is very similar to the February 2009 cumulative update which was very much focused on improving Outlook’s responsiveness and stability. Some other notable changes and fixes in Service Pack 2;

• The option to select which pages you want to print is back.
• Many fixes to meetings and reminders behavior.
• “Change Calendar Time Zone” option is removed and now available as a separate download.
• Outlook shutdown improvements (quicker and less likely to hang when still being used by an addin or external application).
• Downloading from POP3 will download the newest messages first instead of the oldest.
• RSS Feeds behave more reliable (sometimes they caused duplicates or stopped updating).
• Improved reliability with SharePoint connections.

When you launch Outlook for the first time after installing Service Pack 2, you’ll get a dialog saying “Preparing Outlook for first use.” This could take a while depending on the size of your mailbox and the amount of items in it. This is because of some changes in the indexes of the pst-file to improve performance. Don’t worry, this is one time only and it won’t break compatibility with Outlook 2003 (or in case you are still using the ANSI format, it won’t break compatibility with Outlook XP/2002 or previous either).

Outlook will also show a new icon in the Notification Area if the outlook.exe process is still running when all Outlook windows are closed already;

In addition, this Service Pack is the first Office Service Pack that can be uninstalled without first completely uninstalling Office and then reinstalling it again. So if you find the need to uninstall it again for whatever reason, you can use this tool.

View: Description of 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 2 (SP2) and of Microsoft Office Language Pack 2007 SP2
Download: 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 2
Download: Microsoft Office Language Pack 2007 Service Pack 2
Download: 2007 Office Service Pack 2 Changes (Excel sheet)

     Actual Contacts for Outlook (8 April, 2009)

Actual Contacts for Outlook is an add-in for updating your address book and monitoring validity of e-mail addresses in contacts.

Select the contacts you would like to update, and add-in for Oulook will send a message containing a special form to these addresses. The respondents will be able to update their data in your address book by filling in this form. This add-in for Outlook is also able to check your address-book. It takes it a few minutes to inform you about the contacts that contain invalid email addresses.

Actual Contacts for Outlook also supports validation of the recipient list in Mail Merge Mode in Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Word (a mail merge function is prerequisite for version 2002 or later ones). In order to check an address, add-in for Outlook imitates sending a message to this address. When the server confirms or doesn’t confirm the existence of this address, the program cancels message sending and finishes the session correctly. So, address verification is technically correct and cannot be noticed by the address owner. Now Actual Contacts for Outlook has the full functionality of Contacts Verifier add-in which was earlier offered as a separate tool for Outlook.

Program Features:

• Compatibility.
  A standart message with an HTML form based on the contact’s field entries is sent to the contact’s e-mail address. If the e-mail client of your respondent supports HTML, he or she can correct his/her information in the fields of the form and send it back. It does not matter whether your respondent works with Microsoft® Windows®, Linux or Macintosh operating systems – only the old text e-mail clients do not support HTML.
  No need for the Internet!
• You and your respondent do not need access to the Internet, but only access to e-mail. This is important if you work with organizations that limit access to the Internet for security reasons.
• Privacy.
  No information is sent to MAPILab or any other company. The entire contact update process is an exchange of messages between you and your respondent only.

     MAPILab (8 April, 2009)

The MAPILab company was founded in 2003 and has managed to take the leading position on the market of software products for Microsoft® Outlook® since then. Today it offers more than 20 products within a wide range – there are utilities for work automation and productivity improvement, components for developers, tools for teamwork.

An important trend in the work of the company is developing software products for Microsoft® Exchange Server. We create truly unique and high-quality solutions that take a firm position on the market of server extension software.

The products of the MAPILab company is a choice of thousands of users around the world. And it is a sensible choice because you can freely download all our products – including fairly expensive products for Microsoft® Exchange Server – and check if they can be used to solve your tasks.

All products are tested by Microsoft and VeriTest, which is proved by the logos given to products and the fact that they are published on the prestigious Microsoft Office Online and Windows Catalog portals. Being a certified Microsoft partner, the MAPILab company receives the prerelease versions of Microsoft products and updates beforehand and has extended access to technical information and support, which allows us to maintain the high quality of our products all the time.

     Sperry Software (8 April, 2009)

Based just south of Jacksonville, FL (US), Sperry Software has been developing and marketing add-in solutions for Microsoft Outlook since 1998. With a committment to fast, easy, and productive solutions over 8,000 customers have been served including major fortune 500 companies like General Electric, Cisco, Merck & Co., and Microsoft.

     Add Email Address (8 April, 2009)

Do you miss the “Automatically put people I reply to” feature? Are you tired of having to manually add email addresses into your Outlook contacts? Now you can automatically add email addresses to any contacts folder. Become more organized by setting up the add-in to show you each name it adds (in a grid, where you can check which people to add) or just have it automatically add contacts without any intervention by you.

Features of the Add Email Address add-in include:

• Automatically adds the email addresses as contacts
• Add contacts to any contact folder you choose, not just the default Contact folder
• If you use Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2003, you can store these addresses in Business Contact Manager
• Store contacts in Microsoft Exchange public folders or any other shared folders
• Automatically adds just the people you reply to or those you send to
• Process as many emails as you like all at once with the toolbar button
• Works with CC (carbon copy) recipients as well
• Automatically avoids adding contacts already contained in another folder
• Optionally copies the categories (if any) from the email to the new contact
• In addition, a category dropdown within the grid allows you to easily assign categories to new contacts
• Integrates directly into Outlook for easy access
• Coded to avoid the Outlook security prompts so you won’t get those nagging security prompts
• Works with Microsoft Outlook 2007, Outlook 2003, Outlook 2002 and Outlook 2000
• Ability to scan all your previous email to get caught up quick

     Send as PDF with original (6 April, 2009)

When you install the Save as PDF and XPS addin for Office 2007, then you can also save your document in the pdf-format for several Office applications. Additionally it allows you to use the Send-> Email As PDF Attachment option to directly share send out the open document as a pdf-file.

On occassion it can be convenient to send out both the pdf out with the original. While previous versions of Office can also open the new Office file formats, this way you know for sure that they can at least open it (as pdf) if they cannot provide in-line comments (in the original document) when they haven't installed the compatibility addin.

This guide will explain how you can create that functionality with a macro in Word. It also has code examples for using this macro in PowerPoint and Excel.