Quick Tips for week 21 (28 May, 2010)

This week, the following Quick Tips were posted at HowTo-Outlook’s Q&A blog MSOutlook.info;

Creating an ANSI pst-file in Outlook 2010
Replies do not show picture in signature
Do not print Tracking Receipts

Quick Tip Highlights;
Opening eml-files with Outlook
Tasks show up multiple times
Windows 7 and Outlook

These tips and other headlines can also be followed via

     Quick Steps not saving or not showing addresses (28 May, 2010)

When you create a Quick Step in Outlook 2010 which contains an address, it could be that the Quick Step cannot be saved (Finish/Save button doesn’t respond) or your address list shows empty when trying to select an address from the Address Book.

This issue is caused because Outlook opens the Windows Address Book instead of Outlook’s own Address Book when you select or try to resolve a typed address.

If you have an Exchange account added to your mail profile, you won’t be affected by this bug.
If you only have a POP3, IMAP or Hotmail Connector account you and you want to create a Quick Step containing an email address you can use the following workaround.

     Business Contact Manager 2010 Ships! (26 May, 2010)

The Business Contact Manager Team has announced on their Team Blog that Business Contact Manager 2010 has reached the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) status.

It is directly available via Volume Licensing and will soon be added to MSDN and TechNet as well.

     Updated How To: Setting Outlook Group Policies (26 May, 2010)

I’ve updated the “Setting Outlook Group Policies” guide to include information for Office 2010.

Group Policies allow you to enforce settings on a specific or a group of users or computers. This is mainly to be used to change or limit the default behavior of Office applications in an Active Directory environment but can also be useful in some home environments.

The Setting Outlook Group Policies guide explains how you can set Group Policies for Outlook in these environments and which tools are needed for it.

     Outlook pst-format opened further; open source tools available (26 May, 2010)

Microsoft has released 2 tools under an open source license. These 2 tools will allow developers to edit an pst-file without the need for Outlook to be installed on a machine or even for the machine to be running Windows.

The tools and their projects are hosted on CodePlex;
Download: PST Data Structure View Tool
Download: PST File Format SDK
View: Microsoft Delivers on Interoperability Principles With Office Outlook

The tools follow the earlier released Outlook Personal Folders File Format (.pst) Structure Specification.

     Quick Tips for week 20 (21 May, 2010)

This week, the following Quick Tips were posted at HowTo-Outlook’s Q&A blog MSOutlook.info;

Display contact addresses in Google Maps
Jump Lists and Outlook templates
Organize feature in Outlook 2010

Quick Tip Highlights;
Backup Add-in and Outlook 2010
Downloading pictures for selected contacts
Don’t open Word attachments in Reading Layout

These tips and other headlines can also be followed via

     Outlook Email Manager (20 May, 2010)

Outlook eMail Manager is an Outlook 2007 + addin designed to assist the user in filing and retrieving emails in a consistent way.

Outlook eMail Manager integrates with your inbox in the form of a File Message button in either a toolbar of the main Outlook window or on the ribbon of the email window. As the email is read you have the option to quickly file the message into an Outlook folder or the file system in the form of an .MSG file.

The dialog presents you with a list of recent save locations and a range of options for dealing with attachments.

As mail is sent Outlook eMail Manager pops up a dialog prompting you to save or delete the sent message. Just as with received mail you can save your message to an Outlook folder or into the file system. The dialog presents you with a list of recent save locations and a range of options for dealing with attachments.

Messages saved into the file system are consistent named with the filename in the format of:

[DATE SENT]_[TIME SENT]_[SENDER NAME]_[SUBJECT].msg

As well as saving msg files into the file system Outlook eMail Manager can assist with searching through folders and sub-folders to find saved messages.

     Archisoft (20 May, 2010)

Archisoft is a software company owned and run by Russ Green.

     Think Green (18 May, 2010)

Thinking green? It’s nice to know we can help the environment by preventing needless paper printing – the simple “nag” of causing a prompt before each print helps reduce the amount of paper used. By increasing the friction to print people performing unnecessary printing jobs think about what they’re doing and can question whether a physical printing is really necessary. 

After all, the cost of printing is more than paper and ink: toner, service and maintenance costs also add up. And of course, the impact on the environment after that piece of paper is no longer needed has to be taken into account. This add-in encourages pc based scanning and emailing and reduces potential printer expenses by discouraging physical printing during the workflow process.

Think Green saves paper costs by reducing print output resulting in a greener earth – which is a good thing for all of us. Buy your copy today.

Highlights:

• Saves paper
• Prompts before printing – “Are you sure you really need to print this?”
• Covers any method of printing within Outlook – by button, menu, or keyboard shortcut
• Works with Outlook 2007 only
• Integrates within Outlook which means it is easy to access

     VBOffice SAM (18 May, 2010)

SAM automatically sets the sender, signature, and folder for sent items based on several criteria.

• Do you often manually edit an automatically inserted signature because Outlook cannot differentiate between business contacts and your family or good friends?
• Do you want to automatically reply to certain e-mails from a specific sender address, no matter who the e-mail was sent to?
• Do you want to be asked for a specific sending account to be used before sending an e-mail?
• Would you prefer several folders for sent items, for example based on certain projects?

The Features:

• You can set your desired sending account for every e-mail.
• The appropriate signature is inserted for every e-mail.
• Sent items are stored in a folder of your choice or deleted immediately if you so choose.
• Before sending an e-mail, SAM can ask you which sending account to use and where to store the sent message.
• You use rules to define when SAM executes which action.
• In the Basic version, you can create any number of rules for e-mail addresses.
• In the Professional version, more types of rules are available. This allows you to create rules for categories of recipients, categories of e-mails, and for all of your folders.
• At this time, three actions per rule are supported. This feature can, however, be expanded almost infinitely. Are there any other actions you would like to see added to SAM? Please send us your suggestions by e-mail!

SAM works really great together with Category Manager.