Schedule a Recurring E-mail (22 September, 2007)

If you are sending the same e-mails on a recurring basis like daily, weekly, monthly etc… to send for instance a reminder or an update report as attachment you may want to automate that. Outlook doesn’t natively have this feature but with some code or add-in it can be done.

     Setting Outlook Group Policies (22 September, 2007)

When you are in an Active Directory network environment you can set Outlook policies to enforce settings on your users. If you are a home users you might want to set policies on what your children can and cannot do in Outlook. This article explains how you can do this for Outlook.

     Setting Permissions on a Mailbox (22 September, 2007)

Setting the correct permissions on mailboxes and Outlook folders can be done in several ways when you are in an Exchange organization. The correct way for you depends on your needs. While some methods look quite the same the results can be very different. This guide explains in which way you can set permissions and what their results are.

Basically there are three ways of setting permissions;

• via Exchange
• via the Permissions tab in Options
• via the Permissions tab on the folder

Via Exchange

This is where it starts. To be able to set permissions you must have them yourself. When your administrator creates your account he/she will also create a mailbox with you as the owner of the mailbox giving you automatically full permissions. This enables you to create an Outlook mail profile so you can start Outlook with your mailbox as the Outlook Today folder and allows you to set permissions for others.

Exclusive permissions for this method;

• Setting an owner for the mailbox so a mail profile with your mailbox as the Outlook Today mailbox. (full mailbox Exchange permissions required)
• Set Send As Owner permissions (Send As mailbox permissions are required)
• Set Send On Behalf Of Owner permissions. This can be controlled from within Outlook as well so your administrator doesn’t really have to be disturbed for this one.

Via the Permissions tab in Options

This is where you can set permissions on the mailbox shown as the Outlook Today mailbox. In Outlook choose Tools-> Options-> tab Delegates and the following screen will show;

From within this interface you can add people from within your organization to the delegates list and set appropriate permissions for them on the following folders; Calendar, Tasks, Inbox, Contacts, Notes and Journal. Setting permissions this way is probably the easiest and fastest. It also allows you to set some permissions which can’t be set by any other way.

The following permissions can be set on the folders;

Note that you are only setting permissions on the folders that are listed and on not their subfolders.

Once these permissions have been set the delegate can open the folders they’ve got permissions to by File-> Open-> Other User’s Folder…

Exclusive permissions for this method;

• All delegates will have Send On Behalf Of Permissions (also possible by Exchange permissions but since you can control it yourself it’s not needed to bother your administrator about it)
• On the Delegates tab you can set the option that copies of invitations for meetings are also send to the delegate. This is handy when you have someone planning your appointments.
• In the Delegates Permissions window you can set the option that the delegate can also see messages marked as private.

Via the Permissions tab on the folder

This method gives you the best control on how others can access your folders. This also makes this method the most time consuming one.

Besides from the Permissions you can set shown in the table above you can also make adjustments to them by selecting or deselecting the available options.

Be careful with setting permissions for Anonymous cause you’ll end up giving those permissions to everyone in your Exchange organization.

This method can be used so that people can add your mailbox to their Folder List and makes accessing your folders just as quick and easy as accessing your own. If you do this you must make sure that you have at least Folder Visible permissions on that folder and on the one above to make travelling to that folder possible. If you don’t do this you won’t be able to expand the folders. So if you want to add a subfolder of someone else’s mailbox to your Folder List you’ll need to set permissions not only on that subfolder but also on the Inbox folder and the Outlook Today folder.

Once the permissions have been set you can add the mailbox by Tools-> E-mail Account-> button Next-> select Exchange Service-> button Change-> button More Options …-> tab Advanced-> button Add.

You can do this faster by right clicking Outlook Today-> Properties-> button Advanced-> tab Advanced-> button Add.

Exclusive permissions for this method;

• The only method that enables you to set per folder permissions
• Enables you to set permissions without giving the delegate Send On Behalf Of permissions
• Allows you to set more specific permissions.

     Open Message in Internet Browser (22 September, 2007)

Outlook 2007 uses Word as the HTML rendering engine which could end up in a malformed display of the email message. In short; The Word HTML rendering engine doesn’t provide support for things like gif and flash animations, advanced css formatting and HTML accessibility.

This guide explains how you can render the message in a browser of your choice like Internet Explorer or Firefox by a click of a button. For more information on the Word HTML rendering engine and its implications click here.

• Make sure the Visual Basic editor is installed
• Create macro
• Create a button for the macro
• Using the macro

Make sure the Visual Basic editor is installed

Since we are going to create a macro from code you must have the Visual Basic editor installed (which is the default). If you don’t have it installed you can install it by Control Panel-> Add/Remove Programs-> select your Office version-> button change. Now setup will start. Here you choose for Add or Remove Features-> Select “Choose advanced customization of applications” (Outlook 2003). In the list you get expand Microsoft Office-> Office Shared Features-> Visual Basic for Applications and set it to Run form My Computer. Press “Update” to install. You might need to insert your CD during setup.

This is where you can find the Visual Basic Editor when you have it installed

Create Macro

As I already provide you with the code, creating the macro is easy. The code has been tested with Outlook 2003 on Windows XP and Outlook 2007 on Windows Vista but should work on previous versions as well.

We start up the Visual Basic Editor by going to Tools-> Macro-> Visual Basic Editor. This will open a new screen. Choose Insert-> Module to create a new module dedicated to this macro. Select the newly created module in the left pane and rename it to “InBrowser” by changing the Properties value in the pane underneath. Copy and paste the code below to the module.

Sub OpenInBrowser() Dim BrowserLocation As String 'Set the location of the executable of the browser you want to use BrowserLocation = "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" 'Get the user's TempFolder to store the item in Dim FSO As Object, TmpFolder As Object Set FSO = CreateObject("scripting.filesystemobject") Set FileName = FSO.GetSpecialFolder(2) 'Get all selected items Dim MyOlNamespace As Outlook.NameSpace Set MyOlNameSpace = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI") Set MyOlSelection = Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection 'Make sure at least one item is selected If MyOlSelection.Count = 0 Then Response = MsgBox("Please select an item first", vbExclamation, MyApplName) Exit Sub End If 'Make sure only one item is selected If MyOlSelection.Count > 1 Then Response = MsgBox("Please select only one item", vbExclamation, MyApplName) Exit Sub End If 'Retrieve the selected item Set MySelectedItem = MyOlSelection.Item(1) 'save the selected item as htm to the temp folder strname = "www_howto-outlook_com" FileName = FileName & "\" & strname & ".htm" MySelectedItem.SaveAs FileName, olHTML 'open the saved item in the browser Shell BrowserLocation & " " & FileName, vbNormalFocus 'Cleanup Set FSO = Nothing Set FileName = Nothing Set MyOlNameSpace = Nothing Set MyOlSelection = Nothing Set MySelectedItem = Nothing End Sub
Click in the area above and press CTR+A to select all. Press CTRL+C to copy the code

The code copied in the Visual Basic Editor.

You can define which browser to open the message with by editing the following line;
BrowserLocation = "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe"
As you can see by default I’ve set it to open with Internet Explorer.

Now we debug the code by choosing Debug-> Compile Project1. You shouldn’t be getting errors if you’ve done everything correctly.
If you do get errors retrace your steps and also verify that any previous code you might have in ThisOutlookSession is correct. Debug until you’ve solved the errors (the code provided works correctly without any modifications).

To be able to run the code without setting your macro security level to medium I recommend that you sign your code which is a very easy process and only takes a minute.

Create a button for the macro

You can run the macro through Tools-> Macros… -> select the OpenInBrowser macro and then press Run. However the easiest way to access and use the macro is to create a button for it. Since the macro works on the selected item we can create the button in the main Outlook window. Follow the instructions below to create a button.

1. Set the Toolbar in edit mode by going to View-> Toolbars-> Customize…
2. Select the tab Commands
3. In the Categories column select Macros
4. In the Commands toolbar click on Project1.OpenInBrowser and hold down the mouse button.
5. Drag the icon to a location on the Toolbar so the pointer will loose the cross and release the mouse button to drop it in that location
6. Right click the icon to change the name and to assign it a button image you like (if you want to learn more about editing Toolbar buttons click here)
7. Press Close to leave edit mode

The Save Attachments icon in the Toolbar. Curious on how my Save Attachments button works?

Using the macro

Alright, now that we’ve gone to all the trouble we can directly open a message in a browser with gif animations and the browser’s accessibility support.

     Navigation Pane Tips & Tricks (22 September, 2007)

Toggle the Navigation Pane

With ALT+F1 you can enable/disable the Navigation Pane

Easily switch between the various Navigation Panes;

• CTRL+1    Mail Navigation
• CTRL+2    Calendar Navigation
• CTRL+3    Contacts Navigation
• CTRL+4    Tasks Navigation
• CTRL+5    Notes Navigation
• CTRL+6    Folder List Navigation
• CTRL+7    Shortcuts Navigation
• CTRL+8    Journal Navigation

Add Shortcuts to the Shortcuts Navigation

You can build your own custom menu in the Shortcuts Navigation. It can consist of anything like shortcuts to Outlook folders, Explorer Folder, files and applications and can be organized in expandable/collapsible groups.

• For an Outlook folder; click Add new Shortcut
• For an Explorer folder or file; drag & drop the folder or file on the group name from an Explorer window

Change the startup folder

You can configure the startup folder by going to Tools-> Options-> tab Other-> button Advanced E-mail Options… You can even choose a Search Folder.

Start in E-mail, Folder List or Shortcuts Navigation

Close Outlook in the Navigation you prefer and it will start in that Navigation again. For the Shortcuts Navigation make sure your configured startup folder is available in the Shortcuts Navigation.

Add an Exchange Mailbox (when connected to an Exchange server of course)

Right click the root of your Exchange Mailbox-> Properties-> button Advanced…-> tab Advanced

Add Favorite Folders

You can add mail and search folders to your Favorite Folders lists in the Mail Navigation by right clicking a folder and choose Add to Favorite Folders or drag & drop the folder into the Favorite Folders box. To remove a folder right click the folder in either the Favorite Folders box or in the folder list and choose Remove From Favorite Folders…
Note: The Favorite Folders box cannot be removed not even when you remove all shortcuts from the pane.

Reset the Navigation Pane

To reset the Navigation Pane and to undo all customizations start Outlook by (check your path to outlook.exe);
Start-> Run; "C:\Program Files\Office 11\Outlook.exe" /resetnavpane

Location of the Navigation Pane settings

Navigation Pane settings are stored here;
C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\<profilename>.xml
You can backup and restore this file if you want to when Outlook is closed.

Add additional Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, Notes and Journal folders to the Navigation Pane

• All Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, Notes and Journal folders that are available in the Folder List Navigation (with exception of the Public Folders) will be shown in the My … box in the corresponding Navigation Pane.
• All other folders that you have accessed through File-> Open-> Other User’s Folder… will be shown in the Other … box in the corresponding Navigation
• To add a Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, Notes or Journal Public Folder to the corresponding Navigation right click that folder and choose Add to Favorites… If it still doesn’t show; right click the folder from within Favorites and choose Add to Other …

Show Multiple Calendars

To show multiple calendars side-by-side you can select the Calendars in the Calendar Navigation. The name of the Calendar will show above the view of the calendar and calendars will be marked with different colors.

Show Views to the Navigation Pane

View-> Arrange By-> Show Views in Navigation Pane

View Monthly Calendars in the Calendar Navigation

When you disable the TaskPad (View-> TaskPad) when in the Calendar Navigation the monthly calendars will show up in the Navigation Pane instead of above the TaskPad.

     Update general info for multiple contacts (22 September, 2007)

Creating contacts is easy and before you know it you’ve got several dozen, hundreds of them in your Contacts folder. It is very likely that some of them have relations with one another like the same company. If you want to store company info with the contacts you just don’t want to open every contact and add the same information to it. Even worse; do you want to change the address for every contact when the company relocates? I know I wouldn’t!

The following method describes an easy way to update general information for contacts that are linked with one another in some way.

To start we simply update the information for one contact (in this case the Business Address) and then Save and Close that contact. Then we modify the view of the Contacts folder so that the all the contacts are grouped by that updated field. So for our example of the Business Address that would be;

1. View-> Arrange By-> Custom…*
2. In the Customize View window press Group By…
3. At the bottom set the “Select available fields from:” to “Address fields”
4. At the top you can now set the “Group items by” to “Business Address” field
   
5. OK your way out of the open dialog boxes

*Instead of modifying the view you can also define a special Business Address view. Step one then gets replaced by

1. View-> Arrange By-> Current View-> Define Views…-> New
2. Name it Business Address -> OK

Now you’ll see that all your contacts are grouped by the Business Address. Select the contacts who still have the old address and drag & drop them into the group of your updated contact. Outlook will automatically update the Business Address field for all those contacts.

     Creating a Permanent New Mail Desktop Alert in Outlook 2003 (22 September, 2007)

I thought it was one of the most excessive* options in previous versions of Outlook and I was happy to see it got a huge functional and cosmetic overhaul in Outlook 2003. Strangely enough it is now one of the most criticized options as well; the New Mail Desktop Alert.

Old New Mail Alert Outlook 2002 and previous	New Mail Desktop Alert Outlook 2003

Fortunately the criticism is mainly based on only 2 things;

• “It only works on the Inbox folder”
• “It cannot be configured to stay longer than 30 seconds; I WANT IT TO STAY PERMANENT!”

Yes, I said “fortunately” as both issues can be solved. On top of that; there is another way to notify yourself of newly received e-mails while you were not attending Outlook;

• View a list of newly received e-mails

“It only works on the Inbox folder”

By default the new New Mail Desktop Alert will only show when the mail is delivered to the Inbox (as the option says as well in Tools-> Options-> button E-mail Options-> button Advanced E-mail Options). This means that when you have a rule configured to move your mail to a different folder the Notification won’t show.

To workaround this you can add the action “display a Desktop Alert” to each and every rule. Besides the fact that it is very tiresome the real downside of this is that when you are in an Exchange organization the rule will become a local rule so that it will only execute when Outlook is running. This means that when you have added extra actions to the rule like forwarding it to another address this action won’t be executed either.

A better solution it to create a generic rule with no conditions and just the action to display the Desktop Alert.

1. Tools-> Wizards and Alerts… (press OK if you get an HTTP warning)
2. Button New Rule…
3. Select “Start from a blank rule” and verify that “Check messages when they arrive” is selected
4. Press Next to go to the Conditions screen
5. Verify that no condition is selected and press Next
6. A warning will pop-up stating that this rule will apply to all messages. Press “Yes” to indicate that that is correct
7. Select the action “display a Desktop Alert”
8. Press Finish to complete the rule
9. If needed move the “display a Desktop Alert” rule all the way to the top

“It cannot be configured to stay longer than 30 seconds; I WANT IT TO STAY PERMANENT!”

Well permanent isn’t possible but how does 50 days sound? Through the registry you can set the New Mail Desktop Alert as long as 4,294,967,295 milliseconds ≈ 50 days.
Just a little math first to clarify the working of the registry key;

• the value is defined in milliseconds
• when the registry key is set to 0 the New Mail Alert still shows for 3 seconds so this is hard coded in the program thus 3,000 milliseconds
• 4,294,967,295 is the maximum value you can give to a DWORD value in the registry which is 32 bit
• as the object that controls the time of the New Mail Desktop Alert is also defined as a DWORD and is 3000 already we cannot give the TimeOn registry key a higher value than
  4,294,967,295 - 3000 = 4,294,964,295
• To convert from milliseconds to days we must divide the milliseconds through; 1000 to convert to seconds, then 60 to convert to minutes, then 60 to convert to hours, then 24 to convert to days
  (4,294,967,295 - 3,000) / (1000 * 60 * 60 *24) ≈ 50

After all this math it’s time to tell the registry key (to open the registry go to Start-> Run and type “regedit”);
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\DesktopAlerts\TimeOn

If this key isn’t available choose Edit-> New-> DWORD Value and name it TimeOn(case sensitive!).

Double click the key to give it a decimal value between 0 and 4294964295 (in Hexadecimal value this will be fffff448).

Setting the maximum decimal value in the registry

Enjoy your permanent New Mail Desktop Alert that shows for each mail that you receive!
 

View a list of newly received e-mails

The New Mail Desktop Alert only shows for the last e-mail received so when you’ve received multiple new e-mails accross folders it still might be a bit hard to immidiatey locate them. This has actually always been the case with any version of Outlook. Outlook 2003 has a new action rule for this; display a specific message in the New Item Alert window.

As an example we are again going to create a generic rule with no conditions and just the action to display the New Item Alert window. You can of course set conditions and exceptions as desired and note that since Outlook 2003 SP1 rules get executed after Junk E-mail filtering so the New Item Alert window won’t get poluted with Junk E-mail.

1. Tools-> Wizards and Alerts… (press OK if you get an HTTP warning)
2. Button New Rule…
3. Select “Start from a blank rule” and verify that “Check messages when they arrive” is selected
4. Press Next to go to the Conditions screen
5. Verify that no condition is selected and press Next
6. A warning will pop-up stating that this rule will apply to all messages. Press “Yes” to indicate that that is correct
7. Select the action “display a specific message in the New Item Alert window”
8. Type your specific message (this is handy if you create more than one rule that displays the New Item Alert window so that you can easily distinguish between them)
9. Press Finish to complete the rule
10. If needed move the “display a Desktop Alert” rule all the way to the top

Get your newly received e-mails in a handy overview

*In case you were wondering why I found it an excessive option in previous versions of Outlook; it didn’t add anything to the other permanent notification; the envelope in the Notification Area

     What Do The Icons Mean? (22 September, 2007)

I’m pretty sure to say that I’ve got the first publicly published legend (as I hope Microsoft has an internal one) of all the Outlook 2003 icons and their meaning :-).

E-mail

	Unread Message
	Unread Signed Message
	Unread Encrypted Message
	Read Message
	Read Signed Message
	Read Encrypted Message
	Draft
	Sending Message
	Forwarded Message
	Forwarded Signed Message
	Forwarded Encrypted Message
	Replied on Message
	Replied on Signed Message
	Replied on Encrypted Message
	Out Of Office Message
	Recalled Message
	Multimedia Message (can I get a repro?)
	Delivery Report
	Non Delivery Report
	Message Deleted Without Being Read Notice
	Message Read Notice
	Secure Receipt
	Post
	Replied on Post
	Message Holds (Receipts) Information Tab

Meeting Messages

	Meeting Request
	Accepted Meeting Request
	Cancelled Meeting Request
	Can I get a repro?
	Declined Meeting Request
	Tentative Meeting Request

Calendar (with some help from the Office Site)

	Recurring Item
	Exception to Recurring Item
	Data Conflict
	Start Time of an Appointment or Meeting
	End Time of an Appointment or Meeting
	All Day Event
	Scheduled Meeting
	Private Item
	A Reminder is Associated with this Item
	A Meeting Workspace is Associated with this Item
	A File Attachment is Associated with this Item
	More Items

Contacts

	Contact
	Distributionlist

Tasks

	Task
	Delegated Task
	Received Task
	Recurring Task
	Accepted Task
	Declined Task
	Task Request

General

	High Importance
	Low Importance
	Attachment
	Unresolved
	1 Off; something is screwed up
	Sticky Note

Security (icon shown in Message)

	Invalid Signature
	Encrypted
	Valid Signature
	Unknown Signature
	Signature Warning

Flags

	No Follow Up Flag
	Red Follow Up Flag
	Blue Follow Up Flag
	Yellow Follow Up Flag
	Green Follow Up Flag
	Orange Follow Up Flag
	Purple Follow Up Flag
	Follow Up Completed

     Export Contacts to Excel (22 September, 2007)

Although the Import and Export allows you to export to an Excel spreadsheet I think that the Wizard isn’t much of a help in getting it exported the way you want it. Also mapping and choosing fields to export isn’t much fun in the wizard either. Fortunately there is another, more graphical (WYSIWYG), way to do this as well;

1. Change your view to a table view like Phone List;
   Outlook 2003: View-> Arrange By-> Current View-> Phone List
   Outlook 2002 and previous: View-> Current View-> Phone List
2. Insert and arrange the columns you want to export to Excel
   Outlook 2003: View-> Arrange By-> Customize…-> button Fields…
   Outlook 2002 and previous: View-> Current View-> Customze Current View…-> button Fields
   note that you can even choose more fields by using the dropdown list
3. Press OK twice to close all the open screens.
4. Choose Edit-> Select All to select al your contacts
5. Choose Edit-> Copy
6. Open up Excel and select cell A1
7. Choose Edit-> Paste to paste all contact information
8. Save your Excel sheet

Note: This is an export and not a backup. For info on backing up and restoring your Outlook data click here.

     Edit the HTML Source Code while composing a Message (22 September, 2007)

Editing the HTML source code has been made very easy in Outlook Express. In Microsoft Office Outlook… well, not so much and I doubt whether the tool available has actually been designed for this since the process is anything but intuitive.

1. Make sure you’ve got Word selected as your e-mail editor; Tools-> Options-> tab Mail Format
2. Create a new message and make sure the Web Tools Toolbar is visible; View-> Toolbars-> Web Tools
3. Press the Microsoft Script Editor button. A new windows will pop-up displaying the HTML. Word uses a stylesheet so don’t be frightened by the immense amount of code in the header. Just scroll to the body part and edit the HTML
4. When done close the script editor and choose to save it when prompted; a Save As dialog will pop-up
5. Cancel this dialog
6. Close the Script Editor and note that you don’t get prompted to save this time (unless you started editing again). You’ll find the HTML editing applied to your message