Outlook: Knowing Mail box size

 

 

 

                    If you use Outlook and have a busy inbox you might want to periodically find out how much space everything is taking. Today we'll take a very quick look at the Mailbox Cleanup feature in Outlook, which will let you see the amount of space being wasted.

With Outlook open, go to Tools \ Mailbox Cleanup.

 

 

 

Now with the Mailbox Cleanup dialog box open click on View Mailbox Size. You can also use this same dialog to easily find old email, or items that are larger than a certain size, so you can delete them and reclaim some space.

 

 

 

In the Folder Size dialog will show the amount of space being taken up on your local machine by each folder. If you are on an Exchange Server just click on the Server Data tab to find out how much space is being taken up on the server.

 

 

 

 Depending on the size and your setup you might want to Easily Compact The Outlook Data File.

These steps can be followed in Windows XP and Windows 7.

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Outlook 2007: Out of Office assistant

      

                    When you know you are going to be out of the office for a few days, you can set up the Out of Office Assistant to reply automatically, letting people know that you are enjoying your vacation while they are sending you emails. You can also add rules to forward messages based on different criteria.

Open Outlook and Click on Tools \ Out of Office Assistant.

 

Next check I am currently Out of the Office and compose a message for the sender. You can include as little or as much information in this box. In this example I wrote a fairly generic reply message.

 

After filling this out you can just click OK or you can continue to add specific rules to the message. To do this click on the Add Rule button.

 

If you want the rule to only apply to a small set of contacts, you can add contacts or a contact list by clicking on the From button and selecting them there. If you want the rule to apply to any incoming email, then select a combination of both “Sent directly to me” and “Copied (Cc) to me”.

You can choose different actions to take for this rule. For instance if the message is coming from your boss you might want to have the message forwarded to another account, such as your mobile. Or you might want to have it reply with a different template. In this example I just chose to have them sent to my Inbox folder.

When you are done click on OK. You can then add another rule if you want to, just remember that the first matching rule in the list will be executed, but the rest of the matching rules will be executed if you don’t check the “Do not process subsequent rules” option. (Notice the options to move the rules up and down in the last screen)

When you’ve completed everything you will be back to the Out of Office Assistant window in Outlook. Once you have verified everything click OK.

 

Now every time you get an email from a specified address the user will automatically get your Auto Reply. This is very useful in the office and in business environments. It allows your customers and co-workers know you are not available and who to contact if they need further assistance.

These steps will work for Outlook 2007 installed in Windows XP and Windows 7. 

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Outlook 2007: Compact Mode

               One of the nicest features in Outlook is the way the list view handles “Compact Mode” when you use the reading pane on the right-hand side of the screen… it switches to double-line to show more information easily. But did you know that you can actually make it display even more fields?

This is really useful if you want to be able to see a particular extra field at a glance. The latest version of Outlook lets you do color categories, but sometimes it’s easier to just see the textual version.

In the main Outlook screen click on View \ Current View \ Customize Current View.

 

In the Customize View window click on Fields.

Now the Show Fields screen opens and here is where you can add or remove fields, or choose the order the fields will be displayed. 

The key thing to note in the Show Fields dialog is the “Maximum number of lines in compact mode”… for instance here I changed it to display 4 lines: 

 

The interesting thing about this is that you can enable the view only for a particular folder or search folder, so you could easily switch between views on the same folder.

These steps can be followed in Outlook 2007 installed in Windows XP and Windows 7.

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Reply/Forward mail without opening window

                  Now we are going to learn how to forward or reply all in a mail without opening mail in separate window. One of the more annoying things with replying or forwarding emails is the original message you reply to says open and you have to manually close out of it. Here we show you how to bypass this interruption.

You can make this adjustment in Outlook 2007 by going to Tools \ Options 

In the Options screen under the Preferences tab click on the E-mail Options button. 

 

Then check Close original message on reply or forward, click OK and OK again to close out of Outlook Options.

These steps can be followed in Outlook 2007 installed in Windows XP and Windows 7.

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mark email as read when viewed in Reading pane

 

 

 

 

 

              why the default setting in Outlook 2007 is to not mark items as read until you switch to a different email, which leaves the new mail notification sitting in the system tray even though you’ve clearly read the email.

Turns out there’s a very simple setting for this, where you can mark items as read once you’ve viewed them instead of when the selection changes to a different email.

Just go to Tools \ Options and then click on the Other tab. Click the Reading Pane button to bring up the options.\

 

 

Just select the checkbox on “Mark items as read when viewed in the Reading Pane”. You’ll notice that you can’t also select the “Mark item as read when selection changes” box, which seems a little silly, but it’s not important. You might also want to change the number of seconds in this dialog. It doesn’t usually take me 5 seconds to read an email, especially when most of them aren’t important.

Remember that you can always mark an item as read by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Q, which is really the fastest way to mark items as read.

 

These steps can be followed for Outlook 2007 installed in Windows XP and Windows 7.

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Outlook 2007: Hide when minimized

 

             Some days you might have so many applications running you are not able to keep track of them all.  One of the programs bound to be taking up space is Outlook.  Today we will cover a quick tip that will allow more space on your task bar when you have Outlook Minimized.

You may have noticed that by default when you minimize Outlook it still shows in the taskbar. 

To stop it from showing up right click on the Outlook icon in the notification area next to the clock then select Hide When Minimized. 

Another notification balloon will pop up notifying the change and how to change it back if needed. 

Now there will be additional space on the Taskbar for other programs.  Now you can maximize Outlook by Double Clicking the notification icon or clicking on the notification pop up if that is enabled.

These steps can be followed for Outlook 2007 installed on Windows 7 and Vista

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Color categories view in Outlook 2003

      You have two machines with Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007. If you use colored flags in 2003 you can see the corresponding color category in 2007, but if you select a color category in 2007 you cannot view the color in 2003.

Is there something you are missing or another method where both 2003 and 2007 can use the same color coding methods either using colored flags or colored categories?

Outlook 2003 Colored Flags were migrated to Color Categories in Outlook 2007. There is no link in how Color Categories in Outlook 2007 are downgraded to Color Flags in Outlook 2003. This would be impossible as well considering the fact that there are many more colors to choose from in Outlook 2007 than in Outlook 2003.

However, the Categories assigned in Outlook 2007 are still assigned in Outlook 2003; they are just missing a color. You can define an Automatic Formatting rule in your view in Outlook 2003 to color the header text based in the message list based on which category is assigned.

   1. click on "View" under menu and the click "Arrange By-" and then select "Custom"

   2. Click on "Automatic Formatting" tab and Press option "Add"
   3. First add the Name of the rule
   4. Press "Font" to select a font and other font properties

   5. Press Condition and Select the More Choices tab
   6. Press the "Categories" button to select one or more categories that you want to show up in that font setting
   7. Press OK and Move the rule if needed (the last rule that applies wins when there are font conflicting settings)also create additional rules if needed

These steps can be followed in Windows XP and Windows 7.

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Outlook 2010: Organize

Where can you find the Organize feature in Outlook 2010?

The Organize feature itself has been removed in Outlook 2010 mainly because it was made up of 5 other features which are still there;

    * Move to folder
      Home tab-> Move

    * Rules and Alerts
      Home tab-> Rules

    * Categories
      Home tab-> Categorize

    * Conditional Formatting
      View tab-> View Settings-> Conditional Formatting…

    * Views
      View tab-> Change Views

you can find this option for Outlook 2010 which is on Windows XP and Windows 7.

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