This is the fourth article in the Simply Put, by Ryn: Microsoft Outlook Tips series. Previous entries:

• Part I: Checking Availability and Calendar Color Labels
• Part 2: Calendar Colors, Holidays, and Time Zones
• Part 3: Moving Outlook Files to a New/Different Computer

Today’s fascinating tips on Outlook cover the following:

• Junk email filtering
• How to compose email in HTML, rich text or text
• How to force a spell check before sending email

This is Part IV (of I’m guessing VI) in a series of short articles about Microsoft Office Outlook. However, after this one, I *might* take a break and write about something else. I think I’ve had it with Outlook for a bit. I mean, is anyone enjoying it? Reading it? Or are you just thinking “would that chick shut up about Outlook already?” (That’s what I’m thinking.)

Junk Email Filtering

So, I have to be honest and tell you that for years I’ve been using Outlook and I didn’t even realize there was a junk mail folder. But here it is – right in the folder list.

I mean, I guess I knew there were junk mail filters, but since I only use Outlook when I’m forced to (as in “at my job”), there has always been a higher level Network junk mail filter, so I never used my own settings. But, that doesn’t stop a few junk mails from getting through. Like Hallmark. How do they even know I exist at Network Physics???

After investigating, I am now able to block Hallmark – all future Hallmark mail will go to my junk mail folder. I’m pretty stoked (word from 80s surfer vocabulary that describes extreme happiness).

I also must mention that the person who requested I write about this feature told me he HATES the junk mail filter (his exact words were “can you tell people how to turn off the horrendous junk mail filter?”). So, you can use these directions to educate yourself about the filter and then turn it off (if you want to).

To get to the Junk E-Mail Options window, open Tools>Options and then click Junk E-Mail….

(Really been missin’ those arrows.)

The Junk Email Options window opens.

(I want to point out that Microsoft uses “e-mail” while I use “email” and sometimes just “mail.” Hopefully this won’t confuse anyone too much. And if it does, well…you know what they say – “It’s better to say nothing at all than to….”)

From the Junk E-Mail Options window you can set the level of protection (if you are like the person that HATES the junk mail filter, you’d set it to No Automatic Filtering), configure safe senders, safe recipients, etc. All these tabs are pretty self-explanatory. Here is some literature I plagiarized from the Outlook help (and added some of my own comments):

The Junk E-mail Filter in Outlook is turned on by default, and the protection level is set to Low. This level is designed to catch only the most obvious junk e-mail messages (I wonder what “most obvious is?”). You can make the filter more aggressive, but if you do, (I had to add that comma) it may catch legitimate messages sometimes. Any message that is caught by the Junk E-mail Filter is moved to a special Junk E-mail folder (luckily we know where that is). You should review messages in the Junk E-Mail folder from time to time to make sure that they are not legitimate messages that you want to see.

Starting with Microsoft Office 2003 Service Pack 2, messages that are moved to the Junk E-mail folder are automatically converted to plain text format, and any links that they contain are disabled. Any message that you move out of the Junk E-mail folder has its links enabled and the original message format restored, unless the message is considered by the Junk E-mail Filter to contain suspicious links.

You can read more about mail filtering in the Outlook help. Just make sure you aren’t like me and you actually look in the Outlook help instead of the Word help (because I can assure you, there is no mail filtering information in the Word help and all it will do is frustrate you.)

Just to follow through with my story, Hallmark is now blocked:

How to Compose Email in HTML, Rich Text or Text

There is a default setting for how your mail messages are created. To view that default (or change it) complete the following (I’m not sure where this formal voice is coming from):

1. Open Tools>Options and click the Mail Format tab.

2. From the Compose in this message format list, select the format you want.

(Hmm…I use HTML, but I think I’ll switch to Rich Text.)

You can also use a specific format for one message. In other words, create a one-time email in a format different than the default format. (If you still don’t get it, I don’t know what to tell you.) To do this open Actions>New Mail Message Using and then select what format you want to use for your one-time message.

(What the heck is More Stationary???)

(Ok, I checked it out…OMG. It’s made for color freaks like me. But I also know I’d drive everyone insane if I started using it, so I’ll just stick with “blank.” Feel free to look at it.)

How to Force a Spell Check Before Sending Email

It’s just plain embarrassing to send an email with spelling mistakes. If I send one, I usually send a follow-up email pointing out which word I misspelled and apologize. Now, I’m a writer, so it could be considered more important that I don’t make a spelling error.

But…did you know you can force a spell check before you send? Yes! It is one of the ways Microsoft makes you look like you actually know what you are doing.

To do this, once again open Tools>Options and click the Spelling tab.

Select the Always check spelling before sending check box. You can see that there are a lot of other exciting options for checking your spelling.

Next time: I don’t know.

This is the fourth article in the Simply Put, by Ryn: Microsoft Outlook Tips series. Previous entries:

• Part I: Checking Availability and Calendar Color Labels
• Part 2: Calendar Colors, Holidays, and Time Zones
• Part 3: Moving Outlook Files to a New/Different Computer

About Karyn: Karyn was given the nickname Ryn when she was 16-years old. She is the lone technical writer at Network Physics. She just bought a new bike, bringing her bevy of bikes up to five. She will be contributing articles like this one regularly to the site.

This is the third article in the Simply Put, by Ryn: Microsoft Outlook Tips series. Previous entries:

• Part I: Checking Availability and Calendar Color Labels
• Part 2: Calendar Colors, Holidays, and Time Zones
• Part 4: Junk Mail; Composing in HTML, Rich Text, and Plain Text; and Spell Checking

Today’s topic is only going to cover one thing: how to move your Outlook emails to another file for easy transport to a new or different computer. This is useful if you quit (or are fired/laid off from) your current job and you want to take all your email and contacts with you. Well, now you can. (It’s also useful if you get a new computer, but that doesn’t have the intrigue of getting fired.)

This is Part III (of how many, I still don’t know because the list keeps growing — see Jed’s comment in Color Your Emails – in a series of short articles about Microsoft Outlook).

There’s one thing that makes this topic (as in the topic of today, not Jed’s topic) a bit difficult to write about: it is a slightly different procedure depending on which version of Microsoft Outlook you are running. And to further complicate things, there are many different paths you can take to get to the same destination. In other words, there are few ways to back up your mail to a file. (Wait for it…wait for it…OK! There. Appropriate eye-rolling and all directed at Microsoft.) So before we pick a version and I show you how to move your email, we are going to have a little history lesson (with the help of Wikipedia).

Microsoft Outlook Versions

How many versions of Outlook are there? Well, let’s see:

· Outlook for MS-DOS bundled with Exchange Server 5.5

· Outlook for Windows 3.x bundled with Exchange Server 5.5

· Outlook for Macintosh bundled with Exchange Server 5.5

· Outlook 97 (version 8) released January 16, 1997, also bundled with Exchange Server 5.5

· Outlook 98 (version 8.5) released June 21, 1998

· Outlook 2000 (version 9) released June 7, 1999, also bundled with Exchange 2000 Server

· Outlook 2002 (version 10) included in Office XP released May 31, 2001 Office

· Outlook 2003 (version 11) released October 21, 2003, also bundled with Exchange Server 2003

· Office Outlook 2007 (version 12) released November 30, 2006

Here’s a little known fact (at least I think it is little-known): with the release of Outlook 2003, the official name of Microsoft Outlook became Microsoft *Office* Outlook. Also, probably a more known fact is that after Outlook98, the Outlook for Macs, became Entourage (not to be confused with the HBO series).

Moving Your Mail

I am going to specifically discuss how to move your email to a Personal Folder using Microsoft Office Outlook 2003. We are going to pull your mail off of the Exchange server and put it in a Personal Folder that resides on your hard drive, and in turn, you can copy this folder like any other folder. There is one thing you must understand before going forward: I use .pst and Personal Folder interchangeably. They are the same thing.

If you aren’t using Outlook with an Exchange server, your mail is already in Personal Folders, so they are already cleared for transport (although you have to locate them, which is difficult).

Ready? Oookay. (Any of you who were a cheerleader at some time or another will get that reference. If not, oh well…)

From the File menu, select New and then Create Outlook data file.

Select Office Outlook Personal Folder (.pst).

Rename and save the Personal Folder to your desktop. I called mine Karyns_email.pst. (I know, I know. SUPER original.) Now, keep this in mind. This is the name of FILE – not the name of the folder.

Once you name your .pst file and click OK, the Create Microsoft Personal Folder window pops up. On this screen you name the folder, that is, what you will see in your Outlook folder thingy. I named my Gossip. This is where I’m going to store all the emails about any gossip I get about my co-workers. I wouldn’t want to keep that on the server, right?

This brings up an important point. You see, you are only saving the .pst file to the desktop so you can easily copy this folder to another place. BUT, let’s just say you wanted to have some Personal Folders to keep email off the server but you didn’t want to store it on the desktop. In reality, you see, I have a folder called Past Projects. After a project is done, I move all the email associated with that project to my Past Project folder.

I did not save my Past Projects folder to the desktop, but to its default location, as shown below:

So, in short, you can save the .pst file any where, but if you are copying your email some where else, it’s good to save it on your desktop because you can easily locate and move it.

Ok, back to Gossip. Once I save Gossip as the name, the folder is now visible in the Outlook thingy (Folder directory?). But the FILE is visible as Karyns_email on my desktop. Do you get it? They are the same thing, really (for us simple-minded).

Now all you need to do is drag email from My Stuff into the .pst you just created (Gossip). Once it is fully populated, the file (Karyns_email.pst) is ready for transport.

Deleting Personal Folder

If you ever want to delete a Personal folder, right-click the folder and select Close [name of folder]. You might want to make sure it is empty first. Then throw away the .pst file.

Next time: More email information

By the way, every thing you ever want to know about Microsoft Office Outlook is here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/default.aspx . In essence, this site makes the articles I’m writing completely useless (although I’m still going to write a few more.)

This is the third article in the Simply Put, by Ryn: Microsoft Outlook Tips series. Previous entries:

• Part I: Checking Availability and Calendar Color Labels
• Part 2: Calendar Colors, Holidays, and Time Zones
• Part 4: Junk Mail; Composing in HTML, Rich Text, and Plain Text; and Spell Checking

About Karyn: Karyn was given the nickname Ryn when she was 16-years old. (We won’t say how old she is now.) She is the lone technical writer at Network Physics. She has had a life long love affair with ice cream. She will be contributing articles like this one regularly to the site.

I found this one via that venerable treasure trove of productivity and enlightenment, Lifehacker.

Paul Nilsen has done a great job with this extremely short screencast that shows you how to automatically apply color to incoming email in Microsoft Outlook. Although it is a little light on written instructions (the kind you could print out), this task is so easy a short screencast might be just enough. Maybe I’ll ask Ryn to write about it in one of her upcoming articles (she may already have this planned for the Outlook series we are currently in, I don’t know). Paul has done a great job with this screencast, the production quality is very high. I’m going to have to learn how to do some of the things he does with Camtasia, because it really takes the recording to the next level. Warning: this one has sound, that some people have commented is LOUD. I think Paul has fixed the problem, but I didn’t notice a problem in the first place.

Paul Nilsen’s Lifehacker Short Screencast [Via Lifehacker]

This is the second article in the Simply Put, by Ryn: Microsoft Outlook Tips series. Previous entries:

• Part I: Checking Availability and Calendar Color Labels
• Part 3: Moving Outlook Files to a New/Different Computer
• Part 4: Junk Mail; Composing in HTML, Rich Text, and Plain Text; and Spell Checking

Today I am going to write more about Outlook calendar. If you recall, last time I discussed how to check availability of your co-workers and how to use the Label function for you appointments. Today we are going to learn three more tips, and I promise you, it is just as exciting (seriously, you’ve got to knock it off with the eye-rolling):

• How to change colors in the calendar (this is different than the Labeling)
• How to add holidays to the calendar
• How to add multiple time zones to the calendar

This is Part II (of how many, I still don’t know) in a series of articles about using some of the features in Outlook.

Coloring Your Calendar

If you read Part I then you know that I am a color freak. I’ll repeat that I like color EVERY WHERE (maybe if you’re good, I’ll post some picture of my house – bring your sunglasses). So, you might already have guessed that when I first discovered you could color your calendar, I about flipped!

This is how you do it:

1. Open Tools>Options
2. From the Preferences tab, click Calendar Options.

(I got a little over-zealous with the arrows.)

And guess what happens next? Are you sitting down? The Calendar Options window opens! (Look, mister, if you don’t get excited about the small stuff, what’s the point of living?.) From the Calendar Options window, select a color from the Background Color drop down menu.

And finally, click OK. Now look at your calendar. Isn’t it be-a-u-tiful? (I tell ya, I’m jumping up and down for you even if you are not.) Here are some examples of colors to choose from:

Adding Holidays

Are you the kind of person who is constantly forgetting Columbus Day? Or, [insert higher power here] forbid, Valentines Day (now, that’s bad, isn’t)? Well, if you are, Outlook Calendar can save you.

(Ok. Wait. Hold on - this is an aside. In trying to write this, I added holidays for Turkey to my calendar. And then I tried to get them out. And NOW, I’m stuck with Turkish holidays, in a screen I can’t get out of and I, I, I HATE MICROSOFT!!!!!!!)

(Five minutes later: I figured it out. I’m ok. I think. I’m recomposing my “I love Microsoft” face. Ready?)

From the Calendar Option screen, click Add Holidays.

(I tried turquoise-patterned arrows this time.)

From the Add Holidays to Calendar dialog, you can add holidays from countries ranging from Algeria to Yemen. You can see that I have United States holidays added. To add holidays, select the country (or countries) of which holidays you want on your calendar, and click OK. They are added to your calendar.

Now for the sad part – removing holidays you don’t want. It’s not just sad for us; it’s sad that Microsoft is so stupid they make you remove holidays in a painful way. (Did I just type that?? I’m supposed to have my happy face on.)

Let’s say you wanted to add the holidays from Turkey (what did I say about eye-rolling? GEEZ!!). And then, three seconds later you decide you don’t want holidays from Turkey. You’d think you could go back the Add Holiday to Calendar dialog and uncheck Turkey and click OK, right? Nope. Wrong.

To remove holidays, open View>Arrange By>Events.

Then, using the CTRL button, select all the Turkish holidays. Click Delete when done. And oh, by the way, you don’t just remove a holiday once; you have to remove multiple years. (Yeah. I know. Even *I’m* rolling my eyes now.)

(It doesn’t make as good of a story, but it is possible to click the Location column and then use SHIFT button to delete all the Turkey holidays in one fell swoop. Actually, fooling around with sorting your events/holidays in various configurations is sort of fun if you had nothing to do.)

One good thing about this feature is that if you do want to remove one or two specific holidays, like Flag Day, you can go in and edit your holidays.

Using Multiple Time Zones

Do you ever have meetings with anyone that lives in another time zone? Do you sometimes forget the time difference and schedule a meeting that for you is at 9am, but for your friend is 6am? Do they every call you and say “What the #$%@ are you thinking?!” Once again, Outlook calendar comes to the rescue. You can add time zones to your calendar and see your friend’s time zone before you send an invite.

I live in California, but I have regular meeting with a co-worker in New York. In order to make sure I don’t schedule something for her after 5:00pm, I want to add the time zone on the east coast. From the Calendar Option screen, click Time Zone.

From the Time Zone dialog, you see that my current time zone is already entered, but in order to add a time zone I checked the Show an additional time zone box and filled out the information. Then I clicked OK.

And then my calendar looked like this:

I can see that if I want to schedule a meeting with my east coat friend before 5:00pm, I’d better schedule it before 2:00pm my time. Ok, that is a little exciting, right? I’m sort of jumping up and down again – still not quite recovered from the Turkish Holiday thing. Next time: I’ll write about something in Outlook other than the calendar (aren’t you ready?).
This is the second article in the Simply Put, by Ryn: Microsoft Outlook Tips series. Previous entries:

• Part I: Checking Availability and Calendar Color Labels
• Part 3: Moving Outlook Files to a New/Different Computer
• Part 4: Junk Mail; Composing in HTML, Rich Text, and Plain Text; and Spell Checking

Karyn Goldstein was given the nickname Ryn when she was 16-years old. (We won’t say how old she is now.) She is the lone technical writer at Network Physics. She likes dogs, a lot. More than most. She’s been in the technical writing industry as either a writer or manager for 10 years. She’s trying to write a novel. She will be contributing articles like this one regularly to the site.

This is the first article in the Simply Put, by Ryn: Microsoft Outlook Tips series. Previous entries:

• Part 2: Calendar Colors, Holidays, and Time Zones
• Part 3: Moving Outlook Files to a New/Different Computer
• Part 4: Junk Mail; Composing in HTML, Rich Text, and Plain Text; and Spell Checking

Outlook. I know all you techie types hate Microsoft. But I’m going to share some tips that you may or may not know about using your Outlook calendar. Not only does using your Outlook calendar help you communicate company-wide, it can be fun! (Yeah, yeah. Quit rolling your eyes.) This is Part I (of how many, I don’t know) in a series of articles about using some of the features in Outlook (not just the calendar). Today I’m going to write about checking availability of your co-workers and using the Label function to color your appointments.

Check Availability

Did you know you can check the schedule of all your co-workers? Now, don’t get excited; you can’t actually see what they are doing, but you can see when their time is available so that you don’t double-book them (which, in all honesty, is just plain polite). When you schedule a meeting with someone who is not busy, it is much harder for them to make excuses that they are busy – because you can see, plain as day, that they are not.

Note: I sure hope you know this, but this feature does not work for people not on your network.

Let’s see if Scott is busy since I need to speak with him about Insights. I schedule a calendar invite as usual, but before sending it, I click the Scheduling tab. In the example below I am trying to schedule a meeting with Scott to meet 11-11:30am.

The schedule shows me that we are both free. Scott’s is booked from 8-10:30am and then again from 12-2pm. I’m booked from 8-8:30am.

Let’s say I had originally picked 9-9:30am. The schedule would have looked like this, and I would have known Scott is busy:

I could change the meeting time by either typing in a new Meeting start time and Meeting end time at the bottom of the screen, or by dragging the green and red bars to appropriate times.Either way, once you have a time where both parties are free (or more, if you want the meeting to have multiple people), click Send.

That’s it.

Using the Label function

I’m a color freak. I like color EVERY WHERE. So, I like to color my calendar using the Label feature. Below is a picture of my calendar on a very busy week.

Beautiful, isn’t it? Ok, well let’s color the appointment we just made with Scott. How about orange? Prior to sending (or after you’ve sent; it doesn’t matter), open the Appointment tab and choose a color from the Label drop-down menu (you can see I have an extensive label coloring system).

By the way, you can use the Labeling with all appointments; they don’t have to be invites. For instance, on July 20^th I am going out to dinner. I have already the scheduled the appointment in my calendar but now I want to color it green. I right-click the appointment and the following menu appears. I pick green.

You can customize your labels by choosing Edit Labels.

You are now on your way to having your very own colorful calendar.

Next time: More Outlook calendar tips.

This is the first article in the Simply Put, by Ryn: Microsoft Outlook Tips series. Previous entries:

• Part 2: Calendar Colors, Holidays, and Time Zones
• Part 3: Moving Outlook Files to a New/Different Computer
• Part 4: Junk Mail; Composing in HTML, Rich Text, and Plain Text; and Spell Checking

Karyn Goldstein was given the nickname Ryn when she was 16-years old. (We won’t say how old she is now.) She is the lone technical writer at Network Physics, dabbling in fiction on the side. But mostly, she runs around and drives the engineers crazy. We think they are happy she’s mostly remote. She will be contributing articles like this one regularly to the site.