3. Contents
Introduction.............................................................................................................................................................................. 1
Assumptions.........................................................................................................................................................................1
Send Messages Without Touching the Mouse..............................................................................................................2
Outlook 2007 & HTML Mail.................................................................................................................................................3
What Does this Mean to You?........................................................................................................................................3
Attach Reminders to Messages..........................................................................................................................................4
Set a Reminder on a Closed Message..........................................................................................................................4
Set a Reminder on an Open Message..........................................................................................................................4
Clean Up Your Auto-Complete List...................................................................................................................................5
Deleting Addresses from the Auto-Complete List.................................................................................................5
Preview PDF Attachments...................................................................................................................................................5
Download and Install Acrobat Reader 8.1................................................................................................................6
Save More than One Mail Attachment at a Time.........................................................................................................7
Saving More than One Mail Attachment at a Time................................................................................................7
Send Calendar Info in Email Messages...........................................................................................................................8
Zoom the Message Body.......................................................................................................................................................9
Change Message Fonts........................................................................................................................................................10
Print Mail Messages Automatically...............................................................................................................................11
Getting Auto Print............................................................................................................................................................11
Configuring Auto Print...................................................................................................................................................11
The End!................................................................................................................................................................................... 13
Top Tips for Living With Outlook 2007 .................................................................................................................13
4.
5. Introduction
As an author and online instructor, I've worked with thousands of Outlook users over the years.
This short report contains 10 tips for dealing with Outlook 2007 mail. I put these together in
response to some of the most common questions I've received from all those Outlook users.
Chances are good that you've had some of those same questions yourself, and that the tips here will
provide the answers you are looking for.
Assumptions
We all know what happens when you make assumptions, but sometimes you have to do it anyway.
Here are the assumptions I made when I created this report.
1. You are already using Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 (Outlook 2007). If not, you need to
learn the basics of Outlook 2007 before reading the rest of this book.
If you would like to learn about Outlook 2007 by reading a book, I strongly recommend my
book for beginning to intermediate Outlook 2007 users, How to Do Everything with
Microsoft Office Outlook 2007.
2. You want to make your relationship with Outlook 2007 work better by learning new ways
to make it do what you want it to, without writing scripts or doing any programming.
3. If you are using Outlook 2007 at work, you will follow any corporate guidelines that they
give. Your company's policies and guidelines always trump anything you read in this book.
With that said, I hope you enjoy this report and find it to be helpful in improving your relations with
our dear friend Outlook 2007!
--Bill
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6. Send Messages Without Touching the Mouse
Keyboard shortcuts are one of the best ways of getting things done when using Outlook. Keeping
your hands on the keyboard and hitting various key combinations is much faster than using the
mouse to accomplish the same tasks. You've probably seen lists of Outlook keyboard shortcuts that
replace various mouse actions. In this tip, I've put it all together in a set of steps for sending mail
messages without touching the mouse.
To send email using only the keyboard (assuming Outlook is running), follow these steps:
1. Get into Outlook using the ALT+TAB shortcut if you are not already there.
2. Open a new mail message window. If you are in a Mail view, use CTRL+N. If you are in any
other view, use CTRL+SHIFT+M.
3. The cursor should now be in the To field. Type the name of the first person you want to send
the message to. If Outlook offers you a menu of choices as you type, you can use the up and
down arrow keys to scroll through this list, then press ENTER to select that person.
4. If you want to add more people to the To field, type a semi-colon (;), a space, then the next
person. Press TAB when you're done with the To field.
5. Fill in the Cc and Subject fields the same way you did the To field, pressing TAB to move to
the next field each time. Press TAB in the Subject field to put the cursor in the message body.
6. Type your message normally.
7. To check the spelling of your message, press the F7 key.
8. Press CTRL+ENTER to send the message. You may see a dialog box asking if you want to use
CTRL+ENTER as a keyboard shortcut for sending a message.
9. Press P to tell Outlook not to show you this dialog box again, then press Y to tell it you want
to use CTRL+ENTER as a shortcut for sending a message from now on.
That's all it takes to send email without touching the mouse. If you're like me, it will take you some
practice to get consistent with this way of doing things, but once you do, you'll get this most
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7. common of Outlook tasks done with less effort. Over the course of your day, the savings will
definitely add up.
Outlook 2007 & HTML Mail
There's something very different about HTML mail in Outlook 2007. One of the changes Mcirosoft
made was to make Word 2007 the only email editor for Outlook 2007. This has simplified life in
some ways, but caused some problems as well.
One of the biggest problems with this change is that Outlook 2007 doesn't display HTML mail
messages nearly as well as Outlook 2003 did. It's not a disaster, but it is definitely noticeable and
will cause the people who create HTML mail messages some headaches.
Microsoft has published articles that describe all the limitations in the way Word 2007 (and
therefore Outlook 2007) supports web publishing standards. It is easy to see that there are
problems. For example, here's an image from an HTML mail message as it appears in Outlook 2003:
And here's the same piece of the exact same message displayed by Outlook 2007:
As you can see, the positioning of the two parts of the image is incorrect in Outlook 2007. Simple
HTML mail messages seem to come through ok, but most that rely on Cascading Style Sheets (CSS),
a standard tool for formatting HTML, will be messed up. According to the articles Microsoft posted,
Word 2007 doesn't support dozens of the properties that are part of the current CSS standard.
What Does this Mean to You?
At one level, this means nothing to you, because there is nothing you can do about it, short of
sticking with Outlook 2003.
At another level, it means that you can expect to see weirdness in the HTML mail you receive once
you start using Outlook 2007. Since Outlook has the vast majority of the market for corporate mail
programs, eventually people will redesign their HTML mail to eliminate all the features that
Outlook no longer supports and messages should look ok again. But for some time to come, there
will be weirdness.
If you create HTML messages using some tool other than Outlook 2007, particularly messages that
use CSS for formatting and layout, they will likely appear different than you expect when Outlook
2007 users view them. Test everything in both versions of Outlook, and expect to have to do some
redesign.
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8. Attach Reminders to Messages
Often the messages you receive require some sort of action. For each message like this, you could
create a new task or appointment, then enter the relevant information from the message into the
task or appointment, and save the new item. Or you could just set a reminder on the message itself.
Note: In Outlook 2003, this only worked for messages in your Inbox. If the message was in another
folder, you could add the reminder, but it would never appear. In Outlook 2007, this is fixed.
Set a Reminder on a Closed Message
Here's how you set a reminder on a closed message:
1. Select the message in the Unread Mail pane or the Inbox.
2. Use the CTRL+SHIFT+G keyboard shortcut. The Custom dialog box opens.
3. Select a Due by date (and optionally a time using the box to the right of Due by) for the
reminder to appear.
4. Click OK when done. The message is automatically flagged for follow up, and the reminder is
set to go off at the date and time you selected.
Set a Reminder on an Open Message
Here's how you set a reminder on an open message.
1. With the message window open and active, use the CTRL+SHIFT+G keyboard shortcut. The
Custom dialog box opens as in the previous procedure.
2. Select a Due by date (and optionally a time using the box to the right of Due by) for the
reminder to appear.
3. Click OK when done. The message is automatically flagged for follow up, and the reminder is
set to go off at the date and time you selected.
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9. Clean Up Your Auto-Complete List
Outlook's auto-complete feature can help you get things done faster, but sometimes you need to
delete old entries to keep it as useful as possible. There is a simple trick to doing exactly that and
this page tells you how. Let's begin at the beginning:
When you start to enter addresses into Outlook, you will often see a list of possibilities. Outlook
looks at what you have typed so far, and displays a list of possible addresses that match what you
have typed so far. Outlook creates the list by remembering the addresses you have entered into the
TO:, CC: or BCC: fields previously.
This can be a great time-saving tool, but there's one big problem with it: old addresses. Outlook has
no way to know if an address is crucially important to you, or one that you no longer want.
It turns out that it's easy to remove old addresses once you know the trick. Here's how it is done:
Deleting Addresses from the Auto-Complete List
The trick to deleting addresses from the Auto-Complete list is that you must do it using the
keyboard, and not the mouse. Follow these steps:
1. Make the address you want to delete visible by opening a message and entering characters
of the address until Outlook displays the one you want to delete in the Auto-Complete list
2. Use the Up and Down arrow keys on the keyboard to select the address you want to delete.
You must do this with the arrow keys, not the mouse.
3. Instead of pressing the Enter key to use this address, press the Delete key to delete the
address from the list.
See what I mean? This is nice and easy, once you know the trick.
Preview PDF Attachments
On its own, Outlook 2007 can't preview PDF (Adobe Acrobat) attachments. Adobe has released the
free Adobe Reader 8.1, which allows you to preview PDF attachments in Outlook 2007. It's a very
useful feature, and is easy to set up.
How do you know if you need to install this? In Outlook 2007, select a message that has a PDF file
attached to it. In the Reading Pane, you will see something like this:
5
10. Follow these steps to download and install Adobe Reader 8.1 and gain the ability to preview PDF
file attachments.
Download and Install Acrobat Reader 8.1
This is all standard stuff. Go to the Adobe website, www.adobe.com and search around until you
find a link or button that says "Get Adobe Reader" or something similar. Click that and follow the
instructions that appear to download and install the latest version of Adobe Reader.
Note: You will probably have to close your browser and Outlook and perhaps other programs while
you install Adobe Reader. So don't do this while you are in the middle of something important.
Once you finish installing Adobe Reader, restart Outlook 2007. Select a message that includes an
attached PDF file, and look in the Reading Pane. You should see something like this:
You preview the file the same way you would any other previewable file attached to a message.
That is, you click the icon for the file in the Reading Pane.
Note: You can also preview attachments by opening the message in a separate window. That can
increase the amount of screen space available for the preview and make it easier to read.
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11. The preview PDF file appears in the Reading Pane like this:
While previewing a PDF, you can scroll through it with the mouse or arrow keys on the keyboard.
And you can use the blue arrows at the bottom to move through the document page by page.
Save More than One Mail Attachment at a Time
If you ever received more than one mail attachment in a single message, you may have wondered
how to save them simultaneously instead of one at a time. Here are the steps you need to follow:
Saving More than One Mail Attachment at a Time
Follow these steps to save more than one mail attachment at a time.
1. Open the message that contains the attachments.
7
12. 2. Click Other Actions, then Save Attachments in the Actions panel of the Ribbon.
3. The Save All Attachments dialog box appears. In the Attachments list, select the attachments
you want to save, then click OK.
1. A standard file save dialog box appears. Navigate to the folder where you want to save the
attachments and click OK to save them.
That's it. The attachments are now saved in the folder you selected.
Send Calendar Info in Email Messages
When you're trying to make plans with someone who isn't using Outlook for email, you sometimes
get into one of those, "so what does your schedule look like for Thursday" conversations, and end
up having to type in your availability to speed things up. Outlook 2007 can include a copy of your
Calendar information in a message with only a few clicks. The result looks nice, eliminates the
chance of mistakes while retyping, and saves you time. Follow these steps to try it for yourself:
1. In the editing area of the Message you want to contain Calendar information, click at the
position you want the Calendar to appear. The cursor needs to be in this part of the message
window or the rest of the steps will fail.
2. Use the ALT, N, O, C keyboard shortcut to open the Send a Calendar via E-mail dialog box.
8
13. 3. Using the options available in this dialog box, tell Outlook which Calendar you want it to
send, the Date Range (Today, Next 7 Days, Whole Calendar, and other options), along with
the level of Detail of information you want to share. If you wish to show only your activities
during your working hours, set the Show time… check box as well.
Click OK when done setting options. The dialog box closes, and after a moment, Outlook inserts the
Calendar information into the Message.
Zoom the Message Body
Outlook 2007 gives you the ability to zoom in or out on the body text of email messages, calendar
entries, tasks, and contacts. It's an easy trick to learn and could save you some eyestrain. The ability
to zoom like this can be a huge benefit for anyone who has trouble reading the text on the screen.
As always, there are a few things to be aware of when you use this feature.
The body of the message can be zoomed, but not the Subject line. Only the part of the item where
you could enter large amounts of text and images zooms. The body of a message, calendar entry, or
task will zoom, as will the notes field of a contact. The menus and toolbars and buttons and
anything else stay the same size regardless of how you zoom.
Additional things you need to know to be able to use zoom:
• The item you want to zoom must be open in its own window.
• The cursor must be in the zoomable area of the item. Clicking in that area enables zooming.
The Zoom command appears in the Other Actions menu for messages, and in the Zoom group of the
Format Text tab of the Ribbon for other Outlook items.
Just select the level of zoom you want to use from the available options. This dialog box comes from
Word 2007, so some of the options aren't available in Outlook.
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14. Whenever you select a zoom level, the Preview area changes to give you some idea of what text will
look like if you use that zoom level.
Click OK to close the dialog box and apply the new zoom level. You'll be glad you did.
Change Message Fonts
You can change the font settings in a message easily enough, and you can change the default fonts
that Outlook uses almost as easily.
Note: These changes only affect messages that are in HTML or Rich Text format. If you are sending
messages in Plain Text format, the recipient controls the font that they see, not you.
To change the default fonts for HTML or Rich Text formatted messages, follow these steps:
1. In the Outlook main menu, click Tools, then Options to open the Options dialog box.
2. On the Mail Format tabbed page, in the Stationery and Fonts section, is the Fonts button.
Click that to open the Fonts dialog box.
3. In the Message Fonts section of the dialog box, select the fonts you want to use when
composing a new message and when replying to or forwarding a message.
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15. 4. While you're here, you can also select the font you will see when composing and reading
Plain Text formatted messages. This is for your own convenience (my eyes aren't as good as
they used to be!) and doesn't affect what the recipient of Plain Text messages sees, but while
you're here, you might as well adjust this too.
5. Click OK when done, then Apply or OK in the Options dialog box.
Print Mail Messages Automatically
Many people need to keep a hard-copy record of every email message they receive at work, or
every message related to a particular subject. Perhaps you do too. If so, there's a tool that will let
you print the messages you want printed, and do it automatically.
If your organization has an IT department with some Outlook developers, I'm sure they could put
together a script to handle the task for you. But that will likely cost many hours of developer time
and require you to help test and tweak everything. There has to be a better way.
The "better way" that I found is to use the Auto Print add-in from Sperry Software to manage
printing email.
This add-in addresses every way I can think of to print messages, from the most basic--printing
every message that arrives, to only printing messages that land in certain folders and contain
specific text (a project name, for example).
Auto Print can also print attachments, and go through the folders you specify to print messages that
are there now, letting you catch up on your printing.
I don't have a specific need to print my messages, but I've tested the Outlook 2007 version of Auto
Print, and once you have it configured the way you want it, it works very well.
Getting Auto Print
Installing Auto Print is easy. You buy it direct from the Sperry Software website at:
http://www.sperrysoftware.com/Outlook/Auto-Print.asp.
While you are placing your order, if you enter this code: PK4CZK97, you will get a 5% discount
on the purchase of Auto Print and any other Sperry Software products.
Once you place your order, you receive a message with a link to the download page and another
with your product key. You can use Auto Print for up to 14 days before entering the key, so go
ahead and download it as soon as the first message arrives.
Follow the instructions in the message to install Auto Print.
Configuring Auto Print
Once you have Auto Print installed, you need to configure it. This is the place where I was a little
confused at first. Because Auto Print is so flexible, you have to set several options to get it to print
mail exactly the way you want it to.
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16. For the most basic action--printing every message that arrives--here's what you need to do:
• Once you have Auto Print installed and Outlook restarted, click the Sperr Software Add-Ins
button on the Outlook toolbar. This opens the Add-in Configuration dialog box.
• Set the checkbox next to Auto Print to activate the add-in. This makes the rest of the settings
available.
• On the Autoprint Incoming Email tabbed page, click Choose Folder. Because we want it to
print all incoming messages, select Mailbox in the Select Folder dialog box that appears,
then click OK. You will see a message that Outlook needs to be restarted, but you don't need
to do it until after you finish configuring and are ready to print mail messages.
• In the Filter Rules section, select All Incoming Emails.
• In the What to Print section, set the Print the Email checkbox to print just the messages.
Note: You can also tell Auto Print to print attachments of particular file types if you want.
Click the Help button for more information on this option.
• Click OK to close the dialog box. Don't forget to restart Outlook so the print mail changes
you made can take effect.
Once you restart Outlook, all incoming messages will automatically be sent to the printer. You'll
save time and energy while reducing mistakes.
If you need to print mail messages, Auto Print is a definite win.
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17. The End!
You've reached the end of Top 10 Outlook 2007 Mail Tips. I hope you've found this report useful and
interesting and maybe even had some fun with it. I recommend you print a copy if you haven't
already, and keep it by your computer as a reference.
If you have found this report useful, please consider investing in my Top Tips for Living With
Outlook 2007 (http://btlab1.com/TTLWO2007.html) ebook. This 50+ page book includes far more
tips than you've seen here, and covers all aspects of Outlook, not just mail. Here's what you'll get:
In Part 1, you'll find:
• General Keyboard Shortcuts
• Tips for Working with Email
• Tips for Working with the Calendar
• Other Top Tips
Each tip has detailed instructions just like you've seen in this report. These are all tried and true
tips that I have tested and used myself.
One of the biggest issues for Outlook owners is how to make Outlook work with our other email
accounts. I'm constantly getting asked how to make Outlook work with Hotmail, or Gmail, or Yahoo!
Mail. Part 2 of Top Tips contains detailed procedures for making those connections.
Specifically, in Part 2, Outlook and Web-based Email Accounts, you'll find:
• Outlook Web Mail Access Simplifies Life
• Gmail and Outlook
• Hotmail and Outlook
• Yahoo! Mail and Outlook
• Port 25 and Problems Sending Email
Being able to use Outlook is a requirement in today's business world. Being able to use Outlook
better with the tips in this report gives you an advantage. The tips you'll learn when you buy Top
Tips for Living With Outlook 2007 will take you one step higher still. Download your copy today:
Top Tips for Living With Outlook 2007
(http://btlab1.com/TTLWO2007.html)
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