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Greetings! Welcome to Vol. 8, No. 15, 29 Oct 2003, of Exchange
Messaging Outlook, a biweekly newsletter about Microsoft Exchange
and Microsoft Outlook.
Today's highlights:
- Microsoft Office System 2003 Launch
- Configuring the "classic" interface in Outlook 2003
- More Outlook 2003 view tips
- Business Contact Manager FAQ
- New Outlook 2003 form script security settings
- Looking for the old MSDN interface?
- OutlookCode.com celebrates one-year anniversary
Regular features:
- New utilities
- Updated utilities
- Other resources
Microsoft Office System 2003 Launch
It was fun to be in New York City last week for the official
Office 2003 launch, especially when Bill Gates demonstrated some of
the nicer new features in Outlook 2003 with ease. (See photos on our
web site.) Several of the other Outlook MVPs were there, and we
often found ourselves answering questions from the other Office MVPs
about various Outlook features and gotchas.
We're already seeing a bunch of questions about Outlook 2003 in
the public newsgroups and on the outlook-users mailing list (see
http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/outlook-users.htm). Some of the
more common issues involve the new Unicode .pst files (limited in
size only by your hardware and operating system) and the new Cached
Exchange and RPC over HTTP modes of connecting to Exchange Server.
Both are on our list of articles to add to the web site. In the
meantime, you can get more information on Outlook 2003's new
features from
http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/ol2003/newfeatures.htm.
Configuring the "classic" interface
in Outlook 2003
A lot of usability research backs up the ideas behind new layout
in Outlook 2003, with its three columns for navigation pane, item
list and reading pane. Putting the reading pane on the right instead
of at the bottom allows Outlook to show up to 40% more text per
message, making it less likely that you'll need to scroll or open a
message to read the full text. The item list uses two lines per
message not just to display basic header information in a narrow
column but also to give you a larger click target for the Quick Flag
column on the right side of the item list. Even if you don't like
the new interface at first, I urge you to try it out for two weeks,
especially in conjunction with the new search folders feature,
before you decide to revert to the classic Outlook layout.
But if you eventually feel that you must switch, here's how to
make your changes apply to all message folders, at least to those
where you haven't already tried to tinker with the view. The key is
to modify the basic saved Messages view. Follow these steps:
- Choose View | Arrange View | Current View | Define Views.
- Select the Messages view, click Modify, and then
click Other Settings.
- In the Other Settings dialog, uncheck the Show
items in groups box.
- Under Reading Pane, choose Bottom. If you want
the reading pane to occupy less space, check Hide header
information. You could also turn the reading pane off
completely and turn AutoPreview on instead.
- Uncheck the Use multi-line layout in widths smaller than
xxx characters box, and then select Always use
single-line layout.
- Click OK, and make any changes you want to fields or other
view settings. Then click Apply View to display the
current folder with this more "classic" Outlook view, with the
navigation pane on the left, the items list on top, and the
reading page on the bottom.
Since you've customized the base Messages view, this is the view
you should see when you switch to any other mail folder, unless you
previously customized the Messages view in that specific folder.
I've seen cases where the grouping and preview pane header settings
don't "stick" the first time, but you can always go back to the
Messages view options and reset them the way you want.
One thing I haven't figured out is how to get the Folder List or
Shortcuts to appear first when you start Outlook, but I have a few
ideas. Stay tuned!
More Outlook 2003 view tips
Outlook views have been one of my favorite topics for years, so
it's exciting to be able to offer more tips for the new Outlook 2003
layout:
Tip #1: In the new Outlook 2003 view, do you want to show the
size in the item list, as well as the sender, date/time, and
subject? You can add a third line to each item in the list.
Right-click the Arranged By heading, and choose Custom from the
pop-up menu. In the Customize View dialog, click Fields. At the top
of the Show Fields dialog, change the "Maximum number of lines in
multi-line mode" from 2 (the default) to 3.
Tip #2: Want to see the size without adding another line? Just
pause your mouse over the message in question. After a moment, a
screen tip will appear with the size and the complete Received date.
Business Contact Manager FAQ
Included in the Professional and Small Business Editions of
Office 2003 is a new add-in for Outlook, Business Contact Manager.
BCM is aimed at the solitary salesperson who needs more tracking
capability than Outlook itself has out of the box. It has some
significant limitations -- it doesn't work if you connect to an
Exchange mailbox and you can't share your data -- but it does a
better job than Outlook alone of tracking email messages
automatically and has some detailed reports built in.
We've launched a Frequently Asked Questions page for BCM at
http://www.slipstick.com/bcm/bcmfaq.aspx, where you can browse
different categories of questions or read all the questions and
answers we've assembled so far.
New Outlook 2003 form script security settings
If forms in a shared Exchange mailbox folder are acting strangely
under Outlook 2003, it could be due to a new setting. By default,
Outlook 2003 does not allow forms in shared mailbox folders to run
script. You can change the setting by choosing Tools | Options |
Other | Advanced Options and checking the box for Allow
script in shared folders.
A similar setting for form script in public folders is enabled by
default. We're a bit baffled as to why Microsoft included these
options`in the user interface rather than exposing them only in the
registry. See
http://www.slipstick.com/dev/ol2003problems.htm#mailboxscript if
you need the registry entries so you can set these values for users
in a logon script or with the deployment tools in the Office
Resource Kit.
Looking for the old MSDN interface?
The Microsoft Office Developer Center launched a new interface
last week at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/. You won't easily find any
Outlook 2003 content (the one important Outlook 2003 article isn't
linked to the new developer site), and the new table of contents
doesn't make it easy to locate the old content, all of which is
still relevant. We figured out the trick, though: Visit any
technical article you can in the new interface, then click on the
link at the top labeled "See This in MSDN Library." That will switch
the navigation pane on the left-hand side to the MSDN Library
interface, which will let you browse easily to Office Solutions
Development / Microsoft Outlook to get to the existing Outlook
content.
You're probably wondering what that one important Outlook 2003
article might be. It's "Important Security Notes for Microsoft
Outlook COM Add-In Developers" at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/odc_ol2003_ta/html/odc_olsecnotescomaddins.asp.
This article lists the additional properties for which Outlook 2003
displays security prompts and explains that, by default, Outlook
2003 in standalone environments trusts properly constructed COM
add-ins.
OutlookCode.com celebrates one-year anniversary
Happy anniversary to us! Our
http://www.OutlookCode.com site -- where Outlook programmers
from novice to expert can meet and share problems, ideas and code --
is one year old, having opened its doors on October 23, 2002. Since
then, more than 6,000 people have registered in order to be able to
download the sample code from Sue Mosher's "Microsoft Outlook
Programming - Jumpstart for Administrators, Developers, and Power
Users" book. Both registered and unregistered visitors have
discussed some 1700 message topics, with the Outlook forms forum
seeing the most traffic. Registration is not required to participate
in the discussions. Come join us! |