Outlook has a lot of cool features that a lot of people want but haven't discovered and as a result, they often request similar features in future versions of Outlook. With the beta of Outlook 12 expected sometime this fall or winter, I thought it would be a good time to share some of my favorite features that users wish Microsoft would add the next version.

Did you know that instead of using export to move Outlook data into other programs, you can copy data from a table (or card) view and paste it into any program that accepts paste? By creating custom views with just the fields you need and filtering the data, you can easily control the data that is displayed and copied.

Note that if the application is OLE aware (such as Microsoft Word) you'll need to use Paste Special, As Text or paste into Notepad first, then copy it again, otherwise you'll paste Outlook items and forms into the document.

You can use the Find pane to search any (or all) folders without leaving the Inbox. If the Find pane is not displayed above your folder list, press the Find button on the toolbar or press Ctrl+E to display it. Type your search words in the Look for field, select the folders you want to search from the Search In, Choose Folders menu and click Find Now.

It's a little slower than using Advanced Find and has fewer search options, but it's really handy if you know the folders the items you need are in and need to search for different item types. , My only complaint is that the search subfolder option in the Choose Folders menu is disabled by default, while most people complain because Outlook searches older items first. This is because I'm usually looking for older items, but I almost always want to search subfolders.

With all of the third party search tools that are available for Outlook, you may think that Outlook doesn't have good search tools. While they could be better, both Find and Advanced Find work very well once you understand how they work. Along with Find and Advanced Find, you can use filters with Views to control what is displayed and how it's displayed.

The filter dialog is used for Advanced Find, Search Folders, and in Automatic formatting in Views as well as filtered views. When you need more powerful filtering, you can use the SQL tab to construct better search criteria, or use the hidden QueryBuilder to create AND and OR searches in Outlook 2002 and Outlook 2003. (Note, the SQL tab is not available for Automatic formatting.)

To display the QueryBuilder tab, add a registry key called QueryBuilder to

Outlook 2002:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Outlook\QueryBuilder

Outlook 2003:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\QueryBuilder

You won't add any values, just create the key called QueryBuilder.

Now when you open a filter dialog, you'll have a tab called QueryBuilder and can create nested conditions using AND and OR operators.

Tip: If you don't have Outlook 2003, you can create Advanced Finds and save the searches as *.oss files. Copy the *.oss files to a folder in Outlook and you won't have to look for the searches when you need them. It's not quite as fast as a search folder, because it's not continually searching, but it works with any version of Outlook.

Need to create a task or appointment for a message you just received? Just drag the message to the Task or Calendar folder icon and you'll create a new item containing the information from the original item.

When you right click and drag to the folder, you can choose between move and copy and whether to insert the item as text or an attachment.

If you aren't into dragging, look on Outlook's Edit menu for Move to Folder and Copy to Folder to create a new item in another folder, or look on the File menu of an open message. You can also right click on the message in the message list, but your only option is Move to Folder.

You may not know what date 3 weeks from tomorrow is, but Outlook not only understands what you are asking, it also knows the answer. Pretty smart, huh? Outlook knows most holidays that always fall on the same date, such Christmas and Halloween, along many phrases like "now", "today", "next week", "next month", and "the day after tomorrow" and you can use them in any date field in Outlook, including Tasks and Calendar as well as on the Advanced filter tab.

While everyone knows when christmas is and typing 12/25 is faster, you can mix holiday names with phrases: 12 days after christmas. Outlook isn't case sensitive and accepts both numbers and words: twelve days after christmas is accepted in any date field.

Day, week, month, year, after, before, next, last, now, today and yesterday are the basic keywords Outlook understands, along with dates, like Christmas and Halloween, but there isn't a list of all the natural language phrases Outlook knows, so you're on your own at finding out what works and what doesn't, but that's part of the fun.

Date and Time shortcuts are technically part of the natural language feature, but it's so cool (and my favorite Outlook feature) that these shortcuts deserve their own place on my list.

Why type 12 days after christmas when you can save a few keystrokes? Just type
12/25 +12d or 12/25 12d instead.

3 weeks from tomorrow is 3w 1d (or 3w +1d).

Outlook uses the date in the date field as the beginning date for the calculation. If the date in the field is the date you want to begin from, either type over it with the period you want to move ahead to or leave the date in the field and add the time period at the end, like this:
Thu 8/18/2005 3w 1d

Outlook's shortcuts are especially handy when setting times. Typing 125p is much better than selecting from the time picker or typing out 1:25 pm. Outlook usually uses your business hour settings when you enter a time so you don't need to specify an a or p, but I make it a habit to use a or p every time so I'm sure it's for the correct time.

Valid date and time shortcuts are:

y for year
mo for month
w for week
d for day

m for minute
h for hour
. (period) for : (colon) but period is not required a or p for am and pm

Tips:
If you're experimenting with phrases, type now in the date field to reset the field to today's date.
Outlook doesn't accept - (minus sign) as a negative. You'll need to use 'before'.

I still have a few books left in the prize vault and the person who comes up with the longest natural language phrase that Outlook understands can choose from the available titles. Send your entry to answers@slipstick.com. I'll pick the winner before the next issue of EMO goes out, which according to Outlook's date field is Thu 8/18/2005 13d, or Wed 8/31/2005.

Do you need to create a contact from someone who just sent you an email? While you can drag the message to the contacts folder to create the contact, if you don't need a copy of the message saved with the contact, you can save time by right clicking on their address in the preview pane or open message and choosing Save as contact.

That right click menu has other useful options too, including bringing up their contact record, dialing their phone number, and creating a rule based on their address.

Did you ever wish you could mark messages from your boss in big hot pink text so you could easily see his messages mixed in with all of the junk mail you receive? Well, you can. It's called autoformatting and works on any table view in any folder.

You can set up simple autoformatting rules using Outlook's Organize, Using colors (open Organizer from the Tools menu) or create more advanced rules using the Autoformatting dialog.

When you create the autoformatting rules using the organize pane, the colors are part of the current view, but if you create the rules from the Define Views menu, you can create the autoformatting rules for any view. To open the Define views dialog browse View, Arrange By (Ol2003), Current view, Define views. Choose the view you want to add automatic formatting rules to and click Modify, then Autoformatting.

Remember that autoformatting is a feature of Views, not Rules Wizard, and the formatting is "lost" if you change views or move items to another folder and you need to reapply the view to bring the colors back. Also, autoformatting does not work in the Day/Week/Month view, you'll need to use labels to colorize items in that view if you have Outlook 2002 or 2003.

The wait for this SP is almost over. It's reported that we may see a public beta build (officially known as a Community Technology Preview) as early as the end of the week.

Exchange 2003 SP2 offers improvements in spam detection and removal, adds new mobility features for PocketPC users and raises the message storage limit to 75 GB (from 16 GB) on standard and SBS 2003 versions.

Complete details are at
http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/downloads/2003/sp2/default.mspx

As always, don't install it on your production server and as hard as it might be for many Small Business Server sites to wait for Exchange 2003 SP2's larger message stores, it's best to wait for the official release of SBS 2003 SP2 to get Exchange SP2.

Now that you've seen some of the cooler, hidden features in Outlook, I'll show you how to use two of these features to display birthdays that come due over the next few months.

First, you need to create a filtered table view that only shows items in the Birthday category and with a recurrence containing the names of the month. Separate each month with a comma, so the filter knows you want to OR the words. Next, use autoformatting rules to color the birthdays in each month a different color, again using a filter based on 'recurrence pattern contains', but limited each color rule to one month.

Now when you apply the view to your folder, you can see the upcoming birthdays and they are highlighted in different colors by month.

Because Outlook's recurrence pattern filter doesn't accept natural language words, like "next month", you can't make one view that continually updates. Instead, you'll need to make one view for each month or to reduce the number of views needed, use autoformatting to color the birthdays in each month so it's easier to see which birthdays are in each month.

Do you need step-by-step instructions and screenshots? You'll find them at
http://www.outlook-tips.net/howto/birthday.htm