RSSI'm going to begin this by saying that I really think it's time to find another solution for journaling. I have no idea how many more versions we'll see before Microsoft rips Journal's heart out. It's time to move on to something that is going to be around longer.
On the other hand, it's possible that Microsoft has removed all they can without breaking backwards compatibility, in which case, the Journal module might be mostly left alone for another 10 years. I don't have a crystal ball and Microsoft isn't saying anything more than the "journal is deprecated" and deprecated features have a way of hanging on, thanks to their need to provide backwards compatibility.
OneNote is one possible option as a replacement for the journal. I have a VBA sample to Copy Outlook Journal Entries to OneNote.
For those users who aren't ready to move on.... I'll share some facts about the state of the Journal in Outlook 2013 and workarounds to make it more useful and less broken.
Opening the Journal folder
The Journal button was removed from the Navigation pane / Peeks row. The keyboard shortcut of Ctrl+8 works or you can select the Journal from the Folder list.
If you don't like shortcuts, you can use VBA to switch to the Journal and assign it to a QAT or ribbon button.
Sub GotoJournalFolder()
Dim myolApp As Outlook.Application
Dim myNamespace As Outlook.NameSpace
Set myolApp = CreateObject("Outlook.Application")
Set myNamespace = myolApp.GetNamespace("MAPI")
Set myolApp.ActiveExplorer.CurrentFolder = _
myNamespace.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderJournal)
End SubCreating New Journal Items
The New Journal button was removed from the New Items command and the shortcut to create a new journal item from any folder (Ctrl+Shift+J) was removed. You can either browse the New Item button and open the More Forms command and select Journal, switch to the Journal folder first, or use VBA to open a new journal item and assign it to a QAT or ribbon button.
Sub NewJournal()
Set objFolder = Session.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderJournal)
Set objItem = objFolder.Items.Add("IPM.Activity")
objItem.Display
' start the timer automatically
objItem.StartTimer
End Sub
Setting Journal Options
Journal options were removed from Outlook 2013's File, Options dialog, meaning that there is no UI around to edit the settings. This included the dialog where you could choose to journal email from specific contacts, and automatically create journal entries for Office documents.
In applications that support VBA, you can create journal entries automatically using VBA. See Create a journal entry for Word documents in Outlook 2013 for a sample that creates a journal entry when you open a Word document.
Ah... well what about creating the journal keys in the registry yourself? I tried and so far, no luck. You need to create at keys in Outlook\Options\Journal, SharedTools\, and Outlook\, possibly other keys as well. (I'll keep trying.)
Activities
Contact activities were broken in Outlook 2010 and completely gone from Outlook 2013. You'll need to use Instant Search or custom views to find journaled items.
You can use VBA to create an Instant search in the journal folder. Use the VBA code samples at Use Instant search to find messages from a contact, then select a contact and run the macro. With the journal tweaks, the macro will open the journal folder and search for the contact's name in the Contacts field.
