Tutorials

Use this method to create a new *.pst in your profile. While there are several ways to add a new *.pst file to your profile, you need to use...

As many users have discovered, Options, Calendar Options, Add Holidays only adds the holidays to the default Microsoft Outlook calendar. Many users wonder how they'll get the Holidays on...

How to show the sender’s e-mail address and other fields in a column in message list view Many Extended MAPI properties are added to messages when they are committed to Outlook message...

Time and date entry is one area where Outlook is smart. Really smart. This video does not do justice to the power of date and time selections, especially the...

I'm not sure what is causing the problem, but we're seeing a rash of complaints with the following error: "Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook. Unable to open the Outlook...

To change how frequently Outlook does and automatic send and receive, you need to edit the Send and Receive settings. The easiest way to open the Send and Receive...

By default, Outlook is configured to mark a message read a few seconds after the message is selected. This can result in messages accidently marked as read. To disable...

Changing the reminder time on a group of appointments or events is easy. Just use a group by view with the Remind Beforehand field visible and group by it....

Many users ask about editing the subject line of messages, usually because they plan to save the make the subject more better reflect the content of the message. This...

Recurring appointments generate a lot of complaints from users. When you attempt to change the end date, you'll receive a warning that the exceptions will be lost: I have...

Newer versions of Outlook let you start in any folder in your profile. You can use this method to open Outlook with a non-default folder – this is especially...

We often tell people to use switches but don’t always explain how they are used, leaving the user to find out on their own. Even when we do explain...

After years of using POP3 accounts, IMAP accounts take some getting used to. They are more like Exchange or Hotmail accounts, in that they store mail on the server...

There are two ways to give other users the ability to "send as" another user, mailbox, or public folder address when you use Microsoft Exchange server. The first is...

This tutorial shows you how to enable autoarchive and change the autoarchive settings on a folder. Enable Autoarchive Go to Tools, Options, Other tab, Autoarchive (Outlook 2007 and earlier)....

If you are having problems sending and receiving mail, you may need change your authentication method or send and receive ports. Click on Tools, Account settings. (In Outlook 2010,...

Contact and Address book settings are found in three locations in Outlook. These settings control the search order of the address books (when Outlook needs to resolve the addresses)...

We occasionally get complaints from people who are using a group by view on Contacts and they have two groups of "(none)", often when grouping by Company or Country...

If you have Contacts in Microsoft Outlook's Contacts folder but they are not accessible when you click on the To button, check these settings: Make sure the Contact folder...

Outlook doesn't offer a way to print a list of folder names – the best you can do is a screen print. If you use a full featured screen...

This tutorial shows you how to create a custom view that shows just the name and mailing address in the view so that you can copy it for use...

A user wanted to know how to mark messages they had responded to. One method is flagging the items complete. Another is to add a custom field to add...

Modern versions of Windows have a feature called “Send to” which allows you to right click on a file in Windows Explorer and send it to one of several locations...

Outlook doesn't have a way to print the reminders, but you can create a custom view and print it. Tasks uses the Reminder time field, Flagged messages use the...

In older versions of Outlook, you could right click on a contact and choose “New Appointment with contact” to create an appointment linked to the contact. This command was...

It's easy to create an appointment from an email in Microsoft Outlook: just drag the email message to the calendar and drop it. You can drag an email to...

With previous versions of Microsoft Outlook you could select a contact, then choose Actions, New letter to contact to create a letter or envelope from a contact. For various...

Use this method to save the names and addresses distribution list members. Open the DL Go to the File, Save as menu. (This is the Office icon menu in...

To open Outlook in Safe mode: Close Outlook then hold Ctrl as you click on the Outlook icon. You’ll get a message asking if you want to start in...

We get many questions on how to create contact groups (distribution lists) from messages in a folder, from addresses on a message, from addresses in another distribution group, or...

Creating new Categories in Outlook 2007/2010 is not as easy as in older versions – you can’t just type in the Category field. You can’t copy and paste lists...

You'll use the custom view dialog to customize your view and also to reset views back to their default and there are several ways to access this dialog in...

Office 2007's ribbon interface doesn't allow you to create custom toolbars as older versions of Office did, however, you can use the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) to bring your...

When reminders just won’t dismiss, there are several things you can try to get rid of it: Use the Cleanreminders switch. This works most of the time. When cleanreminders...

When you create email accounts in Microsoft Outlook 2010, the default setting is to create a separate data files for each POP3 account. Note that the delivery folders for...

Outlook 2010 has a new Conversation view that groups messages together. Many users don't like it, fortunately its easy to disable, using one of two methods. Method 1: Right...

Protected view is a new security feature for all Office documents which arrive in email or are downloaded from Internet sources. This is a security sandbox used by Office...

Whether the Start times display in the calendar is wholly dependent on the size of the Calendar section. If the calendar is too narrow, the times are hidden. For...

Contact or Business Card images are displayed in the the Business Card view. Open the Contact, double click on the picture placeholder and select an image from your hard...

This is not really a bug but a limitation of the dual time zone display when daylight time goes into effect, and to a lesser degree, when we revert...

Sponsored by While you can remove duplicates by hand, these tools make it easier when there are a lot of duplicates. The following pages are a collection of mail...

Users who recently upgraded to Outlook 2010 are complaining about a change in behavior in Outlook 2010: When attachments are opened from a message, they are read-only. Users can...

It's simple to open a received message to edit or change the format of messages. Open the message. On the opened message’s ribbon or menus: In Outlook 2010: Go...

As many users know, you can edit the subject line in a message. This makes it easier to find messages especially when they don't include a subject. If you...

How to create a custom filter to show only Tasks in the To-Do Bar folder.

When you receive and error that Outlook can't find and add-in, the usual cause is that you uninstalled it but Outlook didn't delete the file it uses to keep...

An Outlook user had this complaint: Some of my contacts are in both the GAL and my local Contacts folder. Outlook updated my contacts (in my contacts folder) with...

We hear from a lot of users who receive the following error when they open Outlook for the first time after upgrading Outlook. (This frequently happens when using Easy Transfer to...

If you don't care for Calibri font as the default for RSS feeds, you need to use a macro to change the font (on font size) as the font cannot be changed by the user. We have code samples for both Outlook 2010 and 2007.

You can change the name of any field in the view. Right click on the field name you wish to change. Select Format Columns from menu (in the Two...

We are often asked how to merge two folders. It’s easy – use a list view then drag the items to the other folder. Or use the Move to...

Outlook will compact the pst automatically when the amount of “white space” (space used by deleted items) exceeds 20% and it has some idle time. Outlook will work on...

Not every Outlook user wants an email account in Outlook, they just want to use Outlook for Calendar and Contacts. This is possible and in older versions of Outlook,...

The following tutorial shows you how to create a new profile in Microsoft Outlook. The second part of the tutorial shows how to use an existing personal store (pst)...

This frequent request comes from users looking for a way to send out meeting requests for training sessions or benefits meetings with HR, where each employee can pick the...

You can use custom views to display just the data you need. To make it easier to create a custom view, begin by applying a view that is similar...

It’s easy to create your own stationery in Outlook (or your favorite HTML editor). The main thing to remember is that Outlook’s stationery picker stores the Stationery in the...

It’s easy to add more folders to Outlook – right click on any folder and choose New Folder. You can change the folder type, if necessary, and change where...

You can create Tasks from email messages by dragging the message to the task button the Navigation pane. If you want the message attached, right click and drag. When...

You can easily change the Private flag (and many other fields) either by editing inline or dragging the item to a new group. First, if you are not using...

Occasionally you'll need to export data from Microsoft Outlook. Export is appropriate for moving calendar or contacts to another computer or backing up your calendar and contacts apart from...

Use this method to share the addresses in a distribution list with anyone, even if they do not use Outlook, or to extract the addresses from a DL. Open...

You can insert text or HTML files in messages in Outlook (any version.) Use this to insert "boilerplate text" or HTML created in an HTML editor. To Insert text...

An Outlook user asks: “Without starting Outlook 2007, I moved the IMAP pst from C to D. I hoped Outlook would ask me where the file is. However it...

Many thanks to Hernan Cibello for this tip, originally used with Exchange 5.5 and Outlook 2000. With later versions of Exchange and Outlook, you need to add the distribution...

Microsoft Outlook comes with a file named Outlook.hol (Outlook.txt in Outlook 2000 and older) that includes lists of holidays that you can import into your personal Calendar folder using...

Not everyone likes RSS support in Outlook, fortunately you can disable the RSS capability using group policy or a registry tweak. You can also remove the RSS folders from your profile. I'll show you how.

Restoring a search folder you accidentally deleted is very easy. Scroll down to the end of the folder list to the "Search Folders" folder. Right click on Search Folders...

Do you want most of your new appointments to use Free (or Tentative or Out of Office) as the default for the "Show as time" instead of Busy? Outlook...

Because the Office update has a habit of installing updates for Outlook, even if you are not using it, and then setting Outlook as the default email client, it's...

After you upgrade to Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2010, you need to convert categories to color categories. Do this by right clicking on the top level folder (where Outlook...

The steps are the same for all versions of Outlook and all Office applications It's easy to find code samples on the Internet, but unless you know how to...

Use this method to view a yearly calendar in Outlook. Drag either the Navigation pane separator bar or the To-do bar / Taskpad bar inward to show more navigation...

The method depends on the version of Outlook. With the exception of Outlook 2003, Outlook displays only the headers, not the full message source. If viewing headers is something...

It’s easy to share the default folders in your Microsoft Exchange mailbox: just give your co-worker permission to the folder. They can view the contents using the File, Open,...

A frequent equest is “How do I see who organized these meetings?” Easy: use a custom view that includes the organizer field. If you need to see the organizer...

We're seeing a lot of questions (and complaints) about the new iCloud service and Outlook integration. Users with POP3 accounts seem to have the most problems (but could benefit the most from iCloud), since the data is local to one computer and iCloud moves it all into the cloud. We have solutions to many of the problems.

Many users have contact data stored in Excel workbooks or created calendar events in Excel to take advantage of formulas and fill features when creating a large number of...

The Exchange administrator can mail-enable public folders. You can then use it as a generic company address (such as sales@ or help@ ). If you mail-enable a Calendar folder,...

We are often asked how to merge two folders. This can mean one of two things: keep the calendars separate but view them as one using calendar overlay or...

A user had this to say about moving Outlook to a new computer: “Still trying to move Outlook 2003 settings on a WinXP machine to Outlook 2007 on a...

This page covers mail options for online services such as AOL, MSN/Hotmail, and Yahoo. The tools listing contains a number of utilities that work with some or all of...

We often tell users to right click on the “root folder” but where exactly is that? Outlook’s root folder is the top folder in your data file, where Outlook...

Earlier versions of Outlook had a group calendar window that was separate from Outlook so you could keep a group schedule visible while working in outlook and other applications....

Any Microsoft Outlook item can be assigned to one or more categories and consistent use of categories will make it easier to locate specific items. This page sums up a few things I've learned about Outlook categories, with suggestions for using and managing categories and troubleshooting tips.

Categories and flags are not available in all of my folders in Microsoft Outlook. I can use categories and flags on mail in my POP3 account but categories are...

We’re seeing users complain about an error message popping up on the computer screen. The error dialog doesn’t contain much information about the program or the cause. Others receive...

Since the first release of Outlook, Microsoft has released many updates and service packs. The following list is an overview of the available public Microsoft Outlook builds. The list...

We’re seeing a lot of complaints about News Feed folders reproducing like rabbits in Outlook’s folder list. This folder is used by the social connector to display feeds in...

A bug in Outlook allows a malformed "web bug" url to bypass the blocked external content setting. As a result, content that would normally be blocked by the Block External Content may be downloaded.

OWA 2007 doesn't include a Print button. If you want to print from OWA, you'll need to use your browser's print functionality. Unfortunately, the results from the default settings...

This bug is fixed in Outlook 2010 SP1. When you create a quick step that contains an address and use only POP3, IMAP, or Outlook Hotmail Connector accounts, Outlook...

Not surprisingly, there are more than a few users who don't Outlook to add birthdays to their calendar. Generally speaking, the best way to prevent this is by not...

When you create a meeting request in a secondary calendar, you'll get a message that responses to the meeting request won't tally because the meeting is not in your...

Enabling Compatibility mode in Windows 7 will cause problems in Outlook, including operation error messages and problems creating accounts or new data files. Tutorial shows how to check compatibility settings.

If you enter a Home address for most people, but not a Business address, you may want the Home address to appear by default when you open a new...

This is one of my favorite Outlook features and it works with all versions of Outlook and with all Outlook folders. It also works with any application that accepts...

When you need to access a non-default calendar in another user's mailbox, you need to add their mailbox to your profile. You can use this method with all versions...

The steps you need to follow to leave mail on the server depends on your version of Outlook. The dialog is identical in all versions. In Outlook 2010, the...

Standalone users of Microsoft Outlook can password-protect the Personal Folders .pst file used to store all messages and other items. “I was wondering if there is some way that...