Volume 27 Issue 12

Issue Date: March 24, 2022 « Previous Issue | Next Issue »

The following articles were included in our Exchange Messaging Outlook (EMO) newsletter published on March 24, 2022.

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Today's Highlights

Outlook Bug: Open Contact Missing?
Change Font Colors on Replies
Two Family subscriptions for 12 licenses?
Fixed: Outlook Search on Windows 11

Outlook Bug: Open Contact Missing?

One of my favorite Outlook features is the ability to open contacts by clicking on an address in an email message.

Double-clicking on the address will open the full size contact card, which displays the email, phone and physical address of the contact (and more) but not the notes field and you are unable to edit the card directly.

There are two ways to open the contact for editing:

1. Click on the 3 dots in the contact card that comes up when you hover over the address or click on it and choose Open contact.

2. Or right-click on the address and choose Open Outlook Properties. If you have a contact saved for the person, it opens, otherwise the smaller email properties dialog opens.

However, the Open contact option is missing in the latest updates to Office 365. You can only add to contacts from this menu. Until Microsoft fixes this, use the right-click method, choosing Open Outlook Properties.

Change Font Colors on Replies

A user wanted to know if Outlook on Windows has an option to change the font colors used for replies.

It does, in fact, it you have two options for changing the font colors.

Open the Options dialog, then click the Signatures and Stationery button on the Mail options page.

To use a single color for all replies, click the Font… button under “Replying or forwarding messages” and choose a specific font color. You can change the font style, size and other attributes too.

If you prefer using random colors, check the option for “Pick a new color when replying or forwarding”. With this checked, Outlook will choose a color for your responses in a thread, based in part on the color of the text in the previous reply.

Outlook on Mac users also have the option to choose the font color for replies. Look in Outlook Preferences, under Fonts. While the Mac version doesn’t include the option to "pick a new color" for random colors, you can choose a single color for for replies, as well as choose the font style and size.

Note: If the message is plain test, the colors and fonts you use are visible only to you, not to the recipient.

Two Family subscriptions for 12 licenses?

A user with a large family needed more than 6 licenses and wanted to know if they could add two subscriptions to their Microsoft account, for a total of 12 licenses.

No, you can’t do this. When you redeem a second license, it adds 12 months to the expiration date. If you need 12 licenses, you’ll need to add subscriptions to two different Microsoft accounts.

If you plan to add a custom domain to the subscription, a domain can only be used with one family share – for 6 addresses total. The second account will need to use a different domain.

Fixed: Outlook Search on Windows 11

Users affected by the search problems in Windows 11 should be getting some relief with the next Windows update, KB5011563. It is expected to be available as early as today and will fix the problems with Outlook search.
Outlook Search not showing recent emails after Windows update KB5008212