Updating Outlook Fields the Easy Way

An Outlook user had a problem:

I often need to add to the Task and Contact Notes fields. Right now I need to open the Task, make the edit, save and close then open the next one. Is there an easier way to do this? Is there any way to make bulk changes to a field? Such as if I need to change a word or two in the Notes field of several tasks.

On the first part of your question, yes! If you use a table view and have in-cell editing enabled, you can type in many of the fields without opening the Outlook item. Not all fields support in-cell editing however.

To enable in-cell editing, switch to the View tab, then click View Settings. In-cell editing is enabled or disabled in Other Settings. Note that ic-cell editing only works with the older single line layout, not the newer Compact layout. When it is enabled, compact layout is disabled automatically.

On bulk editing, yes and no. In some cases, you can group by a field then drag items between groups to change the field, as explained in How to Easily Change the Private Flag. This works great if you want to change the Company name field or update a phone number for all your contacts from one company, but obviously won't work if you just need to search and replace a word or two in your notes.

To replace words in multiple notes, you'll need to use a macro or an add-in that can search all items in a folder. Addins are listed at How to perform a global search and replace.

The macro can be based off the macros at Working with All Items in a Folder or Selected Items. You'll need to add a few lines to change words in the body to do a search and replace.

strOld = InputBox("What word(s) do you want to replace?")
strNew = InputBox("What is the replacement word or phrase?")
For Each obj In Selection
With obj
.Body = Replace(.Body, strOld, strNew)
.Save
End With