Aug/100
Conditional Formatting: Highlight your most important mails
This post is syndicated from Microsoft Outlook 2010.
Last month I wrote about how to quickly create rules to help rid your Inbox of so-called graymail. This week I wanted to share another tool for making sure the right email messages stick out when you’re reading down the message list in your Inbox. This advice comes straight out of the Outlook Best Practices – a series of guidelines to help you be as productive as possible with Outlook.
Conditional Formatting allows you to customize how different messages appear in your Inbox message list based on criteria that you set. By default, conditional formatting makes unread messages bold. By adding your own customizations, you can highlight the messages that are most important to you.
For example, when you are at work, emails that are sent directly to you and no one else are probably some of the more important messages for you to review. For that reason you might want to set these messages to appear larger than others in your Inbox.
To set up Conditional Formatting from your Inbox, on the View tab, in the Current View group, click View Settings, and then click Conditional Formatting. Click Add to create a conditional formatting rule.
Let me take you through an example. I first created a formatting rule for mail that is sent only to me, so after clicking Add, I named it “Only You.”
Next, I clicked Condition and then specified that I want this to apply for messages where I am the only person on the To line.
After clicking OK, I clicked Font and then selected how I want the text to appear in the message list. Because these are the most important messages, I chose a red color and a larger, bold font.
I repeated these steps to create conditional formatting for mail where I am on the To line with other people, mail that I was on the CC line, and mail that was sent to a specific distribution list (DL) instead of directly to me. Here are the results of what these look like in my Inbox.
The different sizes and colors help me see the most important emails and leave the others for later. I recommend that you try conditional formatting rules that help you keep your Inbox more organized. For some people that might mean using a specific color for messages from family members, or making messages from your boss larger than others. We love to hear what works for you, so leave a comment below.
Josh Meisels
Outlook Program Manager
Jul/100
Quick Rule Creation in Outlook 2010
This post is syndicated from Microsoft Outlook 2010.
If you are a heavy email user like me, chances are good that you subscribe to a lot of mailing lists. Unsolicited spam is one issue we battle in our inboxes, but perhaps more perplexing is the amount of email messages that we call “graymail.”
Graymail consists of all those newsletters, coupons, and notifications that can sometimes be useful, but aren’t the things that you want to appear at the top of your Inbox. For example, some of the graymail I regularly receive includes notifications from Netflix, sale flyers from a local outdoors retailer, and email from a food and wine discussion group.
I like to see what movie Netflix has shipped to me, or what is on sale at my favorite stores, but since these messages aren’t time-sensitive and I don’t need to reply, I don’t want them to appear in my Inbox. I would rather move the messages to a folder where I can browse them later.
Outlook 2010 makes it easy for me to sort emails that need attention from graymail. For example, when I received a shipping notification from Netflix, on the ribbon I went to the Home tab and then clicked Rules. Then I clicked Always Move Messages from: Netflix. The sender was suggested based on the message sender and recipients (if it was sent to people other than you).
For a destination folder, I selected my Notifications and Alerts folder so that all of my current and future messages from Netflix would go to that folder. I did the same thing for other companies that regularly send me messages about sales and events that I am interested in.
Now, I’ll never see another Netflix notification in my Inbox, but they are always available in my Notification and Alerts folder that I review at my convenience every day or two.
When I sign up for a new mailing list such as the Food and Wine list I am on I use this “Always Move” command to quickly create a rule that moves messages sent to that mailing list to a new folder I make specifically for those emails.
I hope this simple way to create rules helps you take control of your Inbox by moving graymail messages into their own folders and keeping only the most important messages in your Inbox.
Josh Meisels
Outlook Program Manager
Jul/100
Developing a provider for the Outlook Social Connector version 1.1
This post is syndicated from Microsoft Outlook 2010.
Following the release of the Outlook Social Connector (OSC) version 1.1 and the availability of new and updated providers, we have released a set of updated and expanded content for developers. The Outlook Social Connector 1.1 Provider Reference incorporates content from OSC 1.0 with new additions for OSC 1.1.
If you’re developing a provider for the OSC, here is a quick guide to the new provider reference on MSDN:
- Getting Started with Developing an Outlook Social Connector Provider helps you understand why and how to develop a provider. For developers who are just getting acquainted with OSC provider development, I especially recommend the topic entitled Quick Steps for Learning to Develop a Provider.
- Updated content on provider deployment and packaging. See the topic entitled Installation Checklist for guidelines about building a provider installation package. Although OSC 1.1 is not redistributable, you can link to the appropriate OSC 1.1 installer using a GLINK.
- Completely new content on testing a provider. See the section entitled Getting Ready to Release an OSC Provider. This section contains the complete guide for your Quality Assurance team to fully test provider installation, authentication, and core OSC features such as contact and activity sync.
- Updated code samples for OSC 1.1. The code samples include a working sample provider and provider templates for Visual Basic, Visual C#, and C++. The code samples require Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 or Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.
If you are a developer interested in building a provider for the Outlook Social Connector, review this new reference content on MSDN. If you have questions or issues with the documentation, contact us at oscprex@microsoft.com. Happy coding!
Randy Byrne
Microsoft Outlook Program Manager
Jun/100
Outlook 2010 Available Today!
This post is syndicated from Microsoft Outlook 2010.
Over the past few months, we have shared our excitement about the new features of Outlook 2010, such as Quick Steps, Conversations, and the Contact Card. Our team is proud to announce that Outlook and the rest of Office 2010 are available in retail stores and online today. Thank you to the millions of you who downloaded and tried our Beta and provided feedback. Get a trial or buy it today at www.office.com!
The Outlook 2010 Team
Jun/100
Using the contact card to learn who someone is
This post is syndicated from Microsoft Outlook 2010.
Have you ever received an email message from someone that you don’t know and struggled desperately to figure out who they are? Luckily, when your organization upgrades to Microsoft Outlook 2010 you’ll have quicker access to information about your co-workers without leaving your Inbox.
The other day, after lunch, I returned to my desk and found an urgent email from another Microsoft employee, Jed, asking if I could pass along the design research data from an Outlook study I conducted last week. The problem was, I had no idea who this guy was, and the research is confidential. At a big company like Microsoft, it’s not uncommon to get messages from people that you don’t know, but I still didn’t want to forward the research without knowing exactly who Jed is.
Using the contact hover card in Outlook 2010 I hovered my mouse pointer over Jed’s name at the top of the message and saw that he is a Program Manager. Program Managers design new features for our products, so his need for design research data could be appropriate. Still cautious and unsure how Jed got my email address in the first place, I expanded the hover card to reveal Jed’s full contact card, and then clicked the Organization tab, which allows you to see people in the organizational structure if your organization uses Exchange and Active Directory. From here I realized the he works for Ryan Gregg, a good friend of mine, which was probably where he got my contact information for this research.
Still wanting to know more about Jed, I clicked his name in the contact card to open his SharePoint My Site, an internal Website where employees can list current projects and information about themselves. After seeing Jed’s projects, I was confident to reply to his request and forward him the data he wanted.
I use the contact card all the time to look up people who email me as well as people I have meetings with. If you have Outlook 2010 at your organization, try using the contact card to learn about your coworkers and then let us know what you think.
Josh Meisels
Outlook Program Manager
May/100
Send Text Messages Using Outlook 2010
This post is syndicated from Microsoft Outlook 2010.
With Microsoft Outlook 2010, you can stay connected beyond just e-mail messages. Sending and receiving text messages (SMS) in Microsoft Outlook 2010 is a convenient way to send a quick note to say you are running late, a reminder to a co-worker, or just to say Happy New Year!
With text messaging in Outlook 2010, you can also forward your upcoming Outlook schedule or important e-mail messages directly to your mobile device as a text message — a great way to stay connected when you are on the go.
Getting Started
There are two ways to set up text messaging in Outlook 2010. The easiest way is with a Windows phone running 6.1 with an update or 6.5, and connected to a Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 account. With this setup, your text messages are synchronized from Outlook to your mobile device for sending. As an added bonus, messages that you receive are synchronized back to Outlook for easy reading in your Inbox.
If you don’t have a Windows phone or an Exchange 2010 account, you can still configure text messaging in Outlook 2010 by signing up for a third-party service that sends text messages on your behalf. These services charge a nominal fee for message delivery, but there is a free trial period so you can try it out before you subscribe. Although the use of a third-party messaging service requires more initial setup, after connected, you can then send texts from the convenience of your computer. No longer will you be hunched over a tiny phone trying to add all of those addresses from your phone book just to say “Be there in 10.”
For more information and instructions on setting up text messaging, see Introduction to Text Messaging in Outlook.
Melissa MacBeth and Effon Khoo
Outlook Program Managers
May/100
Send Text Messages Using Outlook 2010
This post is syndicated from Microsoft Outlook 2010.
With Microsoft Outlook 2010, you can stay connected beyond just e-mail messages. Sending and receiving text messages (SMS) in Microsoft Outlook 2010 is a convenient way to send a quick note to say you are running late, a reminder to a co-worker, or just to say Happy New Year!
With text messaging in Outlook 2010, you can also forward your upcoming Outlook schedule or important e-mail messages directly to your mobile device as a text message — a great way to stay connected when you are on the go.
Getting Started
There are two ways to set up text messaging in Outlook 2010. The easiest way is with a Windows phone running 6.1 with an update or 6.5, and connected to a Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 account. With this setup, your text messages are synchronized from Outlook to your mobile device for sending. As an added bonus, messages that you receive are synchronized back to Outlook for easy reading in your Inbox.
If you don’t have a Windows phone or an Exchange 2010 account, you can still configure text messaging in Outlook 2010 by signing up for a third-party service that sends text messages on your behalf. These services charge a nominal fee for message delivery, but there is a free trial period so you can try it out before you subscribe. Although the use of a third-party messaging service requires more initial setup, after connected, you can then send texts from the convenience of your computer. No longer will you be hunched over a tiny phone trying to add all of those addresses from your phone book just to say “Be there in 10.”
For more information and instructions on setting up text messaging, see Introduction to Text Messaging in Outlook.
Melissa MacBeth and Effon Khoo
Outlook Program Managers
Apr/100
Splits & You.
This post is syndicated from Microsoft Outlook 2010.
Have you been part of an e-mail conversation where there were multiple responses to a single message? Were you confident that you responded to the right message and to the right person?
Conversations View in Microsoft Outlook 2010 helps you respond to complicated e-mail conversations. To learn more, watch the video.
Jenny Liu and Josh Meisels
Outlook Program Managers