Outlook Tips--Displaying Multiple Folders Within a View

Can I show more than one folder within a view—such as the Day/Week/Month view that combines Calendar and Tasks, only with different folders?

—Brud Rossmann

Aside from the built-in Calendar + Tasks view and the Outlook Today page, Outlook out of the box provides no views that combine data from multiple folders. The solution is to use the Outlook View Control (OVC) in a folder home page. The OVC is an ActiveX control that displays a specific Outlook page. Folder home pages are simply Web pages, and they can host multiple copies of the OVC, each displaying a different folder. You can add the OVC to a Web page, just as you would any other control, and set the necessary properties.

The original version of the OVC had a security vulnerability. You can download the latest, secure version of the OVC for Outlook 2000 from http://office.microsoft.com/downloads/2000/outlctlx.aspx. For Outlook 2002, visit the Microsoft Office Download Center at http://office.microsoft.com/downloads/default.aspx, and download and install the latest update for Outlook 2002. Any update after August 16, 2001, has the more secure OVC.

After you use the OVC to create a Web page, make it the home page for an Outlook folder by bringing up the folder's Properties dialog box and entering the path to the Web page on the Home Page tab.

For more information about the OVC, including sample code, see the Microsoft article "OL2000: General Information About the Outlook View Control" (http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q281/6/18.asp).