Outlook Tips & Tricks

How can I add a shortcut on my Send To menu to send a file to a particular person as an attachment to an Outlook message?

As you probably know, Windows generates the Send To menu from a group of shortcuts in the user's SendTo folder, which usually is a subfolder of the user's Windows profile folder. To create a Send To shortcut that displays a message to a particular person, create a Windows shortcut in the SendTo folder that uses as the target the command

"C:program filesmicrosoft officeofficeoutlook.exe" /c ipm.note /m [email protected]

where the path to outlook.exe is adjusted to fit your system and you replace [email protected] with the actual name or address of the person you want to send to. If the name or address contains spaces, enclose it within quotation marks. The shortcut lets you generate a mail message by right-clicking any file, choosing SendTo, then selecting your shortcut.

While I'm viewing a contact, how can I create a follow-up call task or appointment?

The adaptive menus in Outlook 2002 and Outlook 2000 often hide commands that you might find useful but that you never see because you've never tried them. When you're viewing an Outlook contact, click the Actions menu, then click the double arrow at the bottom of the menu so that you can see all the commands. You'll find commands to create not just a new message but also a new contact from the same company, a new task, a new appointment, and other items.

To turn off the adaptive menus so that you always see all available commands the first time you pick a menu, choose View, Toolbars, Customize. On the Options tab, select the Always show full menus check box.

I need to give users rights to do everything except delete messages in my mailbox, but when I remove their Delete rights, they can't move messages from one folder to another. In Outlook, is moving a message the same as deleting it?

Yes, moving an item creates a new item in another folder and removes the old item from the current folder. If you're familiar with databases, imagine creating a record in the new table and deleting a row in the old table. Hence, you must grant Delete rights if you want users to be able to move items from that folder. Otherwise, users can only copy items to another folder.

I just upgraded Microsoft Office 2000 to Office XP (including Outlook 2002) and can't find my email signatures. What happened to them?

Your question suggests that you've probably been using Microsoft Word (i.e., WordMail) as your email editor. In Office 2000, Outlook stores your WordMail signatures in the normal.dot Word template as AutoText items. However, Outlook 2000 stores signatures for the built-in Outlook editor as separate .txt, .rtf, and .htm files for the different message formats. In Office XP, both the Outlook editor and WordMail use signatures stored as separate .txt, .rtf, and .htm files. In other words, you no longer have separate signatures for the regular editor and for WordMail.

To find and use your old WordMail signatures, select Insert, AutoText and look under the E-mail Signature heading. To make one of these old signatures your default signature for Outlook 2002, insert it into any current Word document, then choose Edit, Copy. Choose Tools, Options, and on the General tab, click E-mail Options. Type the name you want to use for this signature into the field at the top of the dialog box. Then, paste the copied text into the box under Create your e-mail signature. Click Add to finish adding the copied text as a new signature.