Thursday, October 16, 2008

Microsoft Outlook: 9 Things You Didn't Know You Could Do


Open Calendar, Contacts, or Task List in a separate window
1. Open Calendar, Contacts, or Task List in a separate window
Tired of clicking on the navigation buttons every time you want to switch between your Inbox and Calendar? Right-click on any of the Navigation buttons and choose Open in a New Window, and you can keep your Calendar or Contacts open in windows of their own. They'll stay open while you deal with messages; simply use Alt-Tab to navigate between the windows.

Display multiple dates in the Calendar
2. Display multiple dates in the Calendar
You can display multiple, noncontiguous dates in the Calendar by going to the monthly calendar display in the upper left of the Calendar window and Ctrl-clicking on the dates you want to view. Each date you Ctrl-click will appear as a column in the main Calendar display. You can also display any continuous range of dates by dragging the mouse over a series of dates on the monthly calendar.

3. Customize the flag and category icons
You probably already use the flag icon in the Inbox message list to remind you of messages that you'll need to look at in the future, or the category icon to help organize your mail. (The flag icon appears at the far right of each entry in Outlook's message list; the category icon is the rounded square just to the left of the flag icon.) You can specify which color flag or which color category will appear by default when you click on those icons. Simply right-click on any flag or category icon, choose Set Quick Click…, and select the category or flag that you want to use as the default.

5. Modify Outlook's menus
Do you want the commands you use most often to appear at the top of Outlook's menus? Just choose Tools | Customize, then the Commands tab, and click Rearrange Commands... In the dialog that opens you can move menu items up and down in the list, delete items you don't use, and add ones that you want. You can also save time by specifying "accelerator keys" that will launch a menu item when you type a single letter while that menu is open. To change or create an accelerator key for a menu item, click Modify Selection in the Rearrange Commands dialog, and insert an ampersand (&) immediately before the letter in the menu item that you've chosen to serve as the accelerator key.

6. Add holidays to your Outlook calendar
If your company observes religious holidays, or observes the same holidays honored in a head office in another country, you can add those holidays to the Outlook calendar. Use Tools | Options; on the Preferences tab, click Calendar Options…, then click Add Holidays…, and place check marks next to the national or religious holidays you want marked in your calendar.

7. Insert calendar data into your e-mail
If your e-mail account is on a Microsoft Exchange server and you're writing to someone else who uses the same Exchange server, you can insert data from your calendar into an e-mail. In the message-editing window, go to the Message ribbon (selected by default), choose Calendar from the Include group, and specify the time period and level of detail that you want to include. This option isn't available if your account is on a POP or IMAP server.

8. Add a contact from an e-mail message
To add the sender of an e-mail message to your Contacts, go to the message itself (not the entry in the message list), right-click on the sender's name, and choose Add to Outlook Contacts.

9. Get rid of unwanted add-ins
Keep Outlook 2007 sleek and fast by removing add-ins that other software installs with asking your permission. Go to Tools | Trust Center… then click on Add-ins, find the Manage: item at the foot of the window, make sure that COM Add-ins is the current item, and click on Go…. From the COM Add-ins dialog you can disable an item by clearing its check box, or remove it entirely by clicking Remove.

source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2332279,00.asp

Monday, October 13, 2008

Outlook Technical Support services in canada

After a 97-minute phone call with Bellsouth today and about a 43-minute call yesterday, I have decided to come one step closer to being “Off the grid”.

I have been with Bellsouth forever (I mean, there are so many other choices here in the Southeast, right?), but I have also been a customer of their DSL product for about three or four years with few, if any, problems. I was even on their dial-up plan for about three years before that. All in all, I have been pretty satisfied with them, unless I had to call customer support (God help you if you ever have to).

I use Outlook 2007 as my e-mail client at home. I’ve used it with Bellsouth for a while and I use it at work and love it. Last night, for the first time, I found I could no longer send e-mails, but could receive just fine. It is also worth nothing that Bellsouth/AT&T have no instructions for Outlook support 2007 on their Web site, and their tech support reps' latest instructions are Outlook 2003. I found it comical.

This obviously being a port 25 issue, I naturally called Bellsouth to have them offer me a solution. I’ll sum up their solution in a few words (which took me almost an hour to get):
When the tech couldn’t figure out the problem, they sent me to a “higher level” tech, who would gladly charge me extra money to diagnose the problem. It was their pay tech support.

Thanks, but no thanks. I declined.

It was nearing 8:00 PM and I wanted to play the husband role and spend time with my wife so I ended the call.

Today, I came home early from work to tackle this issue again. After 97 minutes and talking with five, maybe six people (none of whom could understand the issue or seemed to know much about this port 25), here is summation of the support I got.

Outgoing e-mail uses something on the Internet called a “port,” specifically port 25. Since my regular readers don’t claim to be all too technical in this regard, I won’t try and confuse you, but the bottom line is that Bellsouth/AT&T have been dropping their residential customers from using this port to send mail since 2003. My time ran out in late 2008 I guess. Their reasoning was that spammers find it easy to relay spam/junk mail through this port, and since Bellsouth business customers complained about spam (to which I'd say, “welcome to the Internet”), Bellsouth shoved the residential customers in the corner, told them to shut up and stop crying, and catered to the business customers. And as we all know, spammers will never find a new way to send spam e-mail now that port 25 is closed (yeah, right).

source: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/10/11/024643.php