Shortcuts for Task and Appointment Creation in Outlook

If like me, you use Outlook's Tasks and Appointments to manage your time, here are a few easy-to-implement tips that will save you a lot of time.

These tips came about as a result of my laziness(as most shortcuts do) … I don't like having to switch to Outlook and then making the appropriate clicks to open the new Task or Appointment screen … there had to be a better way.

I wanted to either click a button on the Windows Quick Launch bar and/or use keyboard shortcuts that would work even when I wasn't in Outlook.

(For those who are not familiar with the Quick Launch bar … it is the set of icons that you have just beside the Windows Start button. If it is not displayed, right-click on the horizontal bar at the bottom of the screen, click Toolbars and tick Quick Launch.)

Shortcut to create a new Task/Appointment

1. Right-click on any empty space on your desktop and click New-Shortcut.
2. In the location box, click Browse and locate your Outlook.exe file. You will then need to add some switches to the end of it telling Windows that you want Outlook to open the new Task screen instead of just opening Outlook. On my computer the location field contains:
   
   "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\OUTLOOK.EXE" /c ipm.task /a
   
   
3. Click Next and type in a name for the shortcut. By default OUTLOOK.EXE is displayed. I changed mine to New Task.
4. Click Finish.
5. Now right-click over the newly created icon and click Properties.
6. If you want to use keyboard shortcuts to open the application, click on the Shortcut Key field and press the combination of keys that you want to use (I use Ctrl-Shift-T)
7. Click Change Icon and select the Task icon so that the icon is a bit more meaningful.
8. Click OK (and OK again) to return to your desktop.
9. Now right-click and drag and drop the new shortcut to your Quick-Launch bar. On my Vista computer I found that I had to leave of a copy of the shortcut on the desktop if I wanted the keyboard shortcuts to work i.e. I had to Copy the shortcut and not Move it off the desktop.
   

Now whenever I need to create a new Task, I either click on the New Task button on my Quick-Lauch bar or I press Ctrl-Shift-T.

You can use the same steps as above to create a new Appointment ... but change the location field to read:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\OUTLOOK.EXE" /c ipm.appointment /a

But … I prefer to the following shortcut for appointments

Shortcut to open the Calendar folder
I need to see my existing appointments before I create a new appointment … here's a shortcut that opens Outlook with the Calendar displayed.

The steps to do this are identical to what is described above. The only difference is that the location field changes to:

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\OUTLOOK.EXE" /select outlook:calendar

You can have similar shortcuts to open your Tasks and Contacts folders but I find them less useful.
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\OUTLOOK.EXE" /select outlook:tasks
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\OUTLOOK.EXE" /select outlook:contacts

I hope that you find these tips useful. They may not seem like much but you will find that the time it saves you quickly adds up.

Please leave a comment on the blog if you have other ideas to make these tips even more effective.

(vCards) How to receive and send Business Cards in Outlook

In the physical (paper) world, printed business cards are a common way of sharing contact information. Do you know that Outlook also provides a very effective way of sending electronic business cards?

What is an electronic business card?

Electronic business cards are called vCards and are files with the extension vcf. vCards are now recognized by most email clients so you can use Outlook to send and receive vCards even if they do not use Outlook.

Outlook makes it easy to:

1. Send vCards: Convert any contact record to a vCard file (and then send the file)
2. Receive vCards: Convert a received vCard into a contact in your Outlook

Create your own Business Card (vCard)

vCards in Outlook are made from contact records. To make your vCard you first need to create an Outlook contact with your own details in it.

1. Click File-New-Contact to open a new contact record (or create a new contact record using any other method).
2. Enter any details about yourself that you want to share with others.
3. Click Save & Close.

Your contact record is now ready to be used as an electronic business card.

Send your vCard with all your emails

The easiest way to send your vCard to others is to add it to your signature so that it gets attached automatically to emails.

The following steps explain how to create a new signature with a vCard. The steps to add a vCard to an existing email are very similar.

If you are using Outlook 2007:

1. Go to Inbox
2. Tools menu > Options
3. On the Options screen > click on Mail Format tab
4. Click on the Signatures button
5. On the E-mail Signature tab and click New.
6. Give a name to your new signature, click OK
7. In the Edit Signature section, click on Business Card button to browse for the contact that you want to be inserted as your Business Card.
8. Click on Save to save your newly created signature.
9. Assign this signature to the Email account you want and click OK

If you are using Outlook 2003:

1. Go to Inbox
2. Tools menu > Options
3. On the Options screen > click on Mail Format tab
4. Click on Signatures button
5. Click on New and Enter a name for your Signature
6. Choose the option Start with a blank Signature and click Next
7. Enter the text portion of your Signature
8. Click New vCard from Contact
9. Select your Contact, click Add and then OK
10. Click Finish to create your Signature
11. 11. Assign this signature to the Email account you want and click OK

Now (depending on your signature settings) when you create a new e-mail, your Business Card will be automatically attached to it.

If the signature is not assigned to your e-mail account, you can insert it by:

If you are using Outlook 2007:

1. On your composed e-mail, go to Insert tab
2. Click Signature and select your signature that has the Business Card

If you are using Outlook 2003:

1. On your composed e-mail, go to Insert menu > Signature
2. Select your signature that has the Business Card

Receiving vCards and adding them to your Contacts

If you receive an email with a vCard (vcf file), it is super easy to add it to your Contacts list.

If you are using Outlook 2007:

1. Right-click on the Business Card in the received e-mail
2. Click on Add to Contacts.
3. A contacts window will open with all the fields filled-in from the Business Card.
4. Make any needed changes then Click Save and Close

If you are using Outlook 2003:

1. Double-click on the Business Card in the received e-mail
2. Outlook will open the window in a Contact form
3. Click Save and Close to save that contact to your Default Contacts folder.

Sending other people’s contact information

Do you need to send someone’s contact details to someone else? Now you can just send their vCard (I am assuming here that the person is in your contact list).

In Outlook 2007:

1. Click on the Insert tab on the ribbon
2. Click on Business Card and select the name you want to insert on the list (Click Other Business Cards if the name is not on the list).

In Outlook 2003:

1. Open the contact (person whose business card you need to send).
2. In the open contact, on the Actions menu, click Forward as vCard. Outlook attaches the contact information in a vCard file called contactname.vcf
3. Complete the rest of the message and click Send.

I hope that this guide to vCards has been useful. Please let me know what you think by commenting.

SendGuard Tip: Avoid False Attachment Warnings

SendGuard 4Outlook warns you if the text of your email indicates that you meant to attach a file …. and you then tried to send the email without attaching anything to it. We recently updated SendGuard to avoid SendGuard warnings due to "original messages", signatures and disclaimers..

These changes were implemented in version 1.0.33 of SendGuard.

If you are a registered user, your existing unlock code will be picked up automatically after installation. User of the trial version will be given up to 5 extra days to test the software.

Download and install SendGuard 4Outlook Version 1.0.33
Learn more about SendGuard

False Attachment Warnings

SendGuard may display false attachment warnings if:

1. You are replying to an email and the original email has words in it that trigger the warning message. As of Version 1.033 the text of the original message will be ignored so this is no longer a problem.
2. You have words in your signature (or disclaimer) that trigger the warning message. There is now an easy way to tell SendGuard to ignore your signature or disclaimer.

How to tell SendGuard to not check Signatures and Disclaimers

Open an email which has your Signature or Disclaimer in it and copy it to the clipboard. (Select the text and press CTRL-C).

Go to your Inbox.
(On the menu) Click Addins4Outlook-SendGuard-Settings. The Settings screen will be displayed.
Click the Attachment/Subject Guard tab.
Click "Advanced Settings (Avoid false triggers of Attachment Guard)"
Tick the check box labelled "Ignore words …"
Paste the Signature/Disclaimer in the text box/field on the screen. (press CTRL-V)
Click Save.

Another Solution… the Attachment warning does not get displayed because all my emails have my vCard attached to it.

Although not very common, some users configure Outlook to automatically attach their Business Card (vCard) to all outgoing emails. As a result the warnings don't get triggered.

Here's how you can configure SendGuard to ignore your vCard i.e. not count it is an attachment.

Go to your Inbox.
(On the menu) Click Addins4Outlook-SendGuard-Settings. The Settings screen will be displayed.
Click the Attachment/Subject Guard tab.
Click "Advanced Settings (Avoid false triggers of Attachment Guard)"
Tick the check box labelled "Ignore attachments with specific names"
Enter the name of your vCard file in the space provided (e.g. name.vcf).
Click Save.

Resend an Outlook Email

Need to resend an email message.

If you are using Outlook 2007 …

Open the email from the Sent Items folder.
Click Other Actions on the Ribbon.
Click Resend this Message.

A new email will be opened up with all the details copied over from the old message. Make any changes that you want and click Send.

If you are using Outlook 2003.

Open the email from the Sent Items folder.
Click Actions on the menu.
Click Resend this Message.

Outlook Auto-Complete Tips

When you start typing an email address in Outlook, Outlook suggests email addresses for you to pick from. This is known as Auto-Complete and can be a great time saver or ...

It can also create a serious problem if you accidentally pick the wrong email address and send confidential information to the wrong person. Ross Kodner writes about a $1 Billion Email Auto-Complete disaster on his blog.

As almost all Outlook users use auto-complete daily, here are a few tips to get some control over it.

How to turn AutoComplete Off (or On)

I find Auto-Complete very handy but you may want to turn it off to avoid possible auto-complete disasters of your own.

On the menu click Tools and then click Options.
Click the E-Mail Options button.
Click the Advanced E-mail Options button.
Untick the "Suggest names while completing the To, Cc and Bcc fields" box.
Click OK ... until you are back in Outlook.

Deleting entries from the Auto-Complete list.

The other problem with Auto-Complete is that over time the list has email addresses that are no longer valid .... maybe email addresses have changed or you have simply stopped communicating with someone.

To remove an entry from the list so that it does not get suggested again:

Create a new email.
Start typing in the email address that you want to delete (so that Auto-Complete displays its list).
Use the up/down arrow keys to highlight the address that you want to delete.
Press the Delete key on the keyboard.

Create an Outlook Rule that warns you if you were BCCed (How to Stop Embarrassing Reply-to-Alls)

If someone BCCed you on an email, chances are they didn't want other recipients to know that you were also one of the recipients. You can protect yourself from accidental Reply-To-Alls on these emails by creating a Rule so that Outlook automatically marks any messages where you aren't in the To or CC fields. Here's how ...

These instructions are for Outlook 2007 but they more or less apply to earlier versions of Outlook too.

Go to your Inbox.

Click the Create Rule Button on the toolbar to display the Create Rule screen.



Click the Advanced Options button.

Click the Next button. The message "This rule will be applied to every message you receive." will be displayed.

Click Yes.



In Outlook 2007, tick "flag message for follow up at this time". In Outlook 2003, tick "flag message for action in a number of days".

Click "follow up at this time" to bring up the Flag Message box (Outlook 2007).



Select No Response Necessary in the Flag To list.

Select No Date in the For list.

Click OK

Click Next to go to the "Are there any exceptions? Screen

Tick "except if my name is in the To or CC" box.

Click Next

Type a name in the space provided e.g. I was BCCed.

Click Finish.

The rule will automatically be applied to all new emails. The flags on emails on which you were BCCed will serve as a gentle reminder that you should not do a Reply-to-All on them.

If you want a more bullet-proof solution, try an Outlook addon product such as SendGuard 4Outlook. SendGuard can be setup to display warning messages for all Reply-to-Alls or for only those emails on which you were BCCed.





Because the messages are displayed when you actually click the Reply-to-All button, this provides a much higher level of protection.

Auto-Highlight Your Comments in Emails

Here’s a 10 second solution to clearer replies. People often email me several questions in the same email. My answer is normally ... Please seem comments below ... and then I write comments inside the "original message" that is part of the email.

I have setup Outlook to automatically insert my name to identify MY comments to the reader.

Here's how you can do the same.

Go to your Inbox.
On the menu, click Tools-Options.
Select the Preferences tab.
Click the Email Options button to display the following screen.



Tick the "Mark my comments with " checkbox.
Click Ok
Click OK.

The next time you comment on an email, you comments will stand out.