Color Code Emails in Your Outlook Inbox

Letting Outlook color-code emails can greatly improve your productivity by focusing your attention on the right emails. Here are a few simple tips ... using tools that are built into Outlook ... that you can use to achieve this.

Color messages sent only to you
If you don't respond to a message, that was addressed only to you, then no one will. Outlook's Organize feature makes it easy to highlight these messages so that you don't miss them.



Go to your Inbox.
Click Tools-Organize to display the Organize pane..
Click Using Colors (on the left) of the Organize pane.
Click the Turn On button next to "Messages sent only to me now appear blue". (Change the color from blue if you want)

Slight problem … You may find that this also colors email newsletters you receive in your Inbox as they are normally addressed to you (only) as well. I get around this by using rules to automatically move newsletters to a folder I have called Read Later.

Color messages sent by your boss, wife/husband, important clients etc
You can use the same Organize function to color code emails from specific people.



Go to your Inbox.
Click Tools-Organize.
Click Using Colors.
Change the drop-down next to Color Message so that it reads "from".
Type in the email address in the box provided (or select an email from that person in your Inbox and Outlook will fill in the box for you)
Change the color if you need to.
Click the Apply Color button.

Deleting Color Coding
If you need to delete or change the color coding at a later date.



Go to your Inbox.
Click Tools-Organize.
Click Using Colors.
Click Automatic Formatting to display the list of color formats applied to the folder.
Select the relevant item from the list and click Delete.

Advanced Color Coding
You can also use the Automatic Formatting screen described in the previous Delete section for more advanced color coding. Detailed instructions can be found on an earlier post titled Let Outlook highlight your important emails.

I hope these simple color coding tricks help make your Inbox more manageable.

Do you have you own email coloring tricks? Tell me more by leaving comments on the blog.

Word 2007 - Save automatically in the OLD format

Word 2007 (and the rest of Office 2007) introduced new file formats. Word files are now saved as docx instead of doc.

You may have a problem if you email these files to people who haven't upgraded to Word 2007 yet ... users of older versions of Word cannot read these files unless they download additional software.

I haven't figured out a good reason for saving files to the new format, so like me, you may find it easier to configure Word to save files in the OLD format by default.

Start Word.
Click the Office Button (round button/icon at the top left hand corner)
Click Word Options (lower right hand of the menu that opens)
Click Save in the list in the left hand column.
Choose Word 97-2003 Document (.doc) in the drop-down list.
Click OK.

If you have a good reason for actually wanting to use the new format, please let me know by leaving a comment.

vCard Follow-Up: Do vCards expose information about your activities?

Late last month I wrote an article on using vCards in Outlook.

A reader had the following question:

I have created the v-card repeatedly, but no matter what I do, Outlook (2003) recognizes that it's "me" making the card, and always includes all my personal information under the Activities tab. So whoever receives the v-card is able to look at my contacts, emails, calendar, etc. How can I remove that?

I must admit... the email SCARED me ... had I accidentally advised you to send all kinds of personal information out. Luckily for me ...

The person you send the vcard to will not see the activities you are seeing as the activities are NOT being sent with the card.

Instead ... the Activites page is being created on the users computer based on items it find on that users computer related to the contact.

When you are opening the vCard on your computer, Outlook is finding all the activities that relate to you in your Outlook. When the recipient opens it, they will only see any activities that they already have in their Outlook related to you.

You can verify for yourself that there are no activities being sent with your vCard by saving it to harddisk and then opening it with Notepad.

Restore FORMATTING in Plain Text Emails

The only formatting possible in plain text emails is capitalizing certain words and inserting line breaks to make certain ideas stand out.

For received emails, Outlook is configured by default to automatically remove what it considers extra line breaks. Here's how you can get Outlook to leave plain text emails the way the sender intended.

Click Tools - Options.
On the Preferences tab, click the Email Options button.
Clear the tick next to the Remove extra line breaks in plain text messages checkbox.
Click OK
Click OK

Automatic Safe Sender Maintenance for Outlook Junk Folder

I think Outlook's Junk Email Folder does a fantastic job of keeping spam out of my Inbox but ... occasionally real emails end up there. Here's a quick tip to reduce the number of emails that get incorrectly moved to the Junk Email folder.

Outlook has a Safe Sender's list. Outlook knows that anyone who is on your Safe Sender's list is authorised to send you email.

It makes sense (most of the time) that anyone you actually write to should automatically be put on your safe sender's list.

The ability to do this is built into Outlook but is turned off by default. To turn it on ...

Go to your Inbox.
Click Actions - Junk Email - Junk Email Options
Click the Safe Senders tab.
Tick the checkbox Automatically add people I e-mail to the Safe Senders List.
Click OK.

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.