Outlook is big, powerful and flexible, but it can also be big, powerful and confusing. Find out how to get the most out of Outlook and how to exploit all of its features with these Outlook tips, tricks and tutorials.
Get the most out of Outlook with tutorials delivered right to your Outlook inbox. The tips come in weekly doses, to nurture and amuse without overwhelming stomach or attention span.
The good, the bad, and the popular. Are there any correlations? Well, find out for yourself if the most popular tips, tutorials and techniques for Outlook are not also some of the most helpful.
You spend time aplenty in Outlook. Don't waste it. Change defaults to what you prefer; use a keyboard shortcut or two; employ filters; make sure Outlook itself runs at maximum speed, and more.
Your Yahoo! Mail account is not made for the web alone. Here's how to download mail from a free Yahoo! Mail address into Outlook — and how to send through Yahoo! Mail, too.
Use your AOL email accounts with all the power of Outlook. Here's how to set up AOL screen names as IMAP email accounts in Outlook.
Would you like to read your Gmail email not only on the web but in Outlook as well? Here's how to set up a Gmail account in Outlook for sending and retrieving mail.
Outlook and Gmail make a great couple; they send each other messages all day long. Here's how to set up access to a Gmail account in Outlook, and it is terrifically easy.
Use Microsoft Outlook to fetch and send email messages through your Windows Live Hotmail account comfortably and with all the power and flexibility of a real email client.
Would you like to access your email not only from the computer at home or work but also remotely from any place and computer with an internet connection?
Get Zenbe email on the web — and in your Outlook. Here's how to set up a Zenbe account in Outlook, downloading simply using POP or accessing seamlessly using IMAP.
Do you wish for your emails to carry the elegance and style of a background image that does not move as the text is scrolled but stays stationary? Here's how to use stationery to that effect.
Never forget to enter the email address of somebody you reply to in your Outlook 2000 address book.
Is Outlook's "Junk E-mail" folder eating your good mail? Add known senders or complete domains to "Safe Senders" to make sure you get what you need (or want).
Give your emails a colorful and original background in Outlook.
Music in the ear of your email's beholder: here's how to add background sound to messages you write in Outlook.
Send blind carbon copies with Outlook — copies whose recipients will remain anonymous.
A list without members is nothing. Here's how to populate a distribution list in Outlook, either from existing contacts or with new addresses.
Let colors guide you. Using custom Outlook labels with colors, you can categorize your mail your way.
Compose your emails with style and rich formatting in Outlook and make sure, at the same time and automatically, that people who prefer or need a plain text version do get it.
Turn on AutoArchive to have Outlook clean folders of old mail automatically.
If you want to make sure your Outlook is fast and snappy, keept your main PST file size small — by moving old mail to a separate archive file, for example.
Get old messages out of the way. Here's how to move messages or complete folders from Outlook to an archive located at a removable medium, for example.
Attach, Outlook, attach! Here's how to send a file along with your email.
Outlook can send a carbon copy of every message you compose to another email address.
Take the list that pops up when you start typing a recipient's name or address in Outlook with you to a new computer — or create a backup copy.
Backing up all your important Outlook data (mail, contacts, calendars, and more) is as simple as copy and paste.
Have Outlook make up your Inbox. Here's how to get the most out of Outlook's junk mail filter and have spam filtered to a special folder automatically and effectively.
My accounts: 1. private, 2. misc, 3. work. Fortunately, Outlook lets me sort them in this order.
The font Outlook uses when you compose a message or read an email is too wide, tall, small, tiny, big or blue? Here's how to specify the precise font, font style and color to use by default for emails in Outlook.
Do you reach for a magnifying glass in despair when you look at the message list in Outlook, where everything is tiny and barely a character legible? Here's how to change the font style and size of the list of messages in Outlook to suit your fashion and needs.
"New mail for you, oh my most intelligent and beautiful person!" Make your Outlook new mail announcements sound something like this.
Make Outlook announce new emails your way by changing the sound they play for this event.
When you click on the "To" button while composing a message in Outlook, you can have contacts sorted either by their last name or their first.
Unread messages, please stand up. Here's how to highlight unread mail in Outlook using special fonts, colors, and more.
Find out where all the huge emails with big attachments are hiding. Here's how to see the sizes of all your Outlook folders.
The account Outlook selected for a reply or new message is not the one you'd like to appear in the "From:" line of your email? Here's how to choose the email account used to send any message freely.
Even after you have emptied the "Deleted Items" folder in Outlook, these items now doubly deleted may still waste space in your PST file for a while. Here's how to start reclaiming that space instantly.
Enhance your emails with colorful backgrounds, animations, sound and much more. Here's how to use stationery with Outlook.
Set up a short piece of text containing essential contact information, a tag line or maybe an ad or quotation to be inserted in every email you send from Outlook.
Are you composing similar messages again and again? Here's how to save one such message as a template now in Outlook and write that much faster — again and again — in the future.
Create a new email with an attachment the easy way in Outlook.
Satisfy all your filtering needs in Outlook by building complex filters using Visual Basic for Applications.
Spare yourself the long downloads of (junk) messages you don't want. Here's how to make Outlook delete a message right at the server without downloading it in full.
Has Outlook remembered an email address you mistyped, or do you want to get rid of an outdated name? Here's how to clear the auto-complete list that appears when you type in the To: field from unwanted entries.
Keep the message, lose its big size. Here's how to remove attached files (after you have saved them elsewhere) from email messages in Outlook to trim your mailbox size.
Avoid downloading huge attachments and viruses automatically by making Outlook synchronize headers only if a message exceeds a certain size.
Balance privacy protection and security with functionality and comfort. Here's how easy it is to manually show remote images that Outlook has blocked.
Does a message need a more descriptive "Subject", do you want to annotate in the body or make any other change? Outlook makes editing received emails easy.
Outlook can help you avoid phishing scams.
Keep your contacts even if you leave Outlook behind. If you save your Outlook contacts as a CSV file, you can easily import them elsewhere.
Starting with a message, easily set up an Outlook filter that moves all the sender's future emails to a particular folder automatically.
Take advantage of Yahoo! Mail's great anti-spam filters to move spam that comes through your Yahoo! Mail account to a special folder automatically in Outlook.
Outlook has all the messages from a particular sender, and it will show them quickly with this tip.
Find the directory where Outlook keeps all your precious data.
Why are we talking about this right now? How did the discussion get started? What was it that I said? In Outlook, finding all related messages is easy.
Forward messages exactly the way you see them in Outlook, and make it easy for recipients to reply to the original sender.
If you want to share an email you received with others, there's no better way than forwarding it. Here's how to forward emails in Outlook.
To forward a bunch of emails individually yet automatically in Outlook, you need but a folder and a rule.
Live dangerously! Open file attachments unhampered in Outlook.
Outlook is my brain, and it helps me remember replying to emails with short reminders.
Set up a short piece of text containing essential contact information, a tag line or maybe an ad or quotation to be inserted in every email you send from Outlook.
If even chemical elements have friendly names, your email accounts in Outlook should have monikers you remember, too.
Make sure you install Outlook stationery in the right folder so Outlook can find it automatically.
When you are the sole recipient, the message is typically more important than if you're one of 45 people in the Cc: line? Here's how to make Outlook highlight messages that have only you in the To: line.
When you click "To...", Outlook tries to confuse you with multiple entries for contacts, half of them fax numbers? Here's how to hide these duplicates.
If you neither desire to purge deleted messages from your IMAP inbox constantly in Outlook nor like to see all those messages that should be gone, here's how to hide the messages marked for deletion from view.
Prevent spoofed emails in Outlook and web sites from stealing your identity or credit card number.
You extensive list of contacts or customers is stored happily in a spread sheet or database? After some simple importation steps, they can be in Outlook, too, and build the basis for a mailing list, for example.
Have a calendar in Google Calendar whose events you would like to see in Outlook but don't need to synchronize? Here's how to import any Google Calendar itinerary's items easily into Outlook.
The OS X Address Book application can import Outlook contacts for use in Mac OS X Mail.
Is the tiny font in emails giving you headaches? Here's how to swiftly increase the size of text in messages you read in Outlook.
Make the signature appended to your emails in Outlook a richer experience by adding graphics, animations and logos.
If you want to include your photos, sketches or other images in your email messages directly (instead of as attachments), here's how to do it in Outlook.
Self-extracting Outlook stationery may unzip itself, but it doesn't install on its own. But getting that stationery to work is not difficult either.
From downloaded Outlook stationery zip file to beautiful emails in a few steps.
Change the way you look at a group of Outlook folders in one go.
When you click the link to a web page in an email, nothing happens? Here's how to make links work again and open happily in your browser; works for Outlook, Outlook Express, and just about any other Windows email program.
For simple yet effective spam filtering in Outlook, accept only mail from known senders.
Connect your Outlook automatically whenever it needs an Internet connection — to download mail periodically, for example.
You like the background image, but not the font? You want the logo, but not the font? Make Outlook ignore fonts and font styles specified in stationery, either for all messages or just for replies and forwards.
Does Outlook ask you for the password every time you check mail? Here's how to make it remember that password for once and for all.
Do you want new mail to show up in your Outlook Inbox automatically, diligently retrieved on a schedule? And at startup, too?
Outlook sends at its earliest convenience instead of immediately after you click "Send"? Here's how to make Outlook do deliver your mail as fast as possible.
Use Outlook for all your email tasks automatically.
Want to see it all? Here's how to make Outlook fetch the full content of a message after it has grabbed only the headers to let you decide whether the email is worth the download.
Keep Outlook readily accessible while minimizing both its window and the space it consumes on the screen.
Transfer emails quickly with the power of your keyboard alone in Outlook.
Want to delete a message forever right now in Outlook but not empty the "Deleted Items" folder?
Does Outlook add your name (in bold!) when, replying or forwarding, you edit the original text? Here's how to stop this annoyance.
You don't want email senders to know when you open their messages, and you don't want Outlook to ask you to return read receipts either? Here's how to make Outlook ignore requests for read receipts.
Don't let Outlook put your privacy and security at risk by downloading content from the web wildly when you open or preview emails.
Have Outlook send messages to the printer as they arrive. You can set up filtering criteria to print only certain messages, too.
Make sure your archive PST file or part of your Outlook folders can be accessed only with a password.
Want to make sure other people with access to your computer cannot open your mail? Here's how to protect your email program data with your Windows log-on password and maybe even encryption.
When you delete an email in Outlook, it is merely grayed out with a line through it? To permanently erase it, purge the messages marked for deletion in the IMAP folder. It's easy.
Beat application/ms-tnef and winmail.dat. Here's how to configure Outlook to make sure it does not send mysterious and inexplicable winmail.dat attachments with your emails to unsuspectingly confused recipients.
Tired of manually purging deleted items? Outlook can clean up and purge deleted messages whenever you switch IMAP folders.
Plain text emails are fast, secure and no threat to your privacy. Here's how to make Outlook 2002 SP1 display all emails in plain text only.
Avoid privacy threats, ugly messages, viruses and all things evil associated with HTML messages. Here's how to make Outlook display all emails in plain text only.
Get back to and get back old mail you have archived from Outlook to a disk or DVD-ROM, for example.
Are you tired of Outlook collecting (and mixing) all mail from all accounts in one universal Inbox? Using a few rules, you can make it deliver each account's incoming messages to their special folders.
Has Outlook made a mistake and placed a good mail in your "Junk E-mail" folder? No reason to resign to it. Recover the lost message instead. Here's how.
Redirect messages in Outlook to share them or forward them to more appropriate a recipient. Redirecting, unlike forwarding, keeps the message intact, however, and the original sender is preserved for easy replying.
You can help improve the Outlook spam filter by reporting junk mail it missed. With the right tool, it's a matter of a single click.
Know when your message arrives by requesting a return receipt in Outlook.
Get that message delivered from Outlook's Outbox.
Do you get mail from a sender who always sets the importance to "High"? They can't be convinced to change habits? Here's how to have Outlook reset the importance back to normal automatically.
Recover messages, your address book, calendar, and other essential Outlook data from a backup copy.
Want to make sure the emails you have received are stored in a format any computer will always be able to read? Whether you need to save mail as plain text from Outlook for this or for any other reason, here's how it's done.
Get all attachments from an email into a folder in one go with Outlook.
Do not deliver this mail before... You can tell Outlook to deliver a message on or after a certain date.
Create your own mailing lists in Outlook and send messages to groups of people easily.
Want to find something in a long, unwieldy email? Here's how to search the text in a message in Outlook.
Want to know not how many unread messages a folder, say your to-be-followed-up mailbox, contains but how many emails in toto? Here's how to set up Outlook to show you total folder message counts.
Setting up a mailing list in Outlook is only half the fun. Sending a message to the whole list with a few clicks is where the real action is.
Send messages that don't make use of any of Outlook's advanced formatting features, but at least are sure to be displayed properly for every recipient.
If you want to send an email to a group of people but keep their email addresses hidden, send it to "Undisclosed recipients" in Outlook.
To unsubscribe, you need to send an email with an anachronistic email address you stopped using years ago in the From: line? Here's how to send an email from any address in Outlook.
Would you like to place images in your emails or newsletters but don't want them to be attached to the messages? Here's how to make Outlook use references to the internet locations of pictures instead of attaching them.
Tell Outlook to clean up a certain folder periodically and automatically.
When you start a new message in Outlook, this is the account whose settings — the signature and From: address, for example — will be used automatically.
You don't have to choose your favorite message format every time you create a new message. Here's how to make it your default in Outlook.
Have Outlook show all messages from all your folders in one long "All Mail" list.
While you are away from the computer, Outlook can automatically reply to incoming mail with a pre-written message telling senders when you'll be able to reply individually.
Put Google Calendar into Outlook and Outlook into Google Calendar. Here's how to set up 2-way synchronization of your default Outlook and Google Calendar schedules.
The people you know in your Outlook address book can also be the people you know in your Outlook Express address book.
Have you ever wanted to have the most important folder listed on top in Outlook, not the one that happens to be named "Arbitrary"? Here's how to arrange the Outlook folder list your way.
Tell your accounts apart by sorting and grouping the messages in your Outlook Inbox by where they were received.
Share your Outlook experience and suggestions for new features or improvements with the Microsoft Office team.
Want to synch your Outlook calendar to Google and iPhone? It's easy and automatic to keep all your appointments and events up to date on all computers and devices. Here's how to set up background synchronization of your Outlook calendar, Google Calendar and iPhone Calendar.
Is Outlook behaving strangely — not sending or receiving mail, for example — and you have no idea why? Log the hidden activities and fin out what is going on.
Get rid of the ICQ toolbar and some odd behavior in Outlook.
Do you prefer messages not to open automatically? Do you like the overview of a preview pane-free message list? Here are two ways to disable Outlook's reading pane — for all folders, and by default.
Have you just deleted a message in Outlook that was not (yet) meant to head to the "Deleted Items" folder? No worries! Here's a simple and really fast way to get it back.
Outlook complains about an add-on that's not loading whenever you launch it? You want to get rid of all ballast that may make Outlook slower than it needs to be? Here's where to look for add-ons and extensions, and how to remove them from Outlook.
One signature for new messages, another one for replies. Here's how to set up a special signature for responses in Outlook.
Turn your Outlook contacts into elegant, flexible and stable mailing lists by using categories instead of distribution lists.
Compose your Outlook messages with word processor power.
See an email's path, its origin and more in its header lines. Here's how to make Outlook display them in full.
Stop Outlook from throwing away the evidence. Here's how to make Outlook retain the original message source when it retrieves emails from the internet.
Let Outlook build its list of safe senders automatically by adding everybody you send an email.
While I usually send my messages in plain text, I want this particular one to be in HTML! Here's how to use any format for a message you're composing in Outlook.
Should you send your message in fancy HTML, or should you rely on plain text? Or use rich text formatting (whatever that is)?
Make the signature appended to your emails in Outlook a richer experience by adding graphics, animations and logos.
