Replies

Hi Woody. Well, like you I’ve been thinking of moving away from Outlook for donkey’s years, but could never take the plunge. You’ve spurred me to think about it again. But, a couple of questions…

1. I own a domain name, which enables me to use a different email address from what the ISP allocated me. For example, say my address with them is dave@isp.net.nz, but the address I give out for friends and clients is dave@abc.co.nz. Any mail sent to dave@abc.co.nz finds its way to my ISP and they store it in my dave@isp.net.nz inbox. When Outlook picks up my mail from the ISP, it appears in my Outlook inbox as being addressed to dave@abc.co.nz. And, of course, it all gets reversed on the way out. I can’t work out how I would do that using gMail. Is it possible?

2. In Outlook, all my mail (inwards and outwards) appears in a “search folder” I’ve defined called “Active mail”. I just don’t understand the usual approach of storing inwards and outwards emails in separate folders; nuts if you ask me. So, I spend the day looking at “Active mail”, reading in coming mail, sending mail, moving no-longer-active mail to folders, etc. All of this is done in the one (search) folder. Is that possible in gMail? The only way I could think of doing it was perhaps to automatically “star” all inwards and outwards mail, or mark it as important, or something similar, but I don’t know how to automate that.

I guess where I’m reaching (yet again), is that maybe Outlook really is the only fully-functional email client? Please disabuse me of this idea!!!

Thanks for your great articles.

Thanks for your help. By the way, if you’re modifying a theme, how do you turn on/off/customise Aero? (There doesn’t seem to be anything under Control PanelAppearance and PersonalizationPersonalization, which is where I’d expect to find it.)

Works ,this time, thanks. Don’t know what I was doing wrong last time, but I’m now full steam ahead. Thanks.

I don’t understand. Why add yet another background program when the individual programs handle this (informing you that updates are available) anyway? Have I missed the point?

I don’t think this is a built-in feature of Firefox. Over the years, there have been many extensions that customized the tabbed browsing feature, so one of those add-ons might do what you want.

Thanks. Tab Utilities Lite seems to do the trick!

What are the settings in Tools->Options->Programs, in Internet Explorer for default browser?

I checked, and IE was not the default browser (as expected). As an experiment, I made IE the default browser and the links in Outlook emails started working! I then made Firefox the default browser and they still work, so the problem now appears to be fixed.

Thanks for your help.

Do all links fail?

Yes, all links in all emails, inward and outward.

Thanks. Just the ticket!

Thanks for the ideas. Do you have an opinion on the security of Word/Excel passwords? I must admit that I don’t really understand what the difference between an encrypted file and a passworded file is. Presumably Word passwords (for example) involve some level of encryption. And what about a product like 7-zip? Any thoughts you have would be much appreciated.

Add “Go to Today” to the Quick Access Toolbar. Then you should be able to use ALT+n where n is positional number of the “Go to Today” icon.

Joe

Thanks, Joe. So simple!

You can just open C:Documents and SettingsYourUsernameStart MenuPrograms in Windows Explorer and create all the folders you want. The folders will show up in your Programs list.

Are you sure you’re talking about Windows 7? I thought Windows 7 didn’t have a “Documents and Settings folder” (at least, I can’t find it).

Thanks for the further suggestions. In the end I decided to reinstall Outlook, but ran into problems. I have a Dell OEM version, so no disks and I had to install a trial version and then enter my activation code. But I couldn’t get the trial version to successfully install. So, decided to install Office 2007 instead (for which I have disks). I’m happy enough with 2007, as Office 2010 doesn’t seem to add much. But still no “New Outlook appointment” etc items in the right-click menu. Maybe it needs 2010 as well as Windows 7 to work. Or maybe I’ve turned off a Windows 7 switch somewhere which turns this feature off.

So, ever the pragmatist, I’ve come up with a similar solution which involves creating appropriate shortcuts (eg, “C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft OfficeOffice12OUTLOOK.EXE” /c ipm.appointment, which displays a new appointment form) and pinning these to the Start menu. Works just as well (click Start button then click the shortcut, rather than right-click the Outlook taskbar icon then click the shortcut).

Thanks for all the ideas.

Yes, what you’ve got is more or less what I used to have! Re being pinned to the taskbar, I tried that before, and have just tried it again, but still no joy.

I’ve just noticed that yours says “New contact” , whereas my sole entry says “New Outlook contact”. This is very odd.

ADDED LATER:
And, I’ve also noticed that your pop-up menu has a divider, whereas mine doesn’t:

UPDATE: I’ve just rebooted after installing Windows updates (including a security update and a definition update for Word, which may not be pertinent) and one (but only one) of the four entries has returned. Now when I right-click the Outlook icon on the taskbar I get these options:
[indent]New Outlook contact
Pin this program to the taskbar
Close window
[/indent]It’s a mystery to me.
[indent]
[/indent]

You need to have the program pinned to the taskbar to get the extra items. From your attachment it is currently not pinned.

I pinned Outlook and rebooted, but the items still aren’t there.