Archive for the ‘Outlook’ Category

Shared Calendar in Outlook

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

If you use the TAS advanced email service (on the Exchange email server) you can setup a shared calender for your organization using Outlook.
For example, you can setup a company calendar to post events that everyone in your organization can see.  But you can still keep your personal calendar in Outlook that only you can see.

Here’s how to setup a shared company calendar in Public Folders in Outlook:
- Expand Public Folders Until your domain name appears
- Right Click on your domain
- Select New Folder
- In Create New Folder, select dropdown from “Folder contains:” field
- Select Calendar Name
- Enter calendar name in “Name:” field.  Suggestion: Company Calendar (I called mine TAS Calendar)
- Click OK

Here’s how to copy an appointment from your personal calendar to the shared company calendar.
While pressing the “Ctrl” key (“option” key for Entourage users on the Mac), drag from your calendar to the share/company calendar (as shown here).

create_new_folder

It’s just that simple!

Suggestions
- Setup blocks of time when your are busy or unavailable without specifically saying what you are doing.  Simply go to the shared company and create a new appointment as you would any other event.  But in the Subject text box put your name and that your are busy.
- Outlook allows you to color code appointments.  So you can setup your own color code with others in your organization for different types of appointments on your shared company calendar.

You can use this same technique to setup a shared address book. Simply select “Contact” instead or “Calendar” item.  You can copy contacts from your contact list using the same drop-and-drag technique described above for appointments.

Give it a try.  It’s easy.

Click here for more info on Public Folders and permission issues.

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Size Matter for MS Outlook

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

Here are some simple tips to help you manage your Outlook file size thus improving your PCs performance.

How big is my Outlook?
To see the size of your Outlook folders:
•    Select Tools | Mailbox Cleanup… from the menu.
•    Click View Mailbox Size….
•    Click Close (two times) to close the mailbox size view again.

Get rid of the big ones first
In your Folder List Click on the “+” to expand “Search Folders”.
Click on “Large Mail” and you will see the largest email (including attachments).  Start deleting from the top and you should be able to recover a lot of email space quickly.  There’s no need to keep the email with the 4MB attachment of the cat playing the piano.  It’s on YouTube.

Here are some tips for cleaning Outlook
•    Every time you send mail a copy is left in your ‘Sent Items’ folder. Please check this folder for messages you no longer wish to keep and delete them.
•    Delete messages with large attachments.  Chances are you have already saved the attachment to your hard drive.
•    Empty your Junk E-mail folder (right-click over Junk E-mail, select Empty “Junk E-mail” Folder)
•    Once you have cleaned all your folders, empty your ‘Deleted Items’ folder.  When you delete mail in Outlook, the mail actually goes to the ‘Deleted Items’ folder. By default Outlook does not empty the ‘Deleted Items’ when you exit. To empty the ‘Deleted Items’ folder, right click on the ‘Deleted Items’, then choose ‘Empty “Deleted Items” folder’.  Saving emails in your ‘Deleted Items’ folder is the equivalent to saving important documents in your trash can.

Archive
Outlook allows your archive data to another file.  This helps keep you main Outlook file size under control and still have access to your data.  The following link provides a good description of the archive feature and how to use it.
http://kb.iu.edu/data/aead.html

If you do not think you have backed up your Outlook data then you probably haven’t.  This means you could loose everything…well, everything in your Outlook data file.  And in many cases, your Outlook data contains your important contacts.  But Outlook backup is a topic for another time.

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