New Features in Outlook's Out of Office Assistant

Submitted by schwarz on May 14, 2012 - 6:13pm

When you know you're going to be out of the office for a few days (conference, vacation, etc.), you can set Outlook to automatically reply to emails for you.

And now that Pete & Jody have finished upgrading Winnefox's email server, we have an improved version of the Out of Office Assistant / Automatic Replies feature — yay!

Improvements:

Upgraded Outlook Web App (OWA) Loaded With New Features

Submitted by schwarz on May 14, 2012 - 6:02pm

Outlook Web App (OWA) [formerly known as Outlook Web Access] lets you access your email through a web browser & secured logon. OWA looks and works similar to the "native" Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 software loaded on your work computer. All major Outlook functions are accessible in OWA: Inbox, Folders, Calendar, Contacts, Global Address List, and Tasks.

Winnefox now has an upgraded version of OWA that closely matches current Outlook functionality on all major web browsers. You'll get the same OWA experience using Firefox 3+, Chrome 3+, Internet Explorer 7+, and Safari 3+.

You can access it at the same URL as before: https://outlook.winnefox.org/ and sign in with your regular system username and password.

What's new:

Use Conversation to Organize Your Email Messages

Submitted by schwarz on March 13, 2012 - 1:02pm

Outlook 2010 has a new feature that lets you arrange messages by Conversation.

Using this feature, messages that share the same subject appear as Conversations that can be viewed and expanded or collapsed by clicking an con to the left of the Subject line. The messages within each Conversation are sorted with the newest message on top. When a new message is received, the entire Conversation moves to the top of your message list, helping to make tracking email threads much easier than before.

Here's a screenshot of what this looks like in one of my email folders:

Here's how to turn on the Conversations feature:

Recover Deleted Emails from Outlook

Submitted by schwarz on January 9, 2012 - 2:25pm

Following up on my December 2011 post on how to Set Outlook to Automatically Empty Deleted Items Folder, here's how you can recover a deleted email message, calendar event, or task from the Deleted Items folder, even if you've emptied the folder.

Depending on your version of Outlook, you can recover items from Deleted Items, even if you've emptied it:

Set Outlook to Automatically Empty Deleted Items Folder

Submitted by schwarz on December 15, 2011 - 4:05pm

wastepaper can Back in October, Pete sent out an email message asking folks to periodically empty their Outlook "Deleted Items" folder. He and Jody had noticed that some mailboxes have "enormous amounts" of email stored in their Deleted Items or Spam folders.

All of the email is backed up every day. It would save a lot of time and space on the server if we only needed to worry about preserving necessary items.

Who Are You? Use an Email Signature so People Don't Have to Guess

Submitted by schwarz on November 11, 2011 - 4:10pm

An important part of email etiquette is to include a signature in each message you send (both when you compose a message, or reply to a message.) Similar to a signature in a letter, an e-mail signature is added to the end of your message.

Here's a template for creating a basic & effective email signature:

Use Outlook Flags to Get Reminders to Follow Up

Submitted by schwarz on October 14, 2011 - 5:15pm

add a follow-up flag reminder If you receive an email message you need to take action on — but don't have time at the moment — you can "flag" it in Outlook so you'll get a reminder to follow up.

Here's how to set a reminder:

Find All Mail from a Sender Quickly in Outlook

Submitted by schwarz on September 15, 2011 - 10:17am

When you're searching for an email message you've received from someone, it's easy to have Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007 find all messages from a sender, across all your folders (Inbox, Sent Items, any folders or subfolders you've created, etc.)

Here's how to do it...

Outlook 2007:

How to Sort Email Messages by Sender & Date

Submitted by schwarz on August 15, 2011 - 5:09pm

Sorting by a single column in Outlook is as easy as clicking on the column head. Sorting by multiple columns isn't as obvious -- but it's very easy!

Sort the first column (like "From") by clicking on the column heading.
To sort the second column (like "Received) hold the Shift key at the same time as you click on the Received column heading.

This will sort all the messages from a person in chronological order.

Saving, Editing, and Sending Draft Email Messages

Submitted by schwarz on May 16, 2011 - 3:53pm

The Drafts folder in Outlook stores email messages you've started but haven't yet sent. When creating a new email message, every three minutes Outlook will automatically save it as a draft. In addition to this auto-save feature, you can manually save a draft at any time, and are prompted to save a message that you attempt to close without sending.

If you want to do any of the following...

The Ides

Outlook