Conversation View in Outlook 365

Submitted by schwarz on June 15, 2015 - 9:45am

If you don't like having Outlook 365 cluster email messages & their replies — but would rather see each email message on its own — here's how you can fix your view of email threads.

The screenshot below shows a set of email messages posted to the WisPubLib listserv as seen in Outlook 365, with Conversation View turned on (which is the default setting). I've circled in majenta (2) and red (4) the numbers that indicate there's multiple messages grouped together because they have the same subject line:

'Tis the Season to Beware of Scammers

Submitted by schwarz on December 15, 2014 - 9:51am

If you receive an email that looks like it's from a trusted vendor asking you to confirm an order, or a package shipment message that looks like it's from UPS, USPS or FedEx, resist the urge to click any of its links. Even if the email contains a logo that looks official to you, it might be a copy or a screenshot of a company's logo taken from their webpage; it's easy to make an unauthorized copy of any logo.

Gmail This

Submitted by schwarz on October 1, 2014 - 5:15pm

Have a Gmail account? Consider adding the free GmailThis! bookmarklet to your web browser. I've been using it for a month, and I love it!

When I'm at home and find a website I'd like to use for work, I can — without leaving the webpage I'm viewing — click the GmailThis! button on my browser tollbar to send the link to my work email address. And vice versa: when I'm at work and find a resource I want to explore on my own time, I just mark the relevant text and click the GmailThis! bookmarklet to send it to my home email address.

When you click the GmailThis! bookmarklet, it creates a "mini-interface" with Gmail, and pops up a Compose Message window that's pre-populated with a link to the web page you're at, as well as any text you may have highlighted on the page (up to 1000 characters.) Enter the email address to which you want to send the message, add some text to the body of the message if you'd like, then click the send button to mail it off. (if you aren't already logged in to your Gmail account, the log in screen will display first; just log in and re-launch GmailThis!.)

Monitor & Maintain the Size of Your Outlook Mailbox

Submitted by schwarz on August 14, 2014 - 3:53pm

Staff at libraries in our system learned this spring we need to keep our Outlook mailboxes under 1 gigabite (1 GB) in size. (The amount of email stored on our Exchange server had grown enough that reducing each staffperson's mailbox quota could save backup space and improve the efficiency of our email server.)

For some staff, getting below 1 GB wasn't a problem. But others (like me) needed to pare down our mailboxes in a big way, so we set about archiving messages and saving & removing attachments to get under the 1GB mark. I'd met my goal by the deadline, but after a month passed — and more attachment-heavy emails arrived — I thought I might be close to bumping up against my limit again. I checked my Outlook's mailbox size, and sure enough — I realized I'd need to regularly monitor my mailbox size to ensure I wouldn't go over my quota.

Here's what I did, and you can too:

How to Open Outlook Mail, Contacts & Calendar in Separate Windows

Submitted by schwarz on February 12, 2014 - 4:38pm

If you work in Outlook most of the day, you may need to navigate from the Mail view to the Calendar, then to Contacts, and then back to Mail. Juggling those aspects of Outlook can be awkward.

Instead, try this simple tip to open Mail, Calendar, Contacts & Tasks in separate windows, it works in Outlook 2003, 2007, and 2010:

Clean Your Mailbox: Large Messages Need to go First

Submitted by schwarz on November 15, 2013 - 5:00pm

It's time to clean out your email account!

Don't waste time getting rid of twenty small messages — take care of the largest items to get the job done faster.

Attachments take up the most room on Winnefox's email server, so find those emails first, and save & delete the attachments.

The Quick Way to Forward Multiple Email Messages

Submitted by schwarz on September 13, 2013 - 9:56am

When you need to collect and send lots of email messages related to a project, instead of forwarding each individual message, it's easy to gather them and attach them to just one message.

Here's how to do it:

Don't Be a Victim: Think Before You Click

Submitted by schwarz on August 15, 2013 - 4:38pm

Don't become a victim by clicking on malware-infected email links & attachments or fake antivirus scanners!

Pete Hodge (Winnefox's Network Manager/PC Support Specialist) is seeing an alarming increase in malware-infected computers in libraries around the system:

How to Attach an Email to an Email

Submitted by schwarz on November 15, 2012 - 9:28am

You already know you can attach a file — like a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet — to an email message in Outlook. But did you know you can also attach one email message to another message?

Here's how you do it:

Outlook's People Pane Being a Pain? Here's How to Hide It

Submitted by schwarz on September 14, 2012 - 2:54pm

This morning I had another frustrating time accidentally clicking the People Pane in an Outlook email message — argh. The People Pane is a new feature of Outlook 2010 called the "Outlook Social Connector" that brings in information from popular social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn.

Here's what the people pane looks like in an Outlook 2010 email message:

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