Outlook Articles

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-25-2022

Sending email has never been easier than it is in Outlook 2016. You'll notice the familiar Ribbon interface, and you'll still find all the Outlook features you've come to love — plus some new ones. Use this handy Cheat Sheet to orient yourself with Outlook's new look and feel. There's also a helpful table of Outlook shortcut keys.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 11-01-2021

Sending email with Outlook has never been easier. Its familiar ribbon interface has all the features you’ve come to love — plus some new ones. Use this handy Cheat Sheet to discover great tips and keyboard shortcuts to help you get the most out of Outlook.

Article / Updated 11-15-2018

If you use Microsoft Outlook 2019 at home or in an office without Exchange Server, you can’t use these features. But take heart: Little by little, Microsoft is finding ways to make Exchange-only features available to all Outlook users, so you can look over this article as a preview of things to come. How to give delegate permissions in Outlook with Exchange Good managers delegate authority. Extremely busy people sometimes give an assistant the job of managing the boss’s calendar, schedule, and even email. That way, the boss can concentrate on the big picture while the assistant dwells on the details. When you designate a delegate in Outlook on an Exchange network, you give certain rights to the delegate you name — in particular, the right to look at whichever Outlook module you pick. Bear in mind, that person will see everything that appears in that module — no matter how personal; always choose a delegate you can trust with your deep, dark secrets. Oh, and try not to have too many deep, dark secrets; it’s very stressful trying to remember all of them. To name a delegate, follow these steps: Click the File tab, click the Info button in the Navigation pane on the left, and click the Account Settings button. A drop-down menu appears. Click the Delegate Access button. The Delegates dialog box opens. Click the Add button. The Add Users dialog box opens. Double-click the name of each delegate you want to name. The names you choose appear in the Add Users dialog box. Click the OK button. The Delegate Permissions dialog box opens, where you can choose exactly which permissions you want to give to your delegate(s). Make any changes you want in the Delegate Permissions dialog box. If you make no choices in the Delegate Permissions dialog box, by default, your delegate is granted Editor status for your Calendar and Tasks, which means the delegate can read, create, and change items in those two Outlook modules. Click OK. The Delegate Permissions dialog box closes. The names you chose appear in the Delegates dialog box. Click OK. The Delegates dialog box closes. How to open someone else’s Outlook folder with Exchange It’s fairly common for a team of people who work closely together to share calendars or Task lists; not only can they see what other team members are doing, but they can also enter appointments on behalf of a teammate — for example, if you work in a company that has sales and service people sitting side by side. As a service person, you may find it helpful if your partner on the sales side is allowed to enter appointments with a client in your calendar while you’re out dealing with other clients. To do that, your partner needs to open your Calendar folder. You can’t open another person’s Outlook folder unless that person has given you permission first, as I describe in the preceding section. After you have permission, you can open the other person’s folder by following these steps: Click the File tab and click the Open & Export button in the Navigation pane on the left. Click the Other User’s Folder button. The Open Other User’s Folder dialog box opens, as shown in the figure. Click the Name button. The Select Name dialog box opens. (It’s really the Address Book.) Double-click the name of the person whose folder you want to open. The Select Name dialog box closes; the name you double-clicked appears in the Open Other User’s Folder dialog box. Click the triangle on the Folder Type box. A list of the folders you can choose appears. Click the name of the folder you want to view. The name of the folder you choose appears in the Folder Type box. Click OK. The folder you pick is now accessible to you, but it might not be obvious where to find it. For example, if you want to see the other person’s calendar, click the Calendar button and then open the Folder pane. The other person’s calendar appears in the Folder pane as a shared calendar.

Article / Updated 11-15-2018

Management gurus constantly tell us about the importance of good teamwork and decision making. But how do you get a team to make a decision when you can’t find most of the team members most of the time? You can use Microsoft Outlook 2019 as a decision-making tool if you take advantage of the Outlook voting buttons. Voting is a special feature of Outlook email that adds buttons to an email message sent to a group of people. When they get the message and if they’re also using Outlook, recipients can click a button to indicate their response. Outlook automatically tallies the responses so you can see which way the wind is blowing in your office. To add voting buttons to an email message you’re creating, follow these steps while creating your message: 1. From the Mail module, click New Email on the Home tab to start creating a new message. A new Message form opens. 2. Click the Options tab on the Ribbon and then click the Use Voting Buttons button. A list of suggested voting buttons appears. The suggested choices include the following: Approve;Reject Yes;No Yes;No;Maybe Custom If you choose Custom, the Properties dialog box opens. Type your own choices in the Use Voting Buttons text box. Follow the pattern of the suggested choices; just separate your options with a semicolon. If you want to ask people to vote on the lunch menu, for example, include a range of choices, such as Pizza;Burgers;Salad. Don’t use any spaces after the semicolons. 3. Click the set of voting buttons you want to use. The message You Have Added Voting Buttons to This Message now appears at the top of your message. If you’re adding your own custom choices, however, you’ll need to click the Close button in the Properties dialog box when you’re done to return to your message. 4. Click the Send button. And there you are! Democracy in action! Isn’t that inspiring? When your recipients get your message, they can click the button of their choice, as shown here, and zoom their preferences to you. When the replies arrive, you’ll see who chose what by looking at a reply’s Subject. Messages from people who chose Approve, for example, start with the word Approve; rejection messages start with the word Reject. You can also get a full tally of your vote by checking the Tracking tab on the copy of the message in your Sent Items folder. To do so, follow these steps: 1. Click the Sent Items icon in the Folders list. Your list of sent messages appears. 2. Double-click the message you sent for votes. The message you chose opens. 3. Click the Tracking button. You see the people you’ve asked for a vote and how they voted. A banner at the top of the Tracking page tallies the votes.

Article / Updated 11-15-2018

You can set up an RSS feed of any type using either Internet Explorer or Microsoft Outlook 2019, and then read them in either place. However, if you are subscribing to a podcast, you might want to use the Outlook method, so you can configure the feed’s settings while you’re at it. Follow these steps to set up a podcast, or an RSS feed of any kind, using Outlook: 1. Click the File tab, click the Account Settings button, and then choose Account Settings from its menu. The Account Settings dialog box opens. 2. Click the RSS Feeds tab. The RSS signup page shows the list of feeds to which you’ve subscribed. 3. Click the New button. The New RSS Feed dialog box opens, as shown here. 4. Enter the URL of the RSS feed you want. This typically looks like an unusually long URL: http://www.cinemasolo.com/atom.xml. If you enter the address inaccurately, it won’t work. Your best bet is to follow these steps: Go to the site where the feed you want is hosted. Right-click on the XML, RSS, or Feed button. Different sites use different names for the same thing, but it’s often an orange button or a button that looks like the wireless networking icon in the notification area. Choose Copy Shortcut. After you’ve done that, you can follow the preceding steps and paste the address into the New RSS Feed dialog box. 5. Click the Add button. The RSS Feed Options dialog box, shown here, offers a variety of changes you can make to your subscription: Feed Name: You can change the name that Outlook displays. Some feeds have long, clumsy names. Delivery Location: Some feeds generate huge amounts of information, so you may want to send that information to a special folder or even to a totally separate data file. That can be particularly true for podcasts. If you’re on a big corporate network that limits the amount of email you’re allowed to store, you may want to send your RSS subscriptions to a separate Outlook data file to avoid running out of space. Downloads: Outlook automatically downloads only a brief summary of each item, which saves disk space but requires you to manually download the full text of each item one by one. When you’re subscribing to a podcast, it’s best to select the Automatically Download Enclosures for This RSS Feed check box so you receive the actual podcast file, along with the posting that describes it. Update Limit: Some RSS feed publishers don’t let you update your information too frequently. If you try to update too often, they cancel your subscription. If there’s a limit assigned to the feed you’ve chosen, this check box is automatically selected. 6. Click OK. 7. Click Close. As you can see, subscribing to an RSS feed (podcast, blog, or whatever) takes a few more steps in Outlook than it does in Internet Explorer, but you get more options. You can also subscribe to a feed through Internet Explorer and then go to Outlook’s RSS page, select that feed, and click the Change button to modify your options.

Article / Updated 11-15-2018

It’s easy to get confused in a world where social media properties appear and vanish daily. Fortunately, Microsoft Outlook 2019 can help you keep current by neatly tracking your social media subscriptions, along with your email, contacts, appointments, and everything else you need to keep organized, as shown. The technique that lets you use Outlook to keep track of all this changing information is called RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. Outlook has a separate folder for receiving RSS feeds so you can organize the information in a way you find useful. You don’t really need to know how RSS works, but it’s good to know it’s available when it’s useful to you. RSS information is delivered in something called a feed. As appetizing as that sounds, it’s not very filling. In fact, it’s not even edible. A feed is just a mechanism for updating information as it changes. Blogs and podcasts usually offer RSS feeds that allow you to keep track of new entries or episodes. RSS technology lets you subscribe to information that changes frequently so it automatically updates itself. For example, most news organizations, such as The Wall Street Journal and Reuters, offer RSS feeds of their news stories. When you want to see the latest headlines, you don’t need to open a website. Just check the RSS Feeds folder to look for any headlines that interest you. Every time a new story is posted to the respective website, the story also shows up in the RSS feed. If you’re going to try out RSS in Outlook, you might need to make a small settings change in Outlook so the RSS folder will work as it should. Follow these steps: Click the File tab in Outlook. Choose Options. The Outlook Options dialog box opens. Choose Advanced. Select the Synchronize RSS Feeds to the Common Feed List (CFL) in the Windows check box. It’s in the RSS section. Click OK. You can also subscribe to RSS feeds from within Outlook, in case you don’t like Internet Explorer. (It comes free with Windows, so you can’t use the excuse that you don’t have it, but some people just don’t like it and that’s that.) Blogs, podcasts, and news organizations are three important segments of the social media world. You can ignore any of them if you want, but chances are that you’re reading or viewing many of them already. As you can with news services and podcasts, you can use Outlook to subscribe to your favorite blogs so you can stay up to date with the newest entries without having to surf all over the Internet to find out what’s new. Podcasts in Outlook RSS Most radio stations — especially news, talk, and information stations, such as NPR — offer digital, downloadable editions of the programs they air. Those editions are called podcasts; you’ve probably heard that term mentioned frequently by your favorite radio personalities. Podcasts are typically regular, recurring programs. You can download podcasts one at a time or you can set up a subscription so you receive them automatically. The term podcast is misleading. Lots of people think they can only listen to podcasts with a digital music player. Others don’t listen to as many podcasts as they might enjoy because podcasts are a little bit cumbersome to find, download, and play. While podcasts were originally designed to be played on portable devices, many people listen to podcasts on their computers. If your computer can run Outlook, it can also play podcasts. Outlook enables you to get any podcasts to which you’ve subscribed and organize them with the same tools you use for organizing email. Blogs and Outlook RSS A few years ago, everyone talked about blogs as if they were some big, new, whiz-bang technology, but they’re really not. If you surf the Internet for news and information like everybody else, you may be reading blogs without even knowing it. Most major news services offer some kind of blog section where reporters and commentators post breaking news and current observations. A blog is really nothing more than a webpage that allows frequent updates and organizes the updates so that the newest ones appear first. Bloggers have become the preferred source of news for many people today. They can also be a monumental waste of time if you spend your whole day surfing from one blog to the next. Outlook can make that process more efficient for you by giving you one place to read all your blogs and keep up with the latest gossip. Oh — and with important news, too! You can use Outlook to read your favorite blogs, as well as more official-looking RSS feeds like news services.

Article / Updated 11-15-2018

Microsoft Outlook 2019 can forward an electronic business card to any other person who uses Outlook (or any other program that understands how to use digital business cards). It’s a handy way to email any contact record in your list to anybody else. The most obvious thing you may want to send this way is your own contact information: In the People module, create a contact record for yourself. It should have all the information you want to send someone. Double-click the contact record that has the information you want to send. The contact record you double-clicked opens. Click the Forward button on the Contact tab on the Ribbon. A menu offers three choices: As Business Card, In Internet Format (vCard), and As an Outlook Contact. Choose the format you prefer. If you’re not sure, choose As Business Card. That sends both kinds of cards — in Outlook format and Internet format. A new message opens, as shown here, with the contact information attached. In the To text box, type the address of the person who should get the message. Or click the To button and pick a name from the Address Book. Click the Send button (or press Alt+S). Your message and the attached vCard are sent to your recipient. When you get a business card in an email message, you can add the card to your Contacts list by double-clicking the icon in the message that represents the business card. Doing so opens a new contact record. Simply click the Save & Close button to add the new name — along with all the information on the business card — to your Contacts list. You can also forward a business card by clicking the contact record and then clicking the Forward button on the Ribbon. This is a few mouse clicks shorter, but your forwarding options are reduced to sending as a business card or as an Outlook contact.

Article / Updated 11-15-2018

The whole reason for entering people’s contact information in Microsoft Outlook 2019 is so you can find them again. Otherwise, what’s the point of all this rigmarole? Finding names in the People module is child’s play. You can browse or search from any view of the People module. To browse, just page through the contacts using the vertical scroll bar. To search, enter a name or any other relevant text in the Search Contacts box and select what you want from the search results. Here’s how to do it from Card view—which you haven’t worked with yet officially. It’s like Business Cards view, except the cards are of different sizes based on the information they contain, and they’re arranged in columns. To find a contact by last name in Card view, follow these steps: In the People module, choose the Card view in the Current View group on the Home tab on the Ribbon. The Card view appears. Click in the white space below any card and begin typing the first few letters of the desired contact’s last name. The display jumps to the first instance of that name and highlights the card heading. For example, in this figure, the author just typed Sp because he's looking for Kandi Sparkles, a delightful clown he saw at a children’s party last week. Card view has lettered tabs along the left edge. You can browse your contacts by scrolling, but if there are a lot of them, you might find it quicker to click one of those lettered tabs to jump quickly to last names that begin with the chosen letter. Of course, you may need to base a search for a contact name on something like the company the contact works for. Or you may want to find all the people in your list who live in a certain state — or people who put you in a certain state of mind (now there’s a useful tidbit to include in their contact records). In such a case, the Search tool takes you to your contact. To use the Search tool to search for a contact, follow these steps: 1. In the People module, with your favorite view chosen, type the text you want to find in the Search Contacts box and then press Enter. The Search box is found at the top of your Contacts list, right below the Ribbon. Your Contacts list shrinks to those that contain the information you typed, as shown. If you get no contacts that match your search, check to see whether you correctly spelled the search text you entered. 2. To remove the search filter, click the X button at the far right end of the Search box. It’s hard to be as stupidly literal as computers; close doesn’t count with them. If you see Grg Wshngtn, you know to look for George Washington, but a computer doesn’t. George would have to have his vowels removed before a computer would see those two names the same way. On the other hand, if you have only a scrap of the name you’re looking for, Outlook can find that scrap wherever it is. A search for Geo would turn up George Washington as well as any other Georges in your Contacts list, including Boy George and George of the Jungle (provided they’re all such close personal friends of yours that they’re in your Contacts list).

Article / Updated 11-15-2018

Sometimes, you need a reminder to do something involving another person — but tying a string around your finger looks silly and doesn’t help much anyway. Microsoft Outlook 2019 offers a better way. For example, if you promise to call someone next week, the best way to help yourself remember is to flag that person’s name in the Contacts list. A reminder will pop up in your Calendar. Contacts aren’t the only items you can flag. You can add reminders to tasks, email messages, and appointments to achieve the same effect. If you are still in List view, you might want to change back to Business Cards view for these steps. To attach a flag to a contact, follow these steps: 1. In the People module, right-click on the contact you want to flag. A shortcut menu appears. 2. Choose Follow Up. The Follow Up menu appears, as shown here. 3. Click the date you plan to follow up with the contact you chose. Your choices include Today, Tomorrow, This Week, and Next Week. Sadly, When Heck Freezes Over isn’t an option. Flagging a contact for a specific day makes that contact’s name appear on your Outlook Calendar on the day you chose. 4. Right-click the contact again, point to Follow Up, and then click Add Reminder. The Custom dialog box opens. This is an optional step, but this makes a reminder window open and play a sound at the time you choose — just in case you have big reasons to avoid talking to that person. A reminder is Outlook’s way of telling you to get it over with. 5. In the Custom dialog box, Open the Date drop-down menu in the Reminder section and choose a reminder date. Clicking the arrow next to the date opens a calendar date picker, as shown here. Click the desired date. 6. Open the Time drop-down menu and choose a reminder time. You can customize the sound that plays by clicking the speaker icon to the right of the time. 7. Click OK to set the reminder.

Article / Updated 11-15-2018

After you enter your contact information, Microsoft Outlook 2019 lets you see the information arranged in many different and useful ways, called views. Viewing your contact information and sorting the views are quick ways to get the big picture of the data you’ve entered. Outlook comes with several predefined views in each module. You can easily alter any predefined view, name and save your altered view, and use it just as you would the predefined views. To change the view of your Contacts list, follow these steps: In the People module, click the Home tab on the Ribbon. Click the view you want in the Current View group. The display changes to use that view. If you choose Business Cards view, you get something like what’s shown here. You can also choose Card view, Phone view, List view, or whatever other views are listed. You can switch views just like you can switch television channels, so don’t worry about changing back and forth. When you change views, you’re just seeing different ways to organize the same information. How to sort a view in Microsoft Outlook 2019 Some views are organized as simple lists, such as the Phone view of the People module. This figure shows Phone view: a column of names on the left, followed by a column of company names, and so on. If you can’t find a certain contact in a view that’s arranged in columns, click the column title once to sort by that column. For example, suppose you want to see the names of the people who work for IBM who are entered in your Contacts list. One easy way to see all their names simultaneously is to sort the COMPANY column. To sort by column name, follow these steps: In the People module, choose Phone view from the Current View group on the Ribbon. Your Contacts list appears in Phone view. Click the heading at the top of the COMPANY column. Your contacts appear in alphabetical order from A to Z (a.k.a. ascending order) according to the name in the COMPANY column. Now it’s easier to find someone: Scroll down to that part of the alphabet. If you sort by company, all the contacts line up in order of company name. If you click the heading a second time, your contacts appear in reverse alphabetical order (a.k.a. descending order). How to rearrange views in Outlook 2019 You can rearrange the appearance of a view simply by dragging the column title and dropping the title where you want it. Here’s an example that moves the COUNTRY/REGION column to the left of the FILE AS column: If the contacts list is not already displayed in Phone view, click the Phone button from the Current View group on the Home tab. It might already be in Phone view from the preceding set of steps. Click the COUNTRY/REGION heading and drag it on top of the FILE AS column to its left. You see a pair of red arrows pointing to the border between the two columns to the left of the column you clicked. The red arrows tell you where Outlook will drop the column when you release the mouse button. Release the mouse button. The column you dragged is now to the left of the other column. You can use the same process to move any column in any Outlook view. Because the screen isn’t as wide as the list, you may need to scroll to the right to see additional columns. You can reorder the columns as desired so that the ones you use most frequently appear at the left, so you don’t have to scroll every time you want to see them. How to use grouped views in Outlook 2019 Sometimes, sorting just isn’t enough. Contacts lists can get pretty long after a while; you can easily collect a few thousand contacts in a few years. Sorting a list that long means that if you’re looking for something starting with the letter M, for example, the item you want to find will be about three feet below the bottom of your monitor — no matter what you do. Groups are the answer — and I don’t mean Outlook Anonymous. Outlook already offers you several predefined lists that use grouping. You can view several types of lists in Outlook: A sorted list is like a deck of playing cards laid out in numerical order, starting with the deuces, then the threes, then the fours, and so on — up through the picture cards. A grouped view is like seeing the cards arranged with all the hearts in one row, then all the spades, then the diamonds, and then the clubs. Gathering items of similar types into groups is handy for such tasks as finding all the people on your list who work for a certain company when you want to send congratulations on a new piece of business. Because grouping by company is so frequently useful, the List view sorts your contacts by company, and it’s set up as a predefined view in Outlook. To use List view and see the grouping by Company, follow these steps: In the People module, click the Home tab. Choose List from the Current View group on the Home tab. Each heading has a Company: prefix and represents a different company. Each heading tells you how many items are included under that heading. In the following figure, for example, you can see that two people work for Schmoe Unlimited. The triangle symbol to the left of the heading expands or collapses the group of contacts under that heading. If the predefined group views don’t meet your needs, you can group items according to just about anything you want, assuming you’ve entered the data. To group by another field, follow these steps: In the People module, click the View tab and select View Settings. The Advanced View Settings: List dialog box opens. Notice that Group By is set to Company. Click Group By. The Group By dialog box opens. Notice that Group Items By is set to Company. See the following figure. Open the Company list and select a different field. Click Ascending or Descending to specify the sort order. A to Z is ascending, and Z to A is descending. Click OK to close the Group By dialog box. Click OK to close the Advanced View Settings: List dialog box.