Some anti-spam settings to avoid in Outlook We spend a lot of time writing about Outlook settings and how to use them. It occurred to us that there are settings we don’t talk about because they are NOT good and best avoided. In the past we looked at Navigation Buttons.
One important but hidden feature in Outlook will let you see more and faster. Outlook has a lot of different aspects; email, calendar, contacts etc and we see many people switching between them, waiting for different views to load …. and they don’t have to. If you click on a
Put more useful navigation options on the Outlook screen. The default Outlook Navigation pane isn’t meant for you, it’s intended for absolute beginners to the program and to reduce the number of support calls. Once you’ve started to use Outlook, it’s time to change the way it looks to suit
Navigation Buttons take up valuable space you can better use in Outlook – here’s how. The navigation buttons are the ones on the left of Outlook ‘Mail’ ‘Calendar’ ‘Contacts’ etc. They are big, space gobbling buttons designed for new Outlook users – once you’re past the very basics there’s better
What to do when Outlook won’t reconnect to Exchange Server Ira J writes from his work laptop: “I have Outlook on my laptop for work. I leave it on all the time whether I’m connected to the Internet or not. Sometimes Outlook won’t connect to the office even when there’s
Another way to enter lists in Excel, why Microsoft’s effort sucks and an alternative. Excel has two ways of typing in data, there’s the usual direct entry into the worksheet or you can make a form with a single click of a button. For example here’s a ‘typical’ Excel list:
How to get your Office Product Key when the computer is broken. Shelia M has an Office install problem …. ” My two year old computer broke down in 2010 and the hard drive was replaced by the engineer. When I started the computer Microsoft Office was GONE. This year
How to install OneNote 2010 only on an Office 2007 computer. Handy for Windows Mobile 7 users. Bryan J writes: “ I would like to use OneNote 2010 because of my new Windows Mobile 7 phone. So… 1. is OneNote 2010 going to play nicely in my XP & Office
Why can’t you add repeating words or phrases to the Microsoft Word custom dictionary? Word’s custom dictionary can’t handle repeating words or phrases and it should. While we wait for Microsoft to catch up there are limited options available. Microsoft Word’s custom dictionary only lets you add single words to
OpenOffice .odt files should open with Word 2010 – but not always. Margaret H. says “I downloaded a .odt file from Wikipedia but when I tried to open it in Word 2010 all I get are errors. Even the repair option doesn’t work. I thought Word 2007 and 2010 supported
Free training manuals for Office 2007 and before plus Quick References for Office 2010. Mouse Training in the UK has released their training manuals free for all comers plus some Quick Reference Guides. The Training Manuals are for Office 2007, Office 2003, Office XP (2002) and Office 2000. They cover
OneNote is merely the modern version of a Renaissance concept. The commonplace book isn’t a common thing these days, but it was once, er, common. Programs like OneNote might see a revival of the idea though, perhaps, not the name. A commonplace book was an early form of ‘scrapbook’ where
Word’s spell checker has some peculiar ideas about where an & symbol belongs. Susan S. writes with a question about the Word spell checker. She’s noticed that an ampersand next to a letter doesn’t trigger a spelling error in Word. We tried it out and she’s right: An ampersand next
Why is an obviously incorrect word not picked up by Word’s spell checker? Susan S. complains that her copy of Word has phrases like ‘ Thisis ‘ which aren’t showing up as a spelling error. In other words there is no red squiggly line when there should be. We’ve had
How to quickly change to ‘Text Width’ view in Word. A useful view for Word documents is Text Width view but it’s not on the toolbar or ribbon so how can you switch to it quickly? Text Width view is good because it puts text across the available screen width
A useful little feature in Outlook 2010 has been dropped but not removed from the menus. Outlook 2010 has a handy feature to recover some more space for the message reading pane – what a pity it doesn’t work. Screen space is a scare commodity, especially in Outlook 2010 with
Why the low use of Bitlocker when it can secure your private documents and emails? A recent survey has found that nearly 99% of computers that could encrypt their hard drives with Microsoft’s Bitlocker don’t bother. On a normal computer, the hard drive is ‘open’. Even if someone doesn’t have
Some options for making a Gmail like ‘Priority Inbox’ in Outlook. Google’s Gmail service continues to innovate with the addition of a Priority Inbox feature. This feature (being gradually deployed to all Gmail users) puts ‘important’ emails into a special view above the standard Inbox. What is deemed ‘important’ changes
A nice and informative PowerPoint presentation we made a little smaller and safer. A lovely PowerPoint presentation arrived in our Inbox (thanks Peter!) which we’ve decided to share with Office-Watch.com readers. It’s a series of day and night photos of Earth from space taken by Sunita Williams called ‘Blue Beauty’.
A new spam email, ignored by Outlook’s spam filter, is supposed to have a spreadsheet file for Excel. A new spam email is arriving in Inboxes, trying to trick Excel users into opening it. This email isn’t detected by the Outlook 2007/2010 spam filter (latest update and configured to ‘High’)
Making ordinary texts look extraordinary has been possible for many versions of Word. Alas, the features can make ordinary text look awful – if you’re not careful. Making ordinary texts look extraordinary has been possible for many versions of Word. Alas, the features can make ordinary text look awful –
Instyler’s Travel add-in for Outlook lets you block the travel time around an appointment in Outlook calendar. One long-standing problem with Outlook is the lack of a ‘travel time’ option. You can make an appointment but there’s no direct way to include the time it takes to get to and
Some new image changing options in Office 2010. Generally speaking it’s better to make changes to an image before importing it into an Office document (document, spreadsheet or presentation). There even the Microsoft Picture Manager provided with Office to let you do that, as well as many other photo editing
How to get useful extras for Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007 without ‘social’ connections. Microsoft’s Outlook Social Connector adds useful features to Outlook, even if you have no interest in the links to Facebook, Windows Live Messenger etc. The social connector adds the Outlook 2010 People Pane to two earlier
