Workers' Edge

Last week, somebody contacted me about a problem they were having with Outlook:

"I work for a general contractor and have multiple projects going on. When I get e-mails pertaining to particular jobs, I place them in Personal Folders that I name with the job name. When the project is completed, I would like to move the folder onto my hard drive without losing the date.

"I have over 242 e-mails for one job alone. When I move them, they all come up with the date that I transferred them and the subject matter is gone. There has got to be a better way of saving old e-mails without losing important data. It would be impossible to go back to find a particular e-mail after transferring them. The sender info is gone as well."

The steps for moving specific messages into a folder on your hard drive or other storage device are the same for Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2003. Click File > New > Outlook Data File. Choose either Office Outlook Personal Folders File (.pst) or Outlook 97-2002 Personal Folders File (.pst) and click OK.

Next, choose the location for your new folder, give it a name (the default is "Personal Folders(1)," but you can probably come up with a more descriptive name), and click OK. Enter the name in the Create Microsoft Personal Folders dialog box, add a password if you wish, and click OK again.

Now drag the messages you want to store locally out of their current Outlook Personal Folder subfolder and into the folder you just created. The messages will remain intact, with all dates, attachments, and other content unchanged.

A couple of weeks ago, I described how to disable the feature in Microsoft Outlook 2003 and 2007 that automatically completes addresses as you enter them in the To:, Cc:, or Bcc: fields.

As I stated then, I've come to depend on Outlook's address-autocomplete feature, though it's far from perfect. First, editing the list isn't easy. You can delete an entry you no longer need by pressing Delete after you scroll to the address in the drop-down list that appears as you type the name in one of the above fields. But there's no simple way to edit the list.

Sure, you can use the free NK2View utility from NirSoft to import and export address books, as described by the How-To Geek, but there's nothing quick or simple about the process.

What I really want is the ability to restrict the addresses that appear in the list as I enter them. For example, an Autocomplete Settings dialog box would let me limit the list to addresses I've entered at least twice (or three times, or five times, or any number I choose) to eliminate the one-offs (or three-offs, etc.)

An even simpler request to Microsoft's developers would be to let me restrict autocomplete suggestions to addresses that appear in my contacts. And while I have my wish list out, how about making it easier to sync contacts between Gmail and Outlook?

One way to cut through Outlook's autocomplete clutter is to use the Ctrl-K keyboard shortcut to access the program's Check Names feature. Simply type the first few letters of the address you want to enter, and press Ctrl-K.

If only one address in your contacts matches the letters, that address will be entered into the field automatically. If more than one address match the letters, the Check Names dialog box will open (see below). Scroll to an address, and press Enter to place it into the address field of your message.

The clean-slate approach to Outlook's autocomplete feature
If your nickname file gets out of hand, you can start from scratch by renaming the file, which will cause Outlook to create a new one the next time the program opens. Start by finding the .nk2 file. In XP, the default location for this file is here:

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

In Vista, the file is placed in this folder by default:

C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Outlook

If you don't find the file in either of these locations, make sure that your system is set to view hidden system files. To do so in Windows Explorer, click Tools > Folder Options > View and select "Show hidden files and folders" in the "Advanced settings" window. (If you don't see the Tools option in Vista's Explorer, press the Alt key.)

Now simply rename the file. You could delete it, but I recommend keeping the original file around so that you can revert to it, should something go awry. A Microsoft Knowledge Base article provides complete instructions for resetting this Outlook feature.

I didn't realize how much I had come to rely on Microsoft Outlook's ability to automatically complete the e-mail addresses I entered in the To:, Cc:, and Bcc: fields until a recent Microsoft Exchange server update at my office wiped out the entries. Of course, one person's convenience is another person's security risk.

Eli Lilly and Co. found this out the hard way last year after a lawyer in the company's employ sent a confidential memo intended for a colleague to a report for the New York Times whose name was similar to the coworker's.

To disable Outlook's address-autocomplete feature, click Tools > Options > E-mail Options (under the Preferences tab) > Advanced E-mail Options. Uncheck "Suggest names while completing To, Cc, and Bcc fields" and click OK three times.

If you're a fan of Outlook's autocomplete feature, you may want to export your autocomplete entries to another PC. Microsoft provides instructions for doing so, though Vista users will need to refer to one of the article's comments to find the location of the .nk2 file they need to export.

But there's a better way: Nirsoft's free NK2View lets you view the entries in this file and export them as a text file, HTML, or XML. You'll find more information about the utility on the NirSoft site.

The third of my three updates to the 10-Step Security story I wrote back in 2005 covers steps seven through 10, which deal with e-mail safety. (Last week, I refreshed steps one, two, and three, which address Windows security, and steps four, five, and six that cover safe browsing.)

Three years ago, e-mail was the source of most PC virus infections, but that's no longer the case. Now you're more likely to catch a piece of malware from a Web site, whether by downloading a file or simply by opening a booby-trapped page.

Does this mean you may now open e-mail messages and attachments without a second thought? Uh-uh.

The first of the four e-mail security tips in the original story warns against clicking links embedded in messages. That prohibition still applies. It's easy to spoof a link so that it looks like it leads somewhere other than its real destination. As the tip recommended, it's much safer to enter the URL in your browser's address bar manually, or to find your way to the page using the site's own navigation or search function.

Likewise, the advice in the eighth security step to scan attachments for viruses before opening them is as valid today as it was three years ago. Nearly every antivirus program and security suite scans all incoming e-mail and file attachments by default.

Some people will tell you that your e-mail client's preview pane--the topic of security tip number nine--poses no risk because it's much more difficult for malware to attack your PC simply by viewing a message. Even if this were the case, I would still close the preview pane in my e-mail program for privacy's sake.

The original article describes how to close the preview pane in Outlook Express, Outlook 2003, and Mozilla Thunderbird. The steps for doing so in Outlook 2007 are the same as in Outlook 2003.

I'm a big fan of viewing e-mail in plain text, the subject of the last of the 10 security steps. Using plain text is not just a way to block viruses transported via HTML mail. Plain-text messages may not always look so spiffy, but the files open fast.

I described how to set Outlook 2003 and 2007 to send and receive e-mail as plain text in a post from last month. To set Thunderbird to view incoming mail as plain text, click View > Message Body As > Plain Text.

To send mail as plain text in Thunderbird, click Tools > Account Settings, choose Composition & Addressing in the left pane, uncheck "Compose messages in HTML format," and click OK.

A final note on security software and wireless encryption
Two sidebars to the original 10-Step Security list the top security programs in various categories and recommend use of Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) to protect wireless networks.

Rather than using different programs for virus protection, spyware blocking, and other malware defenses, I prefer the suite approach. Using a combo security program reduces the chance of software conflicts, and if something goes wrong, you have only one vendor to deal with, for better or worse.

WPA provides sufficient protection for most home and small-office wireless networks, though you'll be safer if you upgrade to WPA2, if your network's router and other equipment support the later security standard. Using the older WEP security protocol is no longer sufficient because WEP is relatively easy to crack.

One last security-update note: the Mozilla Foundation recently acknowledged security breaches in the Firefox browser, Thunderbird e-mail client, and SeaMonkey Web suite. A security bulletin released last week instructs users to disable JavaScript until you're able to update to these versions:

• Firefox 3.0.5
• Firefox 2.0.0.19
• Thunderbird 2.0.0.19
• SeaMonkey 1.1.14

As of the evening of December 21, 2008, I could update to Firefox 3.0.5 and SeaMonkey 1.1.14, but not to Thunderbird 2.0.0.19 (2.0.0.18 is available). To update Firefox and Thunderbird, click Help > Check for Updates. Visit the SeaMonkey Downloads & Releases page to update that program.

Last January, a Worker's Edge post described how to swap data between your Google Calendar and the calendar in Outlook 2003 or 2007, using the import/export functions of each product.

A few months later, Google released a free program that not only moves data between the two calendar apps, but it also syncs the calendar entries automatically at the interval of your choice.

Google Calendar Sync is so fast and simple to use that my calendars were synced before I knew it. When you install the program, you're asked where you want to place the utility's shortcuts; by default, they'll be added to your Start menu and desktop.

When the installation completes, the program's main window opens, prompting you to add your Google ID and password, and to select either two-way syncs, syncs from Google Calendar to Outlook, or syncs from Outlook to Google Calendar. You can also reset the frequency of updates; the default is every two hours.

If Outlook's not open on your machine, you'll be prompted to enter your Outlook username and password. Then the data in each calendar will be added to the other (if you selected the two-way option). When I installed the Google sync utility, I was surprised how quickly the dozens of entries in my Google Calendar were added to Outlook.

I didn't I notice any missing or garbled entries. In fact, the similarity of the two calendars' appearance was a little spooky: I thought for a second that Google had taken possession of my copy of Office. (I probably jumped the gun on that thought by a couple of years.)

Google offers some caveats about using its Calendar Sync program. For example, you need to uninstall any third-party calendar-syncing applications on your PC beforehand. If you've been using another method, you must choose which of the two calendars you want to use as your primary one and clear the entries from the other. Finally, you have to perform a one-way sync from the primary to the secondary before you can schedule automated syncs.

Another limitation of the utility is that only your pop-up event reminders will transfer from Google Calendar to your Outlook calendar because Outlook doesn't support e-mail and SMS alerts. If you encounter problems using Google Calendar Sync, check the information on Google's troubleshooting page for the program.

After seeing what Google can do to enhance Office applications, I'm thinking that a Windows-killing desktop operating system from the company isn't such a bad idea.

You can't expect any application as complicated and full-featured as Microsoft Outlook to suit you perfectly right out of the box. Here are the Outlook adjustments I rely on to make the program safer and easier to use.

Send and receive mail in plain text
In a previous post, I described how to make sure Outlook shows all incoming mail as plain text. Quick recap: in Outlook 2003, click Tools > Options > Preferences > E-mail Options, and in the Message Handling area, check "Read all standard mail in plain text." To do the same in Outlook 2007, click Tools > Trust Center > E-mail Security (in the left pane) and check "Read all standard mail in plain text" under Read as Plain Text.

But what about the mail you send? Keep things simple for the recipients of your messages by sending them without the fancy--and usually unnecessary--HTML formatting. In Outlook 2003 and 2007, click Tools > Options and choose the Mail Format tab. In Outlook 2003, click Plain Text under "Send in this Format." In Outlook 2007, choose Plain Text in the drop-down menu in the "Message format" area.

Turn off new-mail pop-up windows
Some people want to know the moment a new message has arrived in their Outlook inbox. For me, the alerts that Outlook pops out of the system tray whenever a message comes in are distractions, plain and simple.

To quash the alerts, you can just click the Disable New Mail Message Alert option on the menu that appears when you click the down arrow in the top-right corner of the alert itself. Or if you'd rather not wait for the next alert to block alerts, click Tools > Options > Preferences > E-mail Options > Advanced E-mail Options. Uncheck "Display a New Mail Message Alert (default Inbox only)" and click OK three times.

See more of your inbox by disabling the Reading Pane
I tend to keep a lot of mail in my inbox--like, 301 messages, last time I checked. That's why I like to enlarge Outlook's Inbox window at the expense of the To-Do Bar (just click the X in the top-right corner, or drag it to the right to minimize it but keep it in view) and the Reading Pane (click View > Reading Pane > Off).

Another option for opening Outlook with the Reading Pane disabled is to add the switch "/nopreview" to the file path in the shortcut you use to open the program. Right-click the shortcut, choose Properties, and make the change to the path in the Target field under the Shortcut tab. For example, your file path may read like this:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\OUTLOOK.EXE /recycle /nopreview".

Roll your own Contacts view
Outlook gives you plenty of ways to view your contact information, but none of the choices was just right for me. So I created a custom view that shows only the fields I want to see, in the order I want to see them.

To customize the look of your Contacts window, click View > Current View > Define Views > New. Give your view a name, choose a format, decide whether you want the view to be available to every user on the machine, and click OK. Next, click the Fields button in the Customize View dialog box, add or remove fields as you see fit, click OK twice, and select Apply View.

My previous post described how to create a quick-and-simple HTML e-mail newsletter. I mentioned that you should view the plain-text version of the newsletter so you could see how it looks to recipients who have HTML mail disabled.

But what if you're on the receiving end? How can you ensure that you see the full-color, fancy-format HTML messages sent to you by people or organizations you trust, but are protected from potentially malicious HTML mail from bad guys? In Microsoft Outlook 2003 and 2007, it's easy.

Customize Outlook's message view
Start by setting Outlook to view messages as plain text by default. In Outlook 2007, click Tools > Trust Center > E-mail Security. In Outlook 2003, click Tools > Options > Preferences > E-mail Options. In both versions, check "Read all standard mail as plain text" and click OK.

Next, allow HTML mail from sources you trust to appear by default. In both Outlook 2007 and 2003, click Tools > Options > Junk E-mail (under the Preferences tab). Choose the Safe Senders tab and make sure "Also trust e-mail from my contacts" is checked. You can also check "Automatically add people I e-mail to the Safe Senders List." Other options in this dialog let you add addresses manually and import or export your safe addresses as a .txt file. When you're done, click OK twice.

You can also add e-mail addresses to your safe list by right-clicking the address and selecting Junk E-mail > Add Sender to Safe Senders List.

I wasn't able to find a way to set Mozilla Thunderbird to view HTML mail from sources you trust and plain-text messages from everyone else. You can make the view change globally in Thunderbird by clicking View > Message Body As > Plain Text.

The other two options on this submenu let you view messages as either "Original HTML" or "Simple HTML." What's the difference? According to MozillaZine, simple HTML blocks Javascript and remote-image display and interprets only "basic" HTML commands.

A friend asked if it's possible to print a subset of the addresses in her Microsoft Outlook contacts as mailing labels. You would think that such a basic operation would be a breeze for an industrial-strength personal-information manager like Outlook. You would think wrong.

The first bit of counter-intuitivity is that you use Microsoft Word, not Outlook. If you use Outlook's own mail-merge function by clicking Tools > Mail Merge, you get kicked into Word anyway. And every time I tried to run the resulting wizard, Word stalled in mid-process.

Instead, move the contacts whose addresses you want to print into a new folder in Outlook's contact list. With your new contact folder in place, click Tools > Letters and Mailings > Mail Merge in Word 2003 or the Mail Merge tab on Word 2007's ribbon.

In Word 2003, click the Labels button in the Mail Merge task pane and click Next. Now choose "Change document layout," click Label Options, select the layout you prefer, and click OK. Choose "Next: Select recipients" at the bottom of the task pane.

In Word 2007, click Start Merge > Labels, select your label layout, click OK, and choose Select Recipients. In both versions, choose "Select from Outlook contacts," click Choose Contacts Folder, and select the Outlook contact folder you just created.

In the Mail Merge Recipients dialog box, you can uncheck any names you want to remove from the list, sort the list by any category, or filter it. When the list looks the way you want it, click OK.

In Word 2003, click "Next: Arrange your labels" and choose Address Block. In Word 2007, place the cursor in the first label and click Address Block. In both versions, make any necessary changes to the address layout and click OK. Now choose "Update all labels" in Word 2003 or Update Labels in Word 2007. The address block will appear in each label following "Next Record."

In Word 2003, click "Next: Preview your labels," and in Word 2007 click Preview Results. If you're happy with the look of your labels, click "Next: Complete the merge" in Word 2003 or Finish & Merge in Word 2007. In Word 2003, leave All selected and choose Print. In Word 2007, click Print Documents. You can also choose to edit the contacts before you print them.

A shorter method of printing the addresses is to choose Directory rather than Labels in the Mail Merge task pane of Word 2003 or Word 2007's Start Merge button. This places the addresses together in a single document, but you'll probably have choose the Edit option before you print to clean up the resulting formatting.

I spend most of my workday Alt-Tabbing between my Gmail inbox and the Outlook account on my employer's Exchange Server. The problem is, when it comes to contacts, there isn't much overlap between the two: Only a handful of Gmail addresses are also in the Outlook contacts list, and vice-versa.

Rectifying the situation takes only a few minutes. Start by moving your Outlook contacts to Gmail. In Outlook 2003 and 2007, click File > Import and Export, select "Export to a file," click Next, choose either comma-separated value option, and click Next again. Browse to and select your Contacts folder, click Next again, choose the Browse button, pick a location for the file, give it a name with the .csv extension, click OK, and click Next once more. Verify the action and click Finish.

After the file-export finishes (it can take a while), open Gmail, click Contacts on the left, and choose Import at the top right. Click Browse and navigate to and select the file you just exported. You can create a new group for the contacts by choosing "Also add these imported contacts to" before you click Import. You'll be prompted to give the group a name.

Once the file is imported, you'll see a summary indicating the number of contacts added, merged, or ignored because they were duplicates. Click OK to return to your list of contacts.

Now turn the process around by moving your Gmail contacts to Outlook. On the Gmail Contacts page, click Export in the top right, choose to export just your contacts or your contacts and Gmail's suggested contacts, select "Outlook's CSV format (for importing into Outlook or other applications)," and click the Export button.

The file is named "contacts.csv" automatically. Select the Save File button (it's chosen by default) and click OK. The list will be saved in your Downloads folder (or whichever folder you've picked as your default). Open Outlook, click File > Import and Export > Import from another program or file > Next.

Choose the appropriate comma-separated-value option and click Next again. Click the Browse button, navigate to and select the .csv file you just created, pick one of the options regarding duplicate entries (the default is "Allow duplicates to be created"), and click Next again. Choose the destination folder (probably Contacts under Personal Folders for your account), verify the action, and click Finish.

Any addresses with unrecognizable names will be listed first with only the e-mail address, but other contacts will appear alphabetically by last name.