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.
Send mail in plain-text format by default by choosing this option in Outlook 2007.
(Credit: Microsoft)
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.
Keep new-mail alerts from popping out of your system tray by unchecking this option in Outlook's Advanced E-mail Options dialog box.
(Credit: Microsoft)
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.
Last week I described the PureText utility that lets you paste plain text in Word and other applications via a keyboard shortcut. You can create a macro to get the same functionality in Word and Excel, without having to download anything.
(Note that the original post of this tip reported that PureText required that you click its icon in your system tray before you press the shortcut keys to paste plain text. This is true only if you open the destination app after the material you want to paste has been added to the clipboard. If both the source and destination programs are open when you initially copy the text, you need only press PureText's shortcut key to paste the text without images, formatting, and other non-text elements. my thanks to the reader below for pointing out this error.)
Paste plain text in Word via the keyboard
In Word 2003, click Tools*Macro*Macros. In Word 2007, click View*Macros. In both versions, type PlainPaste in the Macro name field (you can name it anything you like, but the name must begin with a letter, have no spaces, and use no punctuation), and choose Create. Place the cursor at the beginning of the line just above "End Sub" and type Selection.PasteSpecial DataType:=wdPasteText. The only space in the line is between "PasteSpecial" and "Datatype:". Press Ctrl-s to save the macro, and click File*Close and Return to Microsoft Word.
Type this text in the penultimate line of your macro to paste plain text.
Now test the macro: Select a mix of text and other elements in your browser or some other application, press Ctrl-c to place it on the clipboard, return to Word, click Tools*Macro*Macros in Word 2003, or View*Macros in Word 2007, select PlainPaste in the list of Macros, and click Run. Only the text should appear, in the format of the document, not of the source.
Next, assign a keyboard shortcut to the macro: In Word 2003, click Tools*Customize*Commands, make sure Normal.dot is selected in the "Save in" drop-down menu, and click the Keyboard button. Scroll down the Categories list in the top left and select Macros. Choose PlainPaste (or whatever you named the macro) in the right pane, click in the "Press new shortcut key" box, type Ctrl-t (or the unused key combination of your choice, beginning with Ctrl, Alt, and/or Shift), select Assign and then Close twice.
To assign the keyboard shortcut in Word 2007, click the Office button in the top-left corner, choose Word Options at the bottom of the window, click Customize in the left pane, and then the Customize button to the right of "Keyboard shortcuts" at the bottom of the Word Options dialog box. Scroll to and select Macros in the Categories window, select the PlainPaste macro in the window to the right, click in the "Create new keyboard shortcut" field, type Ctrl-t (or your choice of combination, beginning with Ctrl, Alt, and/or Shift), click Assign, then Close, and finally OK.
Set a keyboard shortcut for your plain-paste macro in Word.
Give Excel a plain-paste keyboard shortcut
Here's the fastest way I know of to create a plain-paste keyboard shortcut in Microsoft Excel: First, select any text and press Ctrl-c to place it in the clipboard. In Excel 2003, click Tools*Macro*Record New Macro. In Excel 2007, click View*Macros*Record Macro. Enter a name in the "Macro name" field, beginning with a character, and without any spaces or punctuation. Click in the "Shortcut key" box, type t (or the letter of your choice, as long as it isn't already assigned to a shortcut that begins with Ctrl), and press OK. In Excel 2003, click Edit*Paste Special*Text*OK, and press the Stop Recording button on the tiny toolbar that popped up when you closed the Record Macro dialog box. In Excel 2007, click Home*Paste*Paste Special*Text*OK*View*Stop Recording.
When you close Excel, you'll be asked if you want to save the changes in the Personal Macro Workbook. Click Yes to make the shortcut available when you reopen the application.
Tomorrow: The (selective) return of smart quotes in Microsoft Word.
"If you want something done right, do it yourself."
"Why reinvent the wheel?"
That sums up a conversation I had with a coworker after I told him about the macro I created in Microsoft Word that converts my Ctrl-V keyboard shortcut into one that pastes text from a Web site, some other app, or elsewhere, minus the formatting, images, and any other nontext stuff. The fact is, I rarely want to paste anything but the text, and I want it in the format of the file it's being added to, not the format of the source.
I thought this handy-dandy trick was a first-rate time-saver, especially when you consider that for those rare instances when I want to preserve the formatting of the source, or to include elements other than text, I simply press Shift-Insert.
My buddy said he could do me one better: He presses the Windows key and V to paste plain text he has copied from just about anywhere, into just about any application, not just Word. And he didn't have to go through a multistep process to create a Word macro. All he did was download Steve Miller's free PureText utility.
The PureText freebie from Steve Miller makes pasting plain text a breeze.
After you download the program, it puts an icon in your system tray. Then you just copy the text you want, click the icon before you press Windows-V to paste it without the formatting, or anything else except the text. You can choose another key combination as long as one of the keys is either the Shift, Ctrl, or the Windows key, but I stick with the default keys because they avoid conflicts with other shortcuts. Speaking of which....
Tomorrow: I'll give you a list of the most useful keyboard shortcuts you probably don't know about.
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