Outlook continues to drive us all batty.  I’ve just upgraded to a newer machine and while it might not be the speediest beast on the planet, the 2 gigs of RAM makes everything run better including Outlook.  But I digress.  Outlook 2007 is trying to make our e-mail more secure, but it’s junk mail filtering system has some flaws:
Microsoft Outlook 2007 sucks. Or at least it sucks in how it handles its Junk E-mail functionality. Microsoft’s brilliant decision is to prevent users from Replying to any email that lands in your “special” Junk E-mail folder. Microsoft Outlook 2007, part of …read more

Plaxo launched v3.0 of it’s online contact management service/tool today, and since it’s in the news you might be wondering if you should use it (or restart using it if you have been away from it for a while).
First, just what is Plaxo and what’s all the hype about v3.0 anyway?  Plaxo is a service that let you sync your contacts, calendar, task, and notes (Outlook) online.  It was a social network of sorts so that when one of your contacts who is also on Plaxo changes their information, you are updated.  Also if you add a new person who is …read more

Ah the out of office message.  Can’t remember when I’ve had to put one of those up.  Which isn’t a good sign, really is it?  Anyway, sometimes you don’t just want the basic “I’m not here” message to go to everyone.  It is possible to be more clever in Outlook (and I gather Gmail), you just have to use rules to do it. Lifehacker points out in their post, and rightly so, that this requires that both the host machine and Outlook have to be kept open and running for this to work.  Not going to work for me.  My …read more

 Diana Huggins who contributes to Lockgnome’s Windows Fanatics blog always seems to have those tips and how tos that people need.  Whether it’s watermarks in Word or new lines in Excel cells, Diana has posted them.
Sure, you might think they are simple, if you’ve already spent time trying to figure out how to do it through trial and error and Office help, but lots of people haven’t.
Instead of just posting every day her latest tip, just save us both some time and subscribe to the blog and get them via RSS.
 
Technorati tags: Windows tips, Vista tips, MS Office, MS Word, …read more

We’ve been complaining, we’ve been trying to do what we can to improve things (including disabling most fun plugins), but Outlook 2007 has been dogged with performance problems since it debuted (actually in complaints started in beta).  Microsoft has finally released a patch for Outlook 2007 that is supposed improve the performance issues:
Microsoft indicated that the problem stemmed from RSS feeds, email, and calendar files all being stored in the same .PSD file which as one might imagine could grow in size rather quickly depending on the user. The problem lies not with the software, but how users are using …read more

The guys at ClearContext just can’t seem to leave well enough alone can they:
ClearContext’s AutoAssign is a simple way to create rules to assign ClearContext Priority and Topics to messages. For power users who would like more flexibility in rules creation, we have provided integration of this functionality into the Outlook rules interface. Source: ClearContext Information Management System
No, they just have to keep making their product more flexible.  Man you gotta hate that.
Seriously, I have downloaded but not installed it yet.  One main reason is that I really don’t use Outlook’s rules feature much.  Frankly the AutoAssign function in …read more

You know I love ClearContext for Outlook.  The colour coding, the prioritization, the ability to just file messages with a click, and filing sent messages with a topic, all these things let me really manage my e-mail.  A while ago Brad told me about the Vista gadget for CC and Outlook 2007.  I’ve been trying it since before it was launched and it’s just getting better!  Here’s the short and sweet announcement:
We’ve added three new action buttons to the Inbox Alert Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget.  Now you can Mark Read, Delete or Reply to the message you are previewing (Outlook …read more

 One of the big problems folks have been having with Office 2007 is Outlook.  Frankly, it can be a serious dog.  Sluggish, serious performance lags.  All the things you don’t want in your “latest and greatest” e-mail client.  Looks like, thanks to Mack D. Male, there is a solution:
DELL has gotten back to me with a solution that seemed to work.
Following these steps:
1. Open Outlook as an Administrator by going to C:Programs/Microsoft Office/Office12 and right clicking on the Outlook exe program.  Choose “Run as Administrator”.
2. Then once Outlook opens, go to Tools, then Trust Center, then Addins.
3. Click “Go…” at …read more

Like Google Calendar but use Outlook to manage your day?  That’s my problem too.  Looks like there might a solution in gSyncit:
This Outlook plug-in supports one-way or two-way synchronization (you can go Google-to-Outlook, Outlook-to-Google or both) and works manually or automatically. After installing the program, look for a new two-button toolbar in Outlook; click the Settings button to access gSyncit’s surprisingly robust configuration options. Source: Download of the Day: gSyncit (Windows) – Lifehacker
I gave this a shot and it worked great with my personal Google Calendar, but I couldn’t get it to work with a hosted version.  Still, it …read more