Microsoft Outlook Time-Saving Tips

by Lee Hudspeth
(This article appears in The Naked PC #6.08, April 17, 2003)

** 02. Microsoft Outlook Time-Saving Tips (by Lee Hudspeth)

I did a migration of all my data and tools from one PC to another 
just a few days ago, and of the many time-saving tips I collected 
while on that adventure, many relate to Microsoft Outlook. Here 
they are for your perusal.

-- Adding holidays for 2003 and beyond to your calendar

If you use Outlook 2000, you may have noticed that there aren't 
any holidays in your 2003 calendar. To work around this problem, 
you simply need to download and install the "Outlook 2000 Add-in: 
Holiday Updates" add-in. This add-in updates the calendar with 
holidays from 2003 up through and including 2007.
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/608/tr.cgi?outlook1

Exit Outlook before proceeding. Once you have downloaded the 
file, run it (OutHol.exe), and follow the instructions to install 
it. Next, to add holidays to your calendar follow these steps in 
Outlook: Tools, Options, click the Preferences tab, click the 
"Calendar Options" button, click the "Add Holidays" button, in 
the "Add Holidays to Calendar" dialog that appears select the 
desired country or countries and click OK. If you are prompted 
"Holidays for (country name) are already installed. Do you want 
to install them again?" click OK to install them, click OK to 
dismiss the "Calendar Options" dialog, then click OK to dismiss 
the Options dialog. If you ever find that you need to remove 
duplicate holidays, select Outlook's Calendar folder, View, 
Current View, By Category; there in the Holiday category you'll 
see all holiday events in a single list where you can delete--or 
otherwise act on--them as appropriate.

-- Manipulating Outlook data

The Microsoft Knowledge Base contains a series of articles you'll 
find helpful if you use Outlook--any version--and need to back 
up, restore, or move Outlook data (including settings data). Here 
are the operations described in this article: making a backup 
copy of a personal folder file; exporting personal folder data; 
importing personal folder data; automating the backing up of 
personal folders; backing up Outlook settings files; and 
exporting and importing rules. Here is a link to the article for 
Outlook 2000. To find the other articles, search the Knowledge 
Base for the phrase "How to Back Up, Restore, or Move Outlook 
Data".
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/608/tr.cgi?outlook2

-- Automatic area codes for new contacts

To tell Outlook what area code to automatically add by default 
when you enter a new phone number in a Contact record, follow 
these steps in Outlook 2000: from Outlook's main display select 
Actions, Call Contact, New Call, click the "Dialing Options" 
button (this displays the "Dialing Options" dialog), click the 
"Dialing Properties" button (this displays the "Dialing 
Properties" dialog), and enter your area code in the "Area code" 
text box, click OK, click OK again, and lastly click Close. You 
can also start this procedure from inside an open Contact record. 
In Outlook XP, follow the steps up to and including where you 
click on the "Dialing Properties" button then you see the "Phone 
And Modem Options" dialog, and set up a Location if prompted 
(including your area code), but if there's already a Location 
defined, select it and if you need to change the area code click 
Edit and change the area code as needed and click OK repeatedly 
to get back to the "New Call" dialog and finally click Close.

-- Migrating custom Categories to other users/PCs

This procedure involves editing your Registry, and that is a task 
I do NOT recommend for novice or casual users. There are detailed 
steps--and caveats--for this procedure in the following Microsoft 
Knowledge Base article. (If you don't want to edit the Registry, 
you can re-enter custom Categories manually.) In a nutshell, 
starting from the source PC, you export a particular Registry key 
and its associated values that store the Category names and then 
merge that data with the destination PC's Registry. An important 
caution: all Master Categories List data in the destination PC 
will be overlaid by the merge operation. The procedure is similar 
across all versions of Outlook, only differing in the version 
number of Outlook in the Registry branch name string; for more 
information see the Microsoft Knowledge Base article that matches 
your version of Outlook. Here are the links for Outlook 2000 and 
Outlook XP:
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/608/tr.cgi?outlook3
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/608/tr.cgi?outlook4

Got any hot Outlook tips? Drop me a line.

(c) 2003, Lee Hudspeth
You can reach Lee Hudspeth at:
mailto:LeeHudspeth@TheNakedPC.com

You can reach Lee Hudspeth at:
leehudspeth@TheNakedPC.com

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