Outlook 2007 Fast VCard method

A VCard, or Virtual Card is basically your contact with your information attached to an email so anyone can simply click on it and your contact will go into their Outlook.

In OL2003, you could attach a VCard as a default to any given signature. Not so with subsequent versions.  Outlook 2007 wants to put their business card into your email.  I don’t like that idea because it’s a graphic and cannot be autospawned into an Outlook contact with such programs as copy2contact.com and egrabber.com.

However, here’s how I set it up to shorten the steps of adding a VCard to an email. First, create a _Vcard (include underline) by right-clicking on Personal Folders (or Mailbox if you’re an Exchange user).

Next, copy your contact (with your marketing material in the notes area!) to this folder by right-click-dragging the contact.

Then when you want to add a VCard to an email, click on the Insert tab and Attach Item. Click on the _VCard folder and double-click on your contact.  It’s done.

Fast, smooth, and simple.

What Happened to the Contact Linking Text Box in Outlook 2007?

Outlook 2003 would automatically link an email to a contact so that you could see all emails, both sent and received, in the Activities tab of that contact. In fact, this feature was not limited to just emails. Outlook can link all new items that you created in the lower left-hand corner of new item forms, a contact field that would link that contact to the item–an appointment, task, journal entry…whatever. By being diligent in adding this contact for all new items you would have a running log of all transactions about that contact…and you could even group, sort and view all of those records in the same Activities tab for that contact. That way, you had a valuable running history of all activities between you and that contact.But now, in Outlook 2007, when you open a contact in you’ll notice something is missing–The Contact Links text box on the item screens–an Appointment, Meeting, Task, Journal and Contact form–all show WITHOUT that link.Well Microsoft did not really leave it out, they just turned it off, by default (I know not why).

Here’s how to turn it back on.

From the menu go to Tools, Options, then Contact Options. Check the box called “Show Contact Linking on all Forms”.

Now when you go to create a new item you’ll find the Contact link text box at the bottom.

Here’s a couple other things you should know to help you:

You only need to type part of the name in that text box and press Control-S (for Save). If Outlook found the contact it will fill the full name in for you and underline it signaling that it found the contact in the database. If it finds ambiguities it will prompt you with a Choose Contact box–and you can select from that.

Here’s another great use of contact linking. If you know multiple people at one company you could create a contact by that company’s name and then link all the contacts to it. Then, since those contacts are linked to their transactions, ALL of the transactions for all of those individuals for that company are now linked in as well. You can group, sort and change views of all of those transactions—say, sorted by date, or grouped by person and then sorted by date. These views are extremely flexible.

One final note about using names in the contact link box. To keep the list smaller and if you are not sure of the spelling, type only a few letters of the person’s LAST name rather than the first.

Outlook 2007 Solves Overriding Signature Inserts

If you’re an advanced Outlook 2003 user you probably already know the value of stackable signatures.  You can use the Outlook Signatures as assembly line documents, selecting a signature from the list to drop it into your email, then doing the task again to drop another signature in, and so forth.

 In Outlook 2007 this “feature” was modified to REPLACE one signature with another.  That’s right, every time you select a signature, it removes the existing signature and replaces it with the selected signature from the drop-down list of signatures.

But the boys and girls at Microsoft actually gave another cool feature to solve that “feature” and both features work hand-in-hand.  Here’s how it works.

Create a new email (ctrl-shift-m) and click on the Insert tab. Over on the right you’ll see a brand new icon called Quick Parts.  If you have a signature already displayed, highlight it then click on the Quick Parts icon.  Then click on the “Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery”.  The selected area including graphics is now saved.

 When you create a new email, you can select Insert, Quick Parts, and click on the drop down graphics to insert the signature into your notes.  Notice that the Quick Parts is greyed out until your cursor is IN the new message area.

Finally, if you click on the Quick Parts icon, then right-click on any item from the list, you’ll find a whole bunch of options, including editing the gallery entry.

Way cool.

Paul

Outlook 2007 Search Desktop not indexing Public Folders

I use Hosted Exchange and share my contacts and calendars with my colleague through the Public Folder.

To add a new contact to the Public Folders Contacts you must first click on that folder in the navigation bar (My Favorites), then use Ctrl-Shift-C to add a new contact.

The problem with the Hosted Exchange installation is that by default there is an option for caching/indexing that is NOT set in the Microsoft Exchange Account profile. However, it is easy to set once you know how.

First check that Exchange is in fact being cached. Click on File, Cached Exchange Mode, and check Download Full Items.

Next turn on . Click on Tools, Account Settings. Highlight Microsoft Exchange account. Then click Change. You are now in your Exchange profile settings (Change Email Account). Click More Settings, then the Advanced tab. Check both Use Cached Exchange Mode and Download Public Folder Favorites. You’ll have to restart Outlook for it to begin working.

Outlook and Hosted Exchange will automatically resync and you’ll now be able to find those missing contacts using the Search Desktop feature.

And if you don’t have the Search Desktop feature running, you can find it at

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/desktopsearch/getitnow.mspx

Outlook 2007: The New Item icon may surprise you.

If you are used to creating new items in Outlook 2003 using the New Icon, be prepared for a twist in your thinking.

If you expand the new To-Do Bar along the right-edge and any item is highlighted within it, be aware that when you click on New in the Menu bar that you will in fact be creating a new Task not a new Email just because your inbox is showing.

Personally, I never use the New icon because I have to grab the mouse, position it over the icon, drop-down on the list if I’m not in the current items list, etc.–too much work!

I’ve always said you should learn your shortcuts:

Ctrl-Shift-M New Message
Ctrl-Shift-C New Contact
Ctrl-Shift-A New Appointments
Ctrl-Shift-K New Task