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.

How to Block Email in Outlook (International SPAM)

I noticed that I’ve begun getting more international email.

Now, I don’t speak any foreign languages (well maybe a little French)
so I don’t have any use for emails in a different tongue.

Heck, I wouldn’t even know if I was begin spammed or not (well, I would
guess that it ALL is mail spam technically speaking (Self Promoting Advertising Message). But international email is the worst because even your virus checkers might skip virus spam.

In any case. I simply don’t want it, and have instructed Outlook to ignore all international email and therefore all international mail spam.

Here’s how.

First, I’m assuming you use Outlook 2007 now (if not, there’s
great deals out there for entire Office 2007 suites at about $120)

From Outlook go to Tools,  Options,  Junk E-mail, then click the International tab there on the right.

You have 2 choices here:

1. Blocked Top-Level Domain List.

This is simply every country with a check box. Select All and then uncheck to get email from your sister who now lives in Brazil and sends you email in Portuguese.

OR

2. Block encodings list.

These are the language encodings and you can Select All and then uncheck US-ASCII.

Click OK 3 times.

You are now insulated from email sent in other languages.

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Keep Moving Forward,

Paul

Fake Microsoft Outlook update contains virus for ID theft

Spam email purporting to be a “critical update” for Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express contains a link to download a malicious program that can steal personal information from a user’s computer, including login credentials and credit card information, Trend Micro reported June 22.

The spammers use legitimate links to Microsoft sites in the email body to make the email appear genuine, but a link appearing to direct users to a Microsoft site for the “update” actually downloads a Trojan horse called ZBot.

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

Forward multiple emails as a batch

If you have a bunch of emails in a folder and want to send them to a friend or colleague, here’s how.

- Click on the folder to display the items.
- Click on the first row to highlight it.
- Shift-Click on the last row (or just press Ctrl-A to highlight all of them).
- Right-click anywhere in the blue highlighted area and select Forward.
- Choose the To: person, your note and send them off.

Tell the recipient that to receive them they only need to do the following:

- Double-click on the email to open it.
- Right-click on the attachments and Select All.
- Drag-and-drop them as a group to the Mail Icon in the Navigation pane there in the lower left (or drag them into whichever folder they want)

Piece-a-cake!

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