Outlook How To and Add-on Reviews

The project management software InLoox operates within Outlook, simplifying the combining the organization of projects, documents, resources and budgets. InLoox provides highly effective support for everyday standard business processes.

The standard software product InLoox is integrated into Microsoft Outlook by means of Add-In Technology and incorporates Microsoft methodologies and SQL standards into its project management and planning functionality.

Microsoft Outlook and Exchange Server gain from InLoox new functions which greatly simplify the task of project mangement. Solo users, project teams and task forces, whether localized or distributed, are able to react with speed and efficiency to new requirements arising at any time.

InLoox uses the framework of Microsoft Outlook for project management and associated tasks:

• Project information
• Project scheduling and monitoring
• Activity, cost and time recording
• Team coordination and resource management
• File and document archiving management
• Project controlling and cost monitoring
• Project documentation and report generation
• Project budgeting and costing
• Project accounting and billing

Source: http://www.inloox.com/

In the Inbox, select an email from someone important, such as your partner, boss or co-worker. On the ‘Tools’ menu, click ‘Organize’ to display the Organize pane.

In the left portion of the ‘Organize’ pane, click ‘Using Colors’.

In the first bulleted item, you should see the word ‘from’ and the name of the person who sent you the email.

Then you should see the word ‘in’ and a drop-down list box. Click the arrow to select a colour. Click ‘Apply Color’.

All of the emails in your Inbox from this person should now be colour coded with the colour you selected.

In Outlook 2000, after you receive new mail, the Folder List opens to show any folders in the hierarchy that have new, unread items. Other than that, Outlook does not provide much help in locating unread items.

One method would be to use Advanced Find to search all your folders. HINT: The More Choices tab has an option for finding unread messages. If you use Advanced Find in this manner often, you might want to use File | Save Search to store your search criteria for easy reuse.

Otherwise, a few third-party tools provide some assistance in locating unread items.

Outlook does not provide enough help in finding unread mails. In Outlook 2000, after you receive new mails, the Folder List opens to show folders which have new or unread mails. And that is all Outlook can help you. When using other email client softwares, usually it is a one-click action to do so.

Here is some add-on tools which provide assistance in finding unread mails.

Neo Pro Email Organizer (http://www.caelo.com/index.php)
Implement time-management compliant workflow principles.Automatically organized email – by correspondent, date, attachment and status. See ALL your messages organized together no matter what message store (data file) they are in. Categories view, Filter toolbar, Search for Conversation, undockable tabs and more.

Outlook’s behavior with the reply format is to reply in the format of the original message. If someone sends you  plain text message, the reply will always be plain text, because Outlook (rightfully so) assumes the sender prefers mail in that format or can only accept mail in that format. This is good netiquette.

In past years, the reasoning behind the decision not to have Outlook convert the format automatically was in part because not all email clients could display HTML. Additionally, many users paid for internet access by the minute or KB and HTML formatted messages are much larger than plain text messages.

While all modern desktop email clients can handle HTML formatted messages and many users no longer pay for Internet access by the minute, the popularity of smart phones, blackberries, and other handheld or cellular devices still means a lot of people can’t read HTML formatted messages on their device and many pay for access by the KB.

"How do I set Outlook to always reply in HTML or RTF? When replying to, or forwarding, an email that is in plain text format, it always uses plain text. I want to force it to use RTF or HTML. I know I can change it every time, but I want it to be automatic."

Outlook does not offer a way to always use a specific format for all replies, be it RTF or HTML. You need to change it on each message or write VBA macro to change the format. (If you use Outlook 2002, 2003, or 2007, you can force plain text replies to all messages by using the option to read all mail in plain text.)

Unless you are 100% sure that the sender is not using a blackberry or cellular phone to read and reply to their mail, you should avoid changing the format on replies unless you have a valid reason – such as highlighting text and inserting tables. Don’t change the format just because you like HTML better. If you are replying with basic paragraphs of text, respect the sender’s choice of plain text.

Do not use RTF format for any message unless you know the recipient uses Outlook. Only Outlook can decipher the winmail.dat files used by rich text formatting so the recipient will get a plain text message and an attachment that they can’t use.