Estimating and Tracking

Outlook is the multipurpose email tool which ships with the Microsoft Office suite, and is already available on all Lotech Solutions' documentation work stations. We mainly use it to provide email functionality and schedule meetings.

Anyone who uses the other Microsoft Office suite applications like Word, FrontPage, Outlook or PowerPoint should become proficient in Outlook relatively quickly. This topic will discuss and describe the finer points of how to do some of the trickier things with Outlook.

Outlook is really flexible in the way it presents data. (We should try and make our software offerings this flexible.) You can view, sort, filter, store, and archive your email, and you can compose, send, copy, forward, and delete them. Outlook also has a calendar which can be used to schedule your time. You already use it when booking or accepting a meeting, and as a reminder for meetings, tasks and events. Or perhaps you should be.

Click on the image to view a larger size.

Outlook has a nifty feature called Outlook Today, which displays a summary of your calendar, tasks and messages for the current day. This is a particularly useful tool for planning your day and should be your first port of call in the morning. At a glance, you can see what you have to do, where you have to be, and who's said what to you. Click the Outlook Today node in the Folder List tree to view your's.

The tasks in the illustration above were originally created in Excel and imported to Outlook. These match the scheduled events in calendar, which were also imported from the same Excel spreadsheet file. See Importing data from Excel.

To change the default appearance of your emails in Outlook, see Changing email defaults.

For tips, tricks and useful shortcuts, see Outlook tips and tricks.

---

Importing data from Excel

Outlook can import an Excel file and automatically generate tasks and events to display in your Outlook tasks list and calendar. This allows you to use Outlook to plan your workload and schedule your time.

• How to import tasks from an Excel file
• How to import a calendar from an Excel file

Note

The Excel file must be preformatted with the appropriate structure expected by Outlook. See Using Excel.

---

To import tasks from an Excel file:

1. In Outlook, select Tasks in the Folders List tree.
2. From the main menu, select File | Import and Export.
   This will launch the Import and Export Wizard:
   
3. Select "Import from another program or file", and click Next.
4. 
   Scroll down, select "Microsoft Excel", and click Next.
5. 
   Browse to and select your preconfigured Excel file, check Do not import duplicate items, and click Next.
6. 
   Select your local mailbox "Tasks" as the destination folder and click Next.
7. 
   If you don't see this confirmation page, or you received an error message, Outlook wasn't able to open and examine the Excel file for importation. You'll have to go back and fix the problem, then restart this import procedure again.
   Otherwise, visually confirm that you've made the right selection, and click Finish. 

---

To import calendars from an Excel file:

1. In Outlook, select Tasks in the Folders List tree.
2. From the main menu, select File | Import and Export.
   This will launch the Import and Export Wizard:
   
3. Select "Import from another program or file", and click Next.
4. 
   Scroll down, select "Microsoft Excel", and click Next.
5. 
   Browse to and select your preconfigured Excel file, check Do not import duplicate items, and click Next.
6. 
   Select your local mailbox "Calendar" as the destination folder and click Next.
7. 
   If you don't see this confirmation page, or you received an error message, Outlook wasn't able to open and examine the Excel file for importation. You'll have to go back and fix the problem, then restart this import procedure again.
   Otherwise, visually confirm that you've made the right selection, and click Finish. 

This will import the data for display in Outlook Calendar. Visually check that some items didn't double up or enter into the wrong time. If any value differed between the existing item and its mate in the Excel file, the item will be duplicated and stuff up your calendar. You may need to manually delete such occurrences from Outlook.

---

Changing email defaults

To change your default email signature

1. In Outlook, select Tools | Options and click the 'Mail Format' tab.
2. Click the Signatures button at the bottom of the page.

   You can either create a new template or select and edit an existing one.

3. Click OK, and OK.

To change your default email font

1. In Outlook, select Tools | Options and click the 'Mail Format' tab.
2. In the 'Stationary and Fonts' section in the middle of the page, click the Fonts button.

   Choose an appropriate font for each of the three options.

3. Click OK, and OK.

When changing the default font size for your emails, I observed that Outlook did not consistently display my choice. As it turns out, Outlook cannot display all font sizes, and appears to only support even number size fonts, so if you select 11pt, it will display 12pt.

---

Selecting the correct addressee

Should you have multiple email mail servers, like the corporate one in the office, and your personal one on your website, and you do not always remain connected to the corporate server, Outlook may become confused with which contact list to use when you send mail. You can tell that this has happened when you receive a bounced mail message from your mail server that states:

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

The following recipient(s) could not be reached:

553 sorry, that domain isn't allowed to be relayed thru this MTA (#5.7.1)

The solution is to reopen the mail item from the Sent Items folder, right-click each addressee and examine their properties. When you're away from the corporate mail server, the corporate address list will not suffice, so you need to write out the address in full, or select the addressee from your personal contacts list instead. Then resend the mail item.

---

Outlook Tips and Tricks

Keyboard Shortcuts

Key combination	Action
Ctrl+Q	Mark as Read
Ctrl+Shift+V	Move to folder
Alt+Spacebar+N	Minimise Program

---

See Also

Lotech Solutions' Tips, Tricks, and Procedures | Using Excel

---

email webmaster

Copyright Lotech Solutions. All rights reserved.