Outlook - Sharing Contacts

If you’re like me you like to spread the good news around and introduce one contact to another. It just makes for better business.

However it’s a nuisance to have to retype all a person’s contact details just to send them on to someone else. Well it is unless you know this trick:

To forward a contact’s details in Outlook open Outlook in the Contact area and right-click the Contact’s name in the list. Click the Forward button and an email will open automatically with the contact’s details appended as an Outlook readable file. Simply complete the details of the email message and forward on the contact information. At the other end all your contact needs to do is to drag and drop the contact’s details from the email message into their contact’s folder.

Create an Outlook sticky note

I love sticky notes but not stuck all over my computer monitor. My computer desktop, that's another thing - Sticky notes there look so cute and they're so useful because they're right there where I can see them.

Outlook has a great sticky note feature. Simply type a quick reminder using an Outlook Note and you can 'stick' it on your desktop. Click the Notes icon in Outlook or choose File, New, Note and type the text for your note. Make the first line explanatory of the note's contents as this becomes its name so it's the first thing you see. When you're done, click the Note's Close button to finish.

Now drag and drop the Note onto your desktop - it will stay there and remain accessible even when Outlook isn't open. To view the Note's contents, simply double click it.

Posting to an Outlook folder

Try this scenario: you're working in Outlook and you want to add a note to your inbox - perhaps instead of emailing your work address someone emails your home email address and you want to keep your work emails up to date so you want to note the conversation in your inbox. Here's how to do it, using a Post:

1. Click the folder to post into so you have it open.
   
2. Choose File, New, Post in this folder and type your note - in my scenario it would be details from the email but it could, conceivably, be anything.
   
3. Click the Post button on the toolbar and the note will be saved into the folder – you’ll know it isn’t an email because it has a special icon but it behaves like one so you can open and view it.

I love Posts. They're are a handy way of recording information in an email folder when it's there that you'd expect to find it.

Avoiding that "oops!" moment in Outlook

I think we've all had that sinking "Oh no!" feeling when we've sent an Outlook email. Either you've forgotten to include an attachment or you've thought twice about what you said and you want to recall the email. In most cases an email can't be recalled, but you can delay it being sent.

To add a delay to outgoing emails, use a rule:

1. Choose Tools, Rules and Alerts and click on New Rule.
   
2. Choose the Start from blank rule option and then select Check messages after sending and click Next.
   
3. Click Next as all messages will be delayed (but you can set an exception shortly) and click Next and Ok again to confirm the rule will apply to all sent messages.
   
4. Choose Defer delivery by a number of minutes and set this to the number to wait – say 2 minutes and click Next.
   
5. Now, set an exception for messages that just have to be sent immediately, for example, select Except if it is marked as importance and set this to High.
   
6. Click Next, type a name for the rule such as Delayed Send, enable the Turn on this rule checkbox and click Finish.

Now, when you click Send, your messages will be held for 2 minutes before being sent except if you make them High importance.

Save an Outlook message as a file

When you need to save a copy of an Outlook message simply hold the Control key as you drag it out of your Inbox and drop it into a folder in an open Windows Explorer window or onto the desktop.

The message is saved as a .msg format file that you can open again at any time by double clicking it in Windows Explorer. When you do this, the email itself opens and can be read, even if Outlook is not open.

To save a message as an .html file, open it and choose File, Save As and type a name for it and choose a location for it.