Summary

You have learned some ways to manage your time and your life better. You will find that tracking all of your tasks will become a habit, and you will be much more organized after using this feature for a while. Not only will you know what you need to complete and what you have already done, but you also will be able to keep a close eye on all those tasks and projects you ask other people to take care of.

Part VI: Making Outlook Work the Way You Do

Chapter

Chapter 20. Customizing Outlook

If you look carefully at all of the Outlook screen shots in this book, you might even notice an occasional menu view where Define Views and other commands are on the main menu to the right of Help. In this chapter, you'll learn how they got there. You'll also become a master at adding, moving, and removing menu and toolbar items. You'll become so confident that you won't hesitate to add a command to the menu or a toolbar for a special project ”and then remove it when you're done.

Personalized Toolbars and Menus

You can turn off Outlook's personalized menus and toolbars if you prefer to see full menus. To turn them off, choose Tools, Customize, and click the Options tab. Make sure you deselect the check box called Menus Show Recently Used Commands First, as shown in Figure 20.1.

Tooling Around with Toolbars

The key to customizing Outlook's menus and toolbars is knowing what you have to work with. First, you need to explore an often-overlooked aspect of toolbars. Display the Advanced toolbar, if it's not already displayed. Right-click any toolbar or menu and choose Advanced. Look at the right end of the Advanced toolbar. You should see a downward-pointing black triangle. Click that triangle, and then click Add or Remove Buttons to display the view shown in Figure 20.2.

To hide toolbar buttons that you do not need to see, follow these steps:

1. Display the Inbox, and then click the More Buttons tool at the right end of the Advanced toolbar and click on Add or Remove Buttons to display the list shown in Figure 20.3. (Notice that all of the items are checked. That means that all of the default buttons are set to appear.)

   Figure 20.3. Use the More Buttons tool to hide buttons you never use.

   

2. Remove the checks next to Previous Folder and Next Folder. Observe the toolbar as you do this. When you remove a check, the toolbar icon corresponding to that item disappears. Even though you've now hidden those items, they'll still be displayed as choices each time you display the list shown in Figure 20.2.

3. The list of tools now appears as shown in Figure 20.3. Notice that there are no checks next to the two removed tools. Click each tool to restore it to the menu.

Do you like the toolbars where they are? If so, that's great. If not, why not move them somewhere else, as the following steps demonstrate (see Figure 20.4):

1. Move the mouse pointer over the bar (the Move handle) at the left end of any menu or toolbar (or the top end, if the menu or toolbar is displayed vertically) so that a four-headed arrow appears.

2. Using the left mouse button, drag the toolbar or menu to the desired position and release the mouse button.

3. To anchor the toolbar or menu to one of the four sides, drag it so it snaps into place. To float the toolbar or menu, drag it to an open space away from the four sides of Outlook's window.

4. Floating toolbars and menus can be resized into any rectangular shape. When you hover the mouse pointer over any of the four sides of a floating toolbar, the mouse pointer becomes a two-headed resizing pointer. Use the left mouse button to widen or narrow that dimension.

To return a floating toolbar to its last-anchored position, double-click its title bar.

Displaying, Resetting, and Creating New Toolbars

You've already seen how to choose which toolbars to display by right-clicking any menu or toolbar. That technique is useful for turning a single toolbar on or off, but it's tedious when you want to manipulate multiple toolbars at the same time. For more control, right-click a toolbar, choose Customize, and click the Toolbars tab to display the Customize dialog box shown in Figure 20.5. The Standard, Advanced, and Menu Bar toolbars are enabled. The Web and Remote toolbars are turned off.

While you're here, use the New button to create a brand new toolbar. For example, you can create customized toolbars for different projects. Suppose you go through design phases. You can create a customized toolbar that contains just the design tools you need by following these steps:

1. Right-click any toolbar or menu and choose Customize (or choose Tools, Customize from Outlook's main menu).

2. In the Toolbars tab, click New.

3. Type a new name for the toolbar and click OK.

4. As shown in Figure 20.6, the new toolbar appears to the left of the Customize dialog box, which now includes My Toolbar on the list. You'll learn how to add commands to it in a moment.

   Figure 20.6. My Toolbar has been added to the Toolbars list and now appears as a floating toolbar.

   

After you've added the new toolbar, a couple of changes occur inside the Customize dialog box. Notice that with My Toolbar selected, the Rename and Delete buttons are now available. You cannot delete or rename the built-in toolbars, but you can rename and delete those you create. Keep the Customize dialog box onscreen as you begin the next section.