Personalizing Your Office and Outlook Settings

While you are still becoming familiar with the 2007 Office system programs, and in particular with Outlook, you might be quite content to work with the default settings. But as you become more experienced, you might want to adjust some of the settings to tailor the Office environment to the way you work.

In this exercise, you will explore the ways in which you can customize Outlook. There are no practice files for this exercise.

BE SURE TO start Outlook before beginning this exercise.

OPEN a message window.

1. Click the Microsoft Office Button, and then in the lower-right corner of the Office menu, click Editor Options.

   The Editor Options window opens, displaying the Popular page.

   

   The settings on the Popular page apply to all 2007 Office system programs, not only to Outlook. These settings include showing the Mini toolbar when you select text, enabling live previews of gallery options, showing the Developer tab on the Ribbon, changing the color scheme, and setting the ScreenTip style. In addition, you can specify your user information (name and initials) on this page.

2. In the page list in the left pane, click Display.

   The settings on the Display page control whether Outlook displays various types of formatting marks within message windows.

   

3. In the page list, click Proofing.

   From the Proofing page, you can set AutoCorrect options to specify how Outlook will correct and format the content of your messages as you type them, and customize the spelling and grammar checking settings.

   

4. In the page list, click Advanced.

   This page contains settings for many features you might want to customize to suit the way you work.

   In the Editing Options area of this page, you can turn on or off advanced editing features, such as how Outlook selects and moves text, whether to track formatting changes, and whether Overtype mode is available.

   In the Cut, Copy, And Paste area, you can specify whether Outlook will apply source or destination formatting to text copied within a message, between messages, and from other programs. You can also set options for smart cut and paste (whether to automatically add and remove spaces as needed) and the Paste Options button (whether it appears after a past operation).

   

   In the Display E-mail Content area, you can specify how Outlook displays your message content on screen. You can turn on or off text wrapping, picture placeholders, Smart Tags, field codes, and text animation.

   In the Display area, you can set whether measurements are shown in inches, centimeters, millimeters, points, or picas; whether pixels are shown for HTML features; whether ScreenTips display keyboard shortcuts; and whether character positioning is optimized for layout rather than readability.

5. In the page list, click Customize.

   As discussed in "Making Favorite Outlook Commands Easily Accessible" earlier in this chapter, from the Customize page, you can add frequently used commands to the Quick Access Toolbar.

6. Make any changes that you want to the default Office settings, to the way Outlook displays, corrects, and formats message and other items, and to the way Outlook functions. Then at the bottom of the Editor Options window, click OK (or click Cancel to close the window without implementing changes).

Creating Outlook Forms

Every Outlook item you create is based on a form-you create a message by entering information in a message form that is hosted in a message window; the appointment form consists of the Appointment page and the Scheduling page that you display in an appointment window; you store contact information in a five-page form (General, Details, Activities, Certificates, and All Fields) displayed in a contact window, and so on. The controls you use to interact with the form and its content are part of the item window.

The Outlook 2007 Standard Forms Library includes 11 forms: Appointment, Contact, Distribution List, Journal Entry, Meeting Request, Message, Note, Post, Standard Default, Task, and Task Request. Additional forms might be installed by other programs that interface with Outlook. To access the forms libraries, point to Forms on the Tools menu, and then click Choose Form.

You can create your own form from scratch, or modify an existing form to fit your needs. For example, if you frequently send detailed messages that follow a standard format, want to limit or increase the fields available within a contact record, or want to control the actions a recipient can take with an e-mail message, you can create a custom form containing the specific fields or information you want to have available when you create an item based on that form. Forms can have multiple pages, and can include a variety of information including static content, fields, scripts, and macros. You can specify form properties, including the icon that represents items based on the form; actions that item recipients can perform; and the prefix added to the item subject when they perform those actions.

You can save a custom form in your Personal Forms Library so that it is available to you from any Outlook folder. If your organization is running Microsoft Exchange Server, you can make a form available to anyone within your organization by publishing it to the Organizational Forms Library. Your network administrator can grant you permission to publish to this library.

See Also For a detailed explanation of Outlook forms, refer to Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 Inside Out (ISBN 0-7356-2328-7) by Jim Boyce (Microsoft Press, 2007).

Adding and Removing Toolbar Commands

You can personalize the commands shown on the Outlook program window menu bar and toolbars by adding, removing, or rearranging buttons.

To add a button to a toolbar:

1. Click the Toolbar Options button at the right end of any toolbar, point to Add or Remove Buttons, and then click Customize.

2. In the Customize dialog box, click the Commands tab. In the Categories list, click the category containing the command you want to add.

3. In the Commands list, locate the command you want to add. Then drag the command from the list to the position where you want it to appear on the toolbar.

To rearrange the commands on a toolbar:

1. Click the Toolbar Options button, point to Add or Remove Buttons, and then click Customize.

2. In the Customize dialog box, on the Commands tab, click Rearrange Commands.

3. In the Rearrange Commands dialog box, under Choose a menu or toolbar to rearrange, select the Toolbar option.

4. Click the Toolbar arrow, and then in the list, select the toolbar or menu bar you want to rearrange.

5. In the Controls list, click the command you want to reposition, click Move Up or Move Down as many times as necessary to position the command where you want it, and then click Close.

To remove a default button from a toolbar:

• ➜ Click the Toolbar Options button at the right end of the toolbar, point to Add or Remove Buttons, point to the toolbar name, and then in the list, click the button you want to remove.

To remove a custom button from a toolbar:

1. Click the Toolbar Options button, point to Add or Remove Buttons, and then click Customize.

2. In the Customize dialog box, on the Commands tabs, Rearrange Commands

3. In the Rearrange Commands dialog box, under Choose a menu or toolbar to rearrange, select the Toolbar option, and then in the list, click the toolbar containing the button you want to remove.

4. In the Controls list, click the button you want to remove. Click Delete, and then click Close.

To reset a toolbar to its default state:

1. Click the Toolbar Options button, point to Add or Remove Buttons, and then click Customize.

2. In the Customize dialog box, on the Toolbars tab, click the toolbar you want to restore to its default settings, and then click Reset.