Setting Up Automatic Email Journaling

You can configure the journal to track all emails you send to specific people, track the documents you work on, and track meeting and task requests and responses.

Journaling is disabled by default. When you first select the Journal folder, a dialog asks whether you want to enable journaling. If you only need to track email and other Outlook items, the Activities tab can be used instead of the journal, and you should select No.

Configuring Journal Options

If you choose Yes, the Journal Options dialog box opens, as shown in Figure 15.5. You can change your configuration for journal options at any time by choosing Tools, Options, Preferences tab, Journal Options.

Figure 15.5. Use the Journal Options dialog box to select the activities you want to automatically record in the journal.

Configuring journal options is straightforward. Add a check for the contacts, document types, and meeting and task requests for the journal entries you want automatically created.

CAUTION

Automatic journal settings apply to the user logon, not to your Outlook profile. When you share your computer logon with other people, changes they make to the journal settings affect you as well.

The Journal Options dialog box contains three sections used to configure automatic recording of your activities. The selections you make in the top sections act as a filter to limit what is automatically journaled:

• Automatically Record These Items Select the activities that you want to record from this list

• For These Contacts Only activities involving the selected contacts are recorded

For example, journal entries for Automatically Record These Items selections are created only if the contact is selected in the For These Contacts list box, not for every person you exchange email with.

NOTE

To be listed in the For These Contacts list, a contact must be stored in your default Contacts folder. Contents of other Contacts folders aren't listed.

When you add a new name to your Contacts folder, the name is added to the For These Contacts list, but is left unchecked. You must open the Journal Options dialog box and select the new contact if you want to automatically journal messages to and from your new contact.

In addition to the items checked in the Automatically Record These Items list, journal entries are automatically created for phone calls to a contact selected in the For These Contacts list when you initiate a call to the contact using the Actions, Call Contact menu on an open Contacts form.

The third section, Also Record Files From, contains the list of document types that Outlook is capable of tracking and recording.

The remaining section found on this dialog box contains the settings for the default action that occurs when you double-click on a journal entry. The choices are Opens the Journal Entry or Opens the Item Referred to by the Journal Entry.

The final setting configured from this dialog box is your AutoArchive settings. You should configure AutoArchive Journal Settings if you're journaling activities for a large number of contacts; otherwise, your message store may grow too large.

Do you want to remove programs from these lists? See "Prevent Changes to Automatic Journaling Settings" in the "Troubleshooting" section at the end of this chapter.

Configuring Contacts for Automatic Journaling

You typically use the Tools, Options, Journal Options dialog box to enable contacts for automatic journaling. However, you can also do this from the Contacts form's All Fields tab or when using the Phone List view.

Using views to enable or disable your contacts for automatic journaling is the easiest way to set or change the status for a large number of contacts:

1. Open your Contacts folder and choose Phone List view.

2. Scroll to the right. The Journal field is the next to the last column.

3. Add a check mark in the Journal field for each contact you want to automatically journal; remove the check mark to stop automatic journaling for a contact.

If you have a large number of contacts to change, right-click on the row of field names, choose the Group By Box, and then drag the Journal field name to the Group By box above the row of field names. You can now select and drag multiple contacts between the Journal: No and Journal: Yes groupings, as shown in Figure 15.6.

Figure 15.6. Change the journal setting for many contacts at once by grouping contacts by the journal field.

To enable journaling using the All Fields tab for all new contacts:

1. Open a new contact to the All Fields tab and choose All Contact Fields in the Select From field.

2. Scroll the list of fields and locate Journal; enter Yes as Journal's value.

3. Open Tools, Forms, and then choose Publish Form As.

4. Type a name for the form in the Display name box. Click Publish, and then close the open form, choosing No when asked if you want to save it.

5. Next, make the new form your default Contacts form by right-clicking on the Contacts folder and choosing Properties from the shortcut menu.

6. On the General tab, find the When Posting to This Folder, Use list, select the form you just published, and then click OK.

Now, all new contacts you create will use the form you published with journaling enabled. If you want to stop journaling, repeat the last two steps in the preceding list and select the IPM.Contacts form instead.