Accessing Public Folders Quickly

Outlook 2003 marks the end of the Outlook Bar. It also removes the Folder List from the default Mail view. Clicking Mail on the Navigation Pane does not allow you to view or access the Public Folder tree. Even if those public folders contain mail or post items, the only way display the Public Folder tree in the Navigation Pane is to click the Folder List button. Although that's a perfectly valid method of accessing the Public Folder tree, it negates the benefit of the Navigation Pane feature that displays only mail folders in Mail view.

To quickly access your most frequently used public folders, you can add them to the Favorites Folders pane of the Navigation Pane. Before you can add a folder to the Favorites Folders pane, you must first add the folder to your Public Folders Favorites. The Favorites folder, which is under the top-level of the Public Folders tree, enables you to create shortcuts to public folders you use frequently. If a very long list of public folders is available on your Exchange Server or you typically access a folder that's buried under several other public folders, you can save time by adding the public folder to your Public Folders Favorites. In addition to speeding access to your frequently used public folders, adding a public folder to your Public Folders Favorites can enable the display of the number of unread items in the folder, as shown in Figure 29.10.

Figure 29.10. Folders under Public Folders Favorites can display an unread item count.

To add a public folder to your Public Folders Favorites, drag the folder to Favorites and release. You don't actually move the folder; you just create a shortcut to the folder in the Public Folders Favorites.

After you've added a public folder to Public Folders Favorites, you can also add a shortcut to that folder to the Favorite Folders Pane that's visible when viewing any mail folder in Outlook 2003's Mail view of the Navigation Pane. To add a folder to the Favorite Folders Pane, right-click the folder and select Add to Favorite Folders. This creates a shortcut to the folder in the Favorite Folders Pane, as shown in Figure 29.11.

Figure 29.11. The unread item count is preserved when viewing a public folder in the Favorite Folders pane.