Using the Journal

You can configure the journal to create journal entries for you when you work on Office documents or Outlook items. When journal items are created automatically, the amount of time the document is left open is also recorded.

Not all activities you might want included in the journal can be automatically created. You'll have to create journal entries for these items if you want to track all of your activities.

Creating a journal entry takes just a small amount of effort and is well worth it. For example, if you need to locate a document, it's often easier to use the journal to go back a few months and find the journal entry for the document you worked on than it is to search your computer's drive. As long as you remember approximately when you created the document, using views or Outlook's Advanced Find to find the journal entry is faster than using the Windows search utility to search your computer's hard drive for a filename you can't remember.

One reason many people give for not using the journal is that journaling causes your mail folder to grow very large. When you configure the journal to automatically create entries for many of your contacts and for all Office documents, you might end up with several hundred entries at the end of each week, many of which offer little or no additional value. Unless you use AutoArchive to clean out the journal regularly, you might have thousands of items in the journal.

Configuring the Journal

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

Journaling is disabled by default. The first time you select the Journal folder, a dialog opens asking whether you want to enable journaling. If you need to track only email and other Outlook items associated with specific contacts, the Activities tab on a contact form can be used instead of the journal and you should select N o.

If you choose Y es, the Journal Options dialog opens, as shown in Figure 13.2. You can change your configuration for journal options at any time using the dialog in T ools, O ptions, Preferences tab, J ournal Options.

Figure 13.2. Use the Journal Options dialog to select the activities you want to automatically record in the journal.

Add a check for the contacts, document types, and meeting and task requests for the journal entries you want to create automatically.

Automatic journal settings apply to the user logon, not to your Outlook profile. When you share your computer logon with another person, changes that person makes to the journal settings affect your profile, too.

The dialog contains three sections you'll use to configure the automatic recording of your activities. The items and contacts you choose in the top sections determine what is journaled automatically.

• Automatically Record These I tems Select the activities that you want to record from this list.

• For These C ontacts Only activities involving the selected contacts are recorded.

• A l so Record Files from Select the programs you want to allow to automatically create journal entries. Only the programs listed support automatic journaling.

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

To be listed in the For These Contacts list, the contacts need to be stored in your default Contacts folder. Contents of other Contacts folders aren't included in this list.

When you add a new name to your Contacts folder, the name is added to the For These C ontacts list but isn't checked. You'll have to open the Journal Options dialog and select the new contacts if you want to automatically journal messages to and from your new contacts.

Along with the items checked in the Automatically Record These I tems list, journal entries are automatically created for phone calls to the contacts selected in the For These C ontacts list when you initiate a call to the contact using the A ctions, C a ll Contact menu on an open contacts form.

The third section, A l so Record Files from, contains the list of Office document types that Outlook is capable of tracking and recording. Outlook supports the automatic journaling of documents created with Access, Excel, PowerPoint, and Word. If Project or Visio is installed, documents from those applications can be automatically journaled as well.

Any VBA-enabled application can be programmed for automatic journaling. See the documentation for the application or search online for the specific VBA code needed because it varies with the source application.

The remaining section found on this dialog contains the settings for the default action for opening journal entries when you double-click on an item. The choices are O pens the Journal Entry and O p ens the Item Referred to by the Journal Entry.

In most cases, it's more convenient to open the item directly, instead of opening the journal entry. Regardless of your selection, you can right-click on any journal entry and choose whether to Open Journal Entry or Open Item Referred To.

The last setting you need to configure from this dialog is the AutoArchive setting. You should configure A u toArchive Journal Settings if you're journaling activities for a large number of contacts; otherwise , your message store might grow too large.

Task: Enable Journaling for Specific Contacts

Normally, you would use the T ools, O ptions, J ournal Options dialog to enable contacts for automatic journaling. However, it's time-consuming to mark each item. You can also enable contacts for journaling from a contact form's All Fields tab or by using a Table view in the Contacts folder.

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 (select V iew, A rrange By, Current V iew, Phone List).

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

3. Add check marks in the Journal field for each contact you want to be automatically journaled; remove check marks 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 and choose Group B y Box and then drag the Journal field to the Group By box. You can now select and drag multiple contacts between the Journal: No and Journal: Yes groupings, as shown in Figure 13.3.

Figure 13.3. Change the journal setting for many contacts at once by grouping contacts by the Journal field. Notice the different icon used on journaled items.

You can also enable journaling by opening a contact, selecting the All Fields tab, finding the Journal field, and changing the entry to Yes. But that isn't an efficient way to enable journaling for your contacts. However, when you want to enable journaling for all new contacts, you can create a custom form with this field set to Yes:

1. Open the desired contact to the All Fields tab.

2. Choose All Contact Fields in the Sele c t from field.

3. Scroll the list of fields and locate Journal.

4. Enter Yes as the Journal's field value.

5. Open the T ools, F orms menu selection and then choose Pu b lish Form As.

6. Type a name for the form in the Display Name box.

7. Click P ublish and then close the open form, choosing No when asked whether you want to save it.

Next you need to make the new form your default contact form:

1. Right-click on the Contacts folder and choose Propert i es from the shortcut menu.

2. On the General tab, look for the When P osting to this Folder, Use list. Select the form you just published and then click OK.

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 and select the IPM.Contacts form instead.