Delete appointments prior to a specific date in one go(Outlook 2010)

             You want to remove all the appointments prior to a specific date from your personal “Calendar” in order to make some space in the Outlook PST database (Personal store).

              All the appointments that are set prior to a specific date can be deleted quickly and when displayed in a tabular format. It displays only the appointments and does not give out the days, weeks and months individually. For this you first need to activate the calendar by clicking on the “Calendar” tab from the Navigation field. Then go to the “View” tab, click on the “Change view” button and select the entry “List” in the following menu.
               Now the next step is to sort the displayed appointments in accordance with the beginning or end period. Check whether Outlook has correctly sorted the appointments in a descending chronological order and if necessary click one more time on the column heading till it is arranged in a correct order. Now, look out for the first entry of the date in the list where you would want to delete the appointments prior to this date and mark it. Then keeping the “Shift” button pressed mark the last entry. All the appointments in between the first and the last selected entries will be automatically selected when the shift button is kept pressed during the selection.
             Now, delete these appointments by pressing the [Delete] button. With this, Outlook automatically moves the deleted appointments to the folder “Deleted Items”. You can still restore the deleted appointments if this folder is not emptied.

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Export contacts / data easily and quickly(Outlook 2003, 2007, 2010)

              You want to export your contacts from Outlook to Excel or to another program for editing.

              Outlook allows you to export your data that includes contacts, data, calendar etc. For this, click on “File” command and then select the “Import and Export”. In the “Import and Export” wizard you will find the “Export in file” option. Select that and click on “Next”. Now select the data format, e.g. “Microsoft Excel 97-2003” or “Commaseparated values (Windows)”. After clicking “Next”, select the Outlook folder to be exported, e.g. “Contacts” and again click “Next”. Now determine the target file. Then start the action by clicking “Next” and “Finish”. Your data will be successfully exported.

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Define and execute surveys(Outlook 2003, 2007, 2010)

             You want to ask friends about a topic via email and want to specify “Yes”, “No” or “May be” as optional answers.

             You can gather votes easily with the help of the vote buttons. Draft a new message and select the recipients. In the menu bar, click on “Options” tab and check “Use voting buttons” in “Voting and Tracking” options. Select one from the three default options like “Approve/ Reject”, “Yes/No” or “Yes/No/Maybe”. You can even custom-define responses by giving the options separated by semicolon one after the other. Formulate the suitable question in the email text and send the message to the desired recipients. The recipients will be notified of the voting option at the top of the message. They can click on “Vote” to reply. They can reply immediately using the set replies or change it and send it by clicking on “Ok”.
              The sender can view the results of the answers in a summary and need not read or edit each reply individually. Instead, the sender can open his original email in the “Sent items” folder and click on “Tracking”. He will be able to see an overview of the results, followed by a list of the individual replies. However, this method of voting functions only internally via various Outlook versions, but not with other mail programs like Thunderbird.

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Automatically extend the list of safe senders(Outlook 2003, 2007, 2010)

               When you write a message to a person, Outlook should enter this recipient automatically in the list of safe senders in order to relieve them of the maintenance of this list.

               You can direct Outlook to gather all the recipients of your message in the list of a certain sender. For this, go to "Tools | options" in the 2003, 2007 version. Under the “Preference” tab click on “Junk e-mail”. In case of Outlook 2010, mark the “Junk e-mail” folder in the navigation bar on the left side of the application. Click a received message classified as junk-e-mail and open the command “Junk e-mail | Junk e-mail options” in the context menu.
                 In both the versions, select the "Safe Sender" tab and check the box next to “Automatically add people I e-mail to the safe sender list" and confirm your selection with “OK”.

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Automatically convert e-mails as schedules or tasks(Outlook 2003, 2007, 2010)

                You receive orders or arrange schedules via e-mail. Then you transfer this information manually to the calendar or define a task for the same. This can be done in a simpler way. The transfer is possible in Outlook via Drag&Drop from e-mails to Calendar. Select the relevant e-mail from the list, then right click and drag it to ‘Calendar’ or ‘Task’ option on the left hand side navigation area. Then release the right key. Outlook will show you a context menu. Here select the desired action. For instance if you select the option ‘Copy here as Appointment with Attachment’ then while your e-mail will remain unchanged in the inbox, you will get all the contents including attachment in a newly created schedule. Here you can edit, make changes before saving it.

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Use the correct reply format in emails(Outlook 2003, 2007, 2010)

               When replying to received emails, your signature is sometimes added in an incorrect manner. You want to know why this happens and how you can resolve this problem.
               Even if you have set HTML format as the default format in the options, it is not always used. This is because when replying to and forwarding mails, Outlook by default uses the format of the received email. In case of a “Plain Text” email format, only text is reformatted along with your signature. When replying to a Plain Text email, retain the same format since the recipient might not be able to read HTML messages. You can, however, format it as HTML when forwarding. You always need to adapt the setting in such a case. For this, go to the dialog box for composing an email and then in the “Format Text” tab or the “Options” tab in Outlook 2007 and change the setting in “Format” to “HTML”.

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Send mails with an expiry date(Outlook 2007, 2010)

               You send emails with a deadline such as invitations, etc. In such cases, you want the recipient to immediately see that the deadline has been overshot if he reads the email late.

               You can assign a validity date to your emails in Outlook. However this works only if the recipient is also using Outlook. For instance, this setting would be of no use if the recipient is using Thunderbird.
              In order to send emails with a validity date, compose a new message in Outlook. Then go to the "Options” tab. In the taskbar in the “Advanced Options” field, click the small arrow icon to open the “Properties” tab. Here activate the “Message valid up to” or the “Expires After” option under Delivery Options. You can set thedate and the time in the adjacent combination fields. Then “Close” the dialog box. You can now send the email as usual.
Note: The expiry date is valid in the overview of the sent items as well. Contrary to popular belief, the content and the access to the content remain valid even after the expiry date. Only the email is shown in gray and is struck out in Outlook. You can thus see at a glance that it is no longer valid.

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Send a copy of your outgoing e-mails automatically(Outlook 2007, 2010)

            You want to mark a BCC of all the emails, which you send, to a particular email address without installing a special add-in or a tool for it.

            You can make this wish come true with VBA programming. For this, open Outlook and press [Alt]+[F11] to start the editor for Microsoft Visual Basic for Application (VBA). Enable the view of VBA modules in a tree structure in the editor via ‘View → Project Explorer’. Then in this structure, click the small plus symbols in front of ‘Project1’ and ‘Microsoft Outlook Project’ and double click ‘ThisOutlookSession’.
             In the code editor window, choose ‘Application’ in the drop-down menu on the top-left. In the drop-down menu on the top-right choose ‘ItemSend’. Then type the following VBA program in the editor after ‘Private Sub Application_ ItemSend(ByVal Item As Object, Cancel As Boolean)’ and before ‘End Sub.’. Replace email@internet.com there with the desired mail address to which Outlook should send BCCs of the sent message automatically. After the input, save your program with [Ctrl]+[S] and close the editor with ‘File → Close and Return to Microsoft Outlook’.
              Note that your security settings may deactivate the macro when you start Outlook. In such a case, either change the settings accordingly or mark your macro.

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