If you utilize an Exchange environment in your office, a very seldom used feature is the ability to hyperlink to shared objects. What can end up happening is users just email documents back in forth or other chaotic methods which just lead to clutter more than anything. So to get started with hyperlinks the easy way, check out the free utility, Linker.

Linker [...] creates hyperlinks to items and folders in Outlook, and to files and folders in Windows Explorer. It is a system tray applet places the hyperlink in the Windows clipboard. The hyperlink can then be pasted into any Microsoft Office document, web page, e-mail message, or any document that supports hyperlinks. While this is an important feature for the efficient and productive use of shared items in an Exchange public folder system,  there was no  convenient way to create these hyperlinks – until now.

While this utility certainly isn’t for everyone, for those of you with a use for it, this tool can really save you some time.

If email is your communication method of choice, the faster it is to compose messages the better. One thing I find myself doing quite a bit is attaching/embedding images (screenshots) and files.

If you use Outlook and your text formatting is either RTF or HTML, did you know you can paste copied files and images directly into the message via Ctrl+V? I find this incredibily useful, especially when it comes to screenshots. Since they are copied to my clipboard, I don’t have to save them to a file first before I can get them in an email. Web-based clients do not have this functionality as you have to browse to and manually attach each file.

I am sure this functionality exists in many other email clients as well, so if your client of choice does this, please share.

If you make use of Outlook’s contact management functionality, over time you may accumulate duplicate entries as you sync with your mobile device, contacts move companies, additional data is imported or [insert reason here]. If this is the case and you are looking for a tool to help remove the duplicates then check out Contacts Scrubber for Outlook.

Scrubber works by comparing all of your Outlook Contacts, looking for possible duplicate items. As it finds these potential duplicates, it presents them to you one at a time via an intuitive interface, displaying field-by-field comparisons of the contact data, and proposing a logical way to merge this data into a single contact item. You may then merge the contacts by either accepting Scrubber’s proposed merge, or you can select which values to used on a field-by-field basis in the merged contact item. Great for eliminating duplicate Outlook Contacts created by your BlackBerry or iPhone.

Contacts Scrubber works on Outlook (not Express though) 2000 and later. The free version of this program processes up to 1,000 entries so if you have more contacts or need additional features, taking a look at the pro version might be worth the time.

I learned of fixoutlook.org from this article, so I’d like to add into the fray why I don’t use Outlook personally.

First of all, I used to use Outlook. And I’m not talking about Outlook Express here, I mean the full version of Outlook. The client was good but there were certain things about the software that really rubbed me the wrong way.

I couldn’t stand the "heavy" nature of it. Outlook has always been a beast. Yes, I know it has a ton of functionality to it (which is a huge perk), but the tradeoff is that the software is huge not only in size but also in what it eats up for memory.

It’s a target. The only time I ever, and I mean ever, got viruses from emails that actually infected my computer was from Outlook. Being it’s so widely used it is a huge target for getting your computer infected. In an enterprise environment this isn’t really a problem since there’s an I.T. staff ready to take care of problems like that, should they occur. But for the home user, you really have to make sure you’ve got some better-than-average protection specifically for your email when using Outlook.

The Word rendering engine. This is a huge bone of contention with a ton of people and the primary focus for the article linked above. I also hated this because that engine never rendered HTML emails correctly. And for Outlook 2010 it’s probably not going to change.

The reason the Word engine is bad is because it’s the "Microsoft Way" of viewing email which does not follow web standards. And yes, this has to change. Email should be rendered in the client in such a way where it follows standards like everybody else does it.

Do you use Outlook now? Is there stuff about it you can’t stand?

(I’m particularly interested in I.T. guys out there who have to support this thing on an enterprise level.)

Let us know by posting a comment.

Outlook users: have you ever sent an email which was supposed to have an attachment, but didn’t attach the file? Of course you have. To help prevent this in the future, check out the free Outlook plugin: Missing Attachment PowerToy.

This free PowerToy for Microsoft Outlook is designed to help you avoid that exact scenario, helping you save time and avoid needless embarrassment: When the Missing Attachment PowerToy detects an outbound e-mail message containing words which you typically use when including attachments, it will offer you an opportunity to revise the e-mail before Outlook sends it on its way!

Not too much else to add here. You can customize the words the tool scans for before sending to fit your typical verbiage, so there is flexibility. One important note though is it only works with Outlook 2007.

Are you constantly being bombarded by email messages which are interupting your work? Rather than going through the ‘drastic’ measure of closing your email client, try the Email Prioritizer plugin for Outlook 2007.

This plugin temporary pauses email from being delivered so you can work uninterrupted for a period of time. To me, this is a better alternative to closing your email client because you may forget to open it back up for long time (this has happened to me several times). With this plugin, once the timer expires, your email will flow like normal.

It gives you the ability to temporarily pause new email arrival by clicking its “do not disturb” button and prioritize email with a 0-3 star rating system. This add-in simply adds two buttons to your toolbar, but the power is in how it can simplify your email life.

Unfortunately, this plugin is limited to Outlook 2007 running on an Exchange Server. So keep this in mind before you give it a try.

The PCMech Premium members have read (and seen in video) in great detail the lengths I go to to instruct how to archive email, be it POP, IMAP, Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail and so on.

This article however is a freebie because it involves now-ancient mail data formats and how to convert them to modern format. And I know there are some poor souls out there still using these format types, so hopefully after reading this they will upgrade to something better like Mozilla Thunderbird, Windows Live Mail or a current version of Microsoft Outlook.

And if you hate email clients, once you pull mail into a client you can push it over to Gmail (IMAP/any modern mail client) or Hotmail (DeltaSync/Windows Live Mail) afterwards.

The two ancient formats I will speak of are Eudora and pre-2003 Microsoft Outlook PST archives. Very recently I discovered I had email archives on CD dating all the way back to 2001 which used these two formats. I wrote about this on my personal site, so I can speak first hand on how the conversions work.

Eudora to Thunderbird

Believe it or not there are those who still use Eudora and absolutely positively refuse to give it up (much like Microsoft Outlook users). They are affectionately called "Eudorka" users.

Eudora has an interesting way of storing mail, because if any mail contains a file attachment it is not stored within the individual emails themselves but rather a separate directory called "attach". This is not as odd as you would think because computers back then were slower, and separating the attachments from the mail itself actually worked better as it took less system resource. This is part of the reason Eudorka people love the client so much.

The easy way

Use Mozilla Thunderbird. It has built-in import support for Eudora import. However it will not grab the file attachments. Not with Eudora 5.1, anyway.

The hard way

On a Mac: Eudora Mailbox Cleaner

On Windows: Eudora Rescue

Both of these will convert to a more modern mbox format that Thunderbird can import easily including all the file attachments. But neither are easy to use. Works, yes, but not easy.

Microsoft Outlook PST to Windows Live Mail

The deal with Outlook PST files is that the pre-2003 Outlook client has a maximum allowed PST size of 2GB. Those who have worked in tech support long enough are quite familiar with the Inbox Repair Tool, a.k.a. scanpst.exe to fix/repair the stupid thing whenever it reaches its cap.

Outlook 2003 to present version on the other hand has a 33TB PST file size limit using the modern unicode format. Huge difference. There is no automatic way to convert an old PST to the current unicode one. But you can perform an import. More on that in a moment.

The easy way

Assuming you’re using Windows XP, if you already have Outlook 97 to 2000 installed (why you’re using something that old I have no idea), have Outlook Express 6 import all your mail. Go into Outlook Express, click File, Import, Messages, select Microsoft Outlook and it’s a done deal.

After that, run Windows Live Mail and click File, Import, Messages and pull in all your mail from Outlook Express 6. Works like a charm. After that, go back to OE6 and delete all the mail out of there since you’ll be using WLmail.

The hard way

Buy a new copy of Outlook, perform an import from the old PST to a new unicode version which the current Outlook creates by default. Remember, there is no automatic conversion from old-to-new PST. You must import from the old to the new manually. I label this as the hard way because you have to flip out cash to do it. Otherwise it’s easy.

Q: Can you convert a Microsoft Outlook pre-2003 PST without Outlook?

A: No. It’s a protected format by Microsoft. There is no known utility (none that I know of anyway) that will convert a PST without having Outlook physically installed. You absolutely must do it the Outlook way.

This, by the way, is a huge reason I am very anti-Outlook. I have never liked the fact that everything you do in a local Outlook database is one big honkin’ proprietary file that cannot be worked with unless you specifically have the Outlook client installed.

Should you fear that the email client you upgrade to will become obsolete?

All software inevitably becomes obsolete. What you have to do is use software that is continually developed with newer versions over time that you either upgrade to for free or purchase when needed.

If you use Microsoft Outlook, yes you will have to buy a new version of it every few years and there’s no way around that. And as long as Microsoft exists and people store data locally, there will be Outlook. It will be around a long, long time.

If you use a free mail client, you will have to periodically download and install an upgrade it when new versions are released. Mozilla Thunderbird/SeaMonkey is actively developed, as is Apple Mail and Opera’s built-in mail client. Ones that have active development and widespread use will stick around for a long time.

Is the email client on the deathbed?

No. Not by a long shot. The day we have no more email client programs is the day we have flying cars. Just stick with a current version of an email client and you’ll be a-okay.

To you Eudorkas out there, don’t go with Penelope. For the love of creamed corn and Christmas, use Thunderbird.

For you GMail users out there who like the threaded view (such as myself) looking to make Outlook behave the same way, be sure to check out this post: Give Outlook a GMail Conversation view. The author walks you through the entire process of setting up your Outlook inbox to behave like GMail. It is pretty simple to do and you can always go back to the standard view if you don’t like it.

Unfortunately, you cannot get the behavior to be exact (GMail archiving, for example), but you can get pretty close. Regardless, this is definitely worth a try if you like the GMail interface.

In most enterprise environments the mail server used most often is Microsoft Exchange. This has been the de facto standard for many years. Corporations like it a lot because not only does it do mail but a ton of collaborative features as well. When connected via the Microsoft Outlook client, it is truly a powerhouse setup.

Wondering if there was any Linux messaging platform that would fit the bill as well as Exchange (or at least put up a good fight), I searched around and did in fact find something on the Linux side that’s not too shabby:

Scalix.

There are a few things I like about Scalix up front.

The enterprise version is not free (although the Community Edition is). I appreciate the fact that Scalix has a paid enterprise version because the fact of the matter is that enterprise cannot run solely on community supported stuff. Enterprise is a business after all, and where there’s money to be made, money has to be spent. Paying for an enterprise-class messaging platform is worth the money.

This is truly enterprise-class messaging we’re talking about. This is not some haphazard badly-designed mish-mosh of code. Rather it’s something that took a lot of time and effort to put together.

The fact Scalix works with Evolution, iCal, Thunderbird, MS Outlook and more is a huge plus.

I seriously dig the fact Scalix explains (even if in basic terms) that the TCO is worth checking out – particularly the last paragraph titled "Transition Seamlessly." The biggest gripe about switching over to anything in enterprise is the migration process. It is never easy, but at least Scalix went thru the effort to ensure the migration will be as headache-free as possible.

It’s the migration notes that really caught my eye here. Most Linux advocates are usually of the opinion "You’re just used to Microsoft, just switch and figure it out", which as anyone with a brain realizes is a stupid maneuver. Migrations have to be planned carefully and timed just right. Scalix even went so far as to say (more or less) "Hey, if you’re using Exchange right now, don’t worry – we’ve got tools to migrate you over."

I wish (oh do I ever) that Linux distribution OSes were more like this, as in the kind that give you a sense of confidence if you want to make the jump.

Remember the Community Edition listed above. If you’re interested in running your own enterprise-class mail server, it’s free for download if you want to check it out. Granted, you don’t get the perks of the enterprise edition, but hey, enterprise-class only a download away? Not bad if you asked me.

Upfront full disclosure: I am not a Hotmail user. However, Hotmail users who also take advantage of Microsoft Outlook might want to grab the Microsoft Office Outlook Connector. This tool allows you to access and control your Hotmail data directly from Outlook 2003/2007:

With Microsoft Office Outlook Connector, you can use Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 or Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to access and manage your Microsoft Windows Live Hotmail or Microsoft Office Live Mail accounts, including e-mail messages, contacts and calendars for free!

This goes above and beyond the capabilities of POP and IMAP as you are able to control your contacts and calendar, which can be extremely useful.

So if you are a user of both, give this tool a try.

Outlook is so much more than just an email client. It offers everything you need to organize yourself: a calendar, todo list and an RSS reader (in 2007 at least). That said, email is by far the most prevalent feature and typically leads to use of the other functions.

Microsoft has a really nice, brief article outlining some of these features. The items I found most useful were points 6 and 7. Expanding on point 7, when you right click on an email item you can also set a reminder from the follow up menu. This will give you a pop-up at the specified time and is great for sending you reminder of upcoming meetings or required correspondence.

In my opinion, Outlook is without a doubt the best “email” client out there. Does anyone have any other tips they would like to pass along?

I will admittedly eat a bit of crow on this one (considering I’m not too fond of Gmail) but in what has been the single largest deployment of Gmail ever, 1.5 million Australian students will now be using Gmail instead of Outlook w/Exchange.

This is what you call the ultimate in TCO. All students got bumped from 35MB to 1GB and the super-friendly nature of Gmail in a web browser makes this a very, very smart choice.

Things like this get attention because it proves without a shadow of a doubt that Gmail can work in large enterprise and save money at the same time.

Even though I’m not particular to Gmail personally, this is just plain cool. And to those that wanted yet another reason to stick it to Microsoft, there you go.

[Source: washingtonpost.com]

If you use Outlook as your mail client, one of the more popular features is the new mail desktop notification which pops up a notice for a few seconds regarding new mail items received. While this is handy for normal use it is a distraction (or embarrassing when some “inappropriate” spam is sent to you) when you are sharing your desktop for others to see.

To avoid this, you can either close Outlook completely, disable the notification (In Outlook 2003/2007: Right click on the Outlook icon in your system tray and uncheck ‘Show New Mail Desktop Alert’) or, if you have multiple monitors, you can move it. I commonly share my desktop to demonstrate stuff, so I have just simply moved the new mail notification box to my second monitor (do this by dragging the popup to the second monitor when you get a new notification). This way I don’t have to remember to shut it off or close Outlook completely each time and when I get a notification, it appears on a monitor which is not shared.