Outlook Today Links are Underlined

Its not uncommon for new software to have an unexpected effect with the behavior of Outlook and the Internet Explorer 8 beta is no exception. On the Outlook Today page times, Appointments and Tasks and all other links are underlined and this can make the Outlook Today page difficult to read.

Because Outlook Today uses IE to render the HTML, all of the links in Outlook Today are affected by the way the new version of IE handles styles. IE's default setting is to underline all links if a style is not applied, but IE8 ignores the CSS Outlook Today uses for links and the links are underlined, per the default setting.
Folder Homepages don't appear to be affected, only Outlook Today.

You can change the setting in IE's Internet Options but keep in mind it will apply to all HTML pages, not just Outlook Today.

From either Control Panel or IE's Tools menu, open Internet Options, Advanced tab. About halfway down the list of options, under the Browsing section, is Underline links, with three choices:
- Always
- Hover
- Never

The default selection is Always. Choose Hover or None.
Click OK to save the settings and close the dialog.

The changes take effect immediately, without restarting Outlook or refreshing the Outlook Today page.

Changing the Default Settings for New Items

Are there any settings you'd like to use for all appointments or contacts, such as all new appointments are marked private? Or all new timed events show the time as free? Maybe all new appointments should use a specific category? The Home address as the default mailing address?

Although Outlook doesn't allow you to choose the defaults for these settings, you can easily change the default for some fields by publishing a custom form with these (and other) settings selected, and then set the new form as the default form for new items.

It takes just a few steps:

Open a new item.
Make the changes you want to be used as default.
Go to Tools, Forms, Publish form as…and publish the form. If you want to use this in multiple folders, publish it to the Personal Forms Library, otherwise you can publish it to the Outlook folders. If you use Outlook 2007, you need to show the developer ribbon. Do this from the Office Orb, Editor Options dialog.

To use the form:
Right click on each folder where this form should be used as default and choose Properties. In the "When posting to this folder" dropdown, select the new form. Now when you click New, the form you created will be used.

There are just a few limitations: You can't set a custom for new mail, or do this for all fields. If you use multiple calendar or contacts folders, the form needs to be set as default for all folders.

Publishing Custom Forms - includes screenshots
http://www.outlook-tips.net/beginner/publish_form.htm 

Change Email Display Name

Several users asked for a way to make the Email Display as field uniform across all contacts. New contacts will use "Full name (email address)" format but existing contacts may use just the full name and editing the full name won't usually change the display name unless you also edit the email address.

You can use VBA to make all contacts use the same display name format. The VBA is almost identical to the VBA used to change the File As field (EMO, September 5 2008).

Change the strFileAs portion of the code to something like this:

strFileAs = .FullName & " (" & .Email1Address & ")"
Or
strFileAs = .CompanyName & " (" & .Email1Address & ")"

And the .FileAs snippet to

.Email1DisplayName= strFileAs

While you can construct display names using different fields, you'll need to separate the fields with spaces or commas. If a field is blank, you'll be left with extra spaces or commas. For example, if you use
strFileAs = .CompanyName & ", " & .FullName & " (" & .Email1Address & ")"
and the company field is blank on my contact, my display name would be
", Diane Poremsky (diane@slipstick.com)".

See http://www.slipstick.com/contacts/emaildisplayname.htm for the complete VBA code sample and instructions.

Exchange Quick Tip: Remove Internal Host Headers

A reader asks: "Can I remove the Internal host name and IP address from the Received: message header? We're using Exchange 2007."

Yes, you can remove it. Use the following script in the management shell:

Remember to replace the Connector_Name with your actual send connector name before running it.