Let's Really Fix Outlook Now

After the apparent success twits had in forcing Apple to change their iPhone upgrade policy, a group calling themselves Email Standards Project, backed by CampaignMonitor and other email-marketers, is trying to use Twitter to convince Microsoft to change how Outlook renders HTML.

Although you may not realize it from reading many of the comments on the FixOutlook website and other blogs, Outlook 2010 will render HTML pretty much the same way it is rendered in Outlook 2007. Word's HTML rendering capabilities are limited but this limitation improves the security in Outlook - scripts and other active content aren't supported in Word.

This "movement" is not about fixing areas where Outlook is "broken" (and there are many) - its solely about making it easier for email marketers to design email so that it has all the bells and whistles found on web pages and works perfectly in all email clients.

As one designer so eloquently stated to a user who doesn't like fancy HTML messages, "It's not about you. It's mostly about the designers and developers having to cobble together hack included versions of already standards compliant collateral."

That's certainly the truth. Few regular users complain about the lack of CSS support in Outlook. I see many more complaints from users about double spacing when sending mail to recipients using web clients and the lack of support for animated GIFs.

Focusing on the end-user experience is more important. Fix what's really broken so end users, not email marketers, can be more productive.

To this end, I set up a forum so everyone can share what they'd really like to see fixed in Outlook 2010.
http://forums.slipstick.com/forumdisplay.php?f=34 

The Power of Word in Outlook - Outlook Team blog
http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/archive/2009/06/24/the-power-of-word-in-outlook.aspx 

Word 2007 HTML and CSS Rendering Capabilities in Outlook 2007
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa338201.aspx 

2007 Office System Tool: Outlook HTML and CSS Validator:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=0b764c08-0f86-431e-8bd5-ef0e9ce26a3a 

Outlook's broken - Let's fix it
http://fixoutlook.org/ 

Always Show the BCC Field in OWA 2007

In OWA 2003, the BCC field is shown by default but in OWA 2007, if you want to send a message BCC you need to either click the To button to open the Address book and select or type addresses into the Message recipients BCC field or enable it in the message form using Options, Show BCC, then enter the addresses. A reader wants to know if there is a way to turn this field on by default as it was in OWA 2003.

Sure. If you want to always see the BCC field, you need to modify editmessage.aspx.

Look for this line: <tr id="trBcc" <%= ShowBcc ? "" : " style=\"display:none\"" %>>
And change it to just: <tr id="trBcc">

Creating Recurring Workday Appointments

I see a lot of questions from users asking how to set up a specific type of recurring appointment. For example, if your workdays are not weekdays (Monday through Friday), you can't use the Daily, Every weekday recurrence pattern because this pattern uses weekdays, not workdays as set in Outlook. But you can set up a workday recurrence if you use Weekly and select the days you work. Use this method to set up recurring events that recur on the same day of the week every x weeks.

The answers to other common recurrence questions include:
Create yearly appointments to recur on this day every 12 months (or multiple of 12), if you aren't using Outlook 2007 SP1, which added a yearly recurrence type. Quarterly appointments are every 13 weeks. Or every 90 days, or every 3 months.

Shift work and other recurrences that don't fit a pattern require multiple appointments that do fit a pattern. If the dates fit a pattern but the hours don't, you can't use recurring appointments. Well, you could create a recurring appointment then set exceptions but you should try to avoid making too many exceptions to recurring appointments.

Outlook's monthly recurrence doesn't offer a 5th week of the month in part because of the inability to know what the user expected when a month didn't have 5 weeks - do they skip the appointment or move it to a different date?

Holidays and weekends are not taken into consideration when scheduling 'every xx days' appointments (or any appointments for that matter). You can use Excel to create appointments that skip weekends and holidays then import into Outlook or use WS:Repeat Appointment II. While using individual items increases the size of your calendar (multiple appointments are larger than one recurring appointment) , if you need to take notes on each date you are less likely to lose your notes should you need to regenerate the meeting.

If you delete an occurrence, you create an exception to the appointment and the deleted exception is not moved to the deleted items folder. You may be able to get the deleted occurrence back by making changes to the series that will cause Outlook to regenerate the appointment, such as changing the end date, but you risk losing notes or other exceptions. Before regenerating the appointment, make a copy of the appointment (use a table view) so you can recover the lost data if it doesn’t work as expected.

Use Excel to Create Appointments for Every X Workday (and a link to WS:Repeat Appointment II)
http://www.outlook-tips.net/howto/everyx.htm 

Outlook Quick Tip: Stop Adding Country Codes to Contact Phone Numbers

If your country/region code (i.e., +1 for US residents) is added to your phone numbers as soon as you tab out of the number field, from the Contacts Folder, go to Actions, Call Contact, New Call... , Dialing Options… and remove the check from Automatically add country/region code to local phone numbers. When this is unchecked, the country code should only be added if you check the phone number by clicking the buttons to the left of the number field (Business, Business Fax etc).