There's a new capability in views in Outlook 2003 such that each message can take up two lines in the view, instead of one. Some people find that with the reading pane enabled on the right-hand side, this makes it easier to handle mail without ever...

In OWA 2003, you can now create a message and fill in an address on the To field with a single URL: http://server/exchange/user/drafts/?cmd=new&mailtoaddr=user@domain.com To fill in multiple addresses: http://server/exchange/user...

A discussion I had with some coworkers over lunch reminded me of another "dumpster trick" for Exchange: items deleted via IMAP can be recovered via the dumpster. I previously described the per-folder dumpster concept in September 26th 's blog entry...

In OWA and Outlook, we're always interested in how people manage their inboxes - how do users handle email overload? A few main strategies came out of our usability studies - that users tended to be "Pilers or Filers". Pilers tend to let all their...

Outlook 2002 and later has a feature whereby it will remember the item you last had selected in a mail folder. So if you have item #5 of 10 in your Inbox selected, and you switch to the Sent Items folder and then go back to the Inbox, item #5 will...

Use F6 to switch "panes" in Outlook (between the message view, folder list and reading pane, for example). And while you're in the reading pane, just keep pressing the spacebar to read all the messages in that folder with a single key.

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When you install Exchange 2003, two shortcuts will be added to Exchange's Program Files folder - one to the Exchange Technical Library, and the other to the Exchange Tools & Updates page. This is one of the steps that the Exchange team has taken...

New in Outlook 2003 is the ability to see what Exchange servers Outlook is connected to, as well as other details about those servers and how Outlook is connected to them. To view this data, hold down the CTRL key and right or left click on the...

I've been a fan of SIM games for years, SimCity being one of the first computer games I ever purchased with my own money. So a couple of years ago, I filled out an internal survey about my gaming preferences, checking the box to indicate that I enjoyed...

Starting with Exchange 2000 SP2, you can multi-select days in the calendar to get a side-by-side view of those days:

1. Select the calendar folder in OWA
2. Hold down the CTRL button
3. Click on up to 7 days (they do not need to be contiguous)

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Before I had Jared , I used to travel quite a bit. Outlook has a nice way of helping you keep the multiple timezones straight when you travel: 1. Tools | Options | Calendar Options 2. Time Zone 3. Click "Show an additional time zone", name...

For some reason, the "GNAP!" episode of the Smurfs has been in my head lately, so I went searching for more information on it just because I can . I ran across this review on epinions , which proved to be some entertaining light reading last...

Megan, of The Screensavers fame, reports in her blog today that she is leaving TechTV to become a writer on a Microsoft website. Welcome aboard!

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http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/wotd.rss I  am subscribed to dictionary.com's word of the day feed. It's really useful... although today it is expropriating me of time. And yesterday, I became atrabilious after getting only 5 hours...

Yet a new time waster on the web. Unfortunately, nothing interesting for my name... yet.

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If you use Outlook 2003 with a POP or IMAP account, you can tell Outlook to store the entire MIME source of the item when downloading. The MIME can then be viewed via the View | Options menu on the item (the full MIME will be located in the "Internet...

In Tools | Options | Email Options | Advanced E-Mail Options, there is a setting: "Suggest names while completing the To, Cc and Bcc fields." When enabled, Outlook suggests matches as you're typing in these fields, much like IE will suggest URLs as...

A friend who used to work at Amazon gave me at tip about how to shorten their URLs. For example, here is a standard URL to an Amazon item: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000ALFVD/ref=amb_center-3_6699/002-8270699-8637653 ...

I read a comment in Joel Spolsky 's blog last month about Rick Chapman's book, In Search Of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters and ended up buying it. I have since finished it and loaned it to a coworker, who in turn loaned...

Exchange has a feature called 'deleted item recovery', usually referred to as the dumpster. When it is enabled, when you empty your deleted items folder, items are placed in the dumpster for a server-configured number of days. The client can choose...

It stands for Out Of Facilities. Fascinating, eh? I guess "OOO" just isn't as nice to say.

The ability to customize toolbars has been around for several versions now, but it doesn't seem to be very widely used in my unofficial survey. I make heavy use of customized toolbars in Outlook, specifically for adding my own keyboard shortcuts...

My name is KC Lemson, I'm a program manager in the Exchange server team at Microsoft. I've been working with e-mail in one form or another for the last 5 years as a PM and tester at Microsoft. Previous to that, I was a linux/bsd systems administrator...