500 Tips
E-mail
Microsoft Mail/Exchange

Up Close and Personal

You can quickly add addresses to your Personal Address Book in Exchange. When you get a message, right-click on the address in the From: field and select "Add to personal address book."

Keep It Thin

It's easy to resize columns in Exchange, but here's a twist: If you double-click on the border between column headings, Windows will automatically resize the column to the narrowest width that will still show all the data in the column.

Folder Feats

Normally you can view only the messages that are stored in a single folder. However, if you want to look at the contents of two folders simultaneously-for example, your inbox and outbox folders-select View/New Window. You can click on the inbox folder in one window and the outbox in the other, and then move and resize the windows so that both are visible.

Letter Opener

If you'd like to take a sneak peek at your messages before they're opened, select View/Columns, choose Item Text from the list on the left, click on Add and then OK. Part of the message text will appear in a column in your inbox display. You can adjust the width and placement of the text column in the Columns dialog box to display as much of the message text as desired.

Finders Keepers

Use the Find command to locate a message in an overstuffed mailbox. Select Tools/Find to open the Find dialog box, then enter your search criteria in one or more of the fields and pick the folder to search. Among the criteria you can use for a search are From, Sent To, Subject and text in the message of a body.

The Message Is a Message

You can include another message as an attachment to a new message. Create a new message, and select Insert/Message. In the dialog box, you can browse all the messages in your folders until you find the one you want to attach; once you've found it, double-click on it to attach. You can also attach files to messages (Insert/File) or other objects (Insert/Object).

Spellbinding Messages

Make sure every "i" is dotted and each "t" is crossed by spell-checking your messages before you send them. In a message, select Tools/Spelling. To customize the way your messages are checked, select Tools/Options, click on the Spelling tab and select or deselect the options.

[ Go to 500 Tips Table of Contents ]