Archive of posts filed under the Microsoft Office category.

Quick Word Tip: Using a Style Separator

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In an article on MakeOfficeWork.com, I learned that you can apply 2 paragraph styles to 1 paragraph using a Style Separator. I would love to have known about this feature before as I had quite a few occasions where I wanted to use only part of a heading to appear in a Table of Content (TOC).

The trick is to press CTRL+ALT+ENTER between 2 paragraphs with a different style. This will change the paragraph break of the current paragraph to a Style Separator, merging the current paragraph with the following paragrah without merging the paragraph styles.

Example: using this technique for a paragraph with style Heading 1, followed by another paragragh with another style:
style_separator
generates the following TOC:
toc

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Changing the default Theme (Colors, Fonts, …) in Outlook 2010

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I wanted to ensure I use the proper fonts and colors when creating emails for the company I work for. We have a strong focus on visual identity and Office 2010 allows for creating custom Themes so that the right colors and fonts are used automatically, as this help-document from Microsoft explains.

I could not figure out how set this custom theme as default for Outlook 2010 however. While you can select the theme when creating a new message in the Options tab, there is no option to make the theme the default:
Outlook 2010 New Message Options tab Themes button

Finally I found a way to do this: in C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates, a file NormalEmail.dotm stores the defaults for email messages. Ensure Outlook is closed, open the file in Word 2010, make the necessary changes (select the Theme and modify the Normal style to ensure the right font is used) and save the file.

Now Outlook will use this as default.

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Send E-mail with 1 minute delay in Outlook

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How often did you sent an email, only to realize seconds after clicking the Send-button that you forgot to add an attachment? How many times did you franticly click the “Sent Items” folder, because you thought you just sent a nasty or embarrasing message about somebody to that person by accident? Did you ever get complaints because you accidentally clicked “Reply to All” on a message with a large distribution list?

With Outlook Rules, you can avoid this stress. You can set up a rule that delays the sending of a message with 1 minute. That’s enough time to correct any mistakes, but still fast enough for day-to-day communication.

The instructions and screenshots below are for Outlook 2007, but older and newer versions have similar capabilities:

  1. Tools > Rules and Alerts
    Start from a blank rule >  Check messages after sending
  2. Do not select any conditions in step 1 (just click Next), confirm that this rule will be applied to all messages (click OK)

  3. Select  defer delivery by a number of minutes  as action, click  a number of, specify 1 minute, click OK, Next
  4. If you want, you can create an exception for urgent messages, so that those are anyway sent immediately: check if marked with high importance, click Next
    (Just click Next if you don’t want any exception)
  5. Give the rule a name, click Finish
    If you are using Outlook in an Exchange environment, you will get a warning that this rule will only be active when Outlook is running. Just click OK. (Outlook Rules in an Exchange environment typically run on the server, so that they are applied even if Outlook is not running  on your PC. This is a Rule that only works if Outlook is running)

Once configured, Outlook will wait 1 minute with sending your message after you click “Send”. If you want to make changes to the email during that time, double-click the message in the Outbox-folder. After making the changes, make sure you click Send again. The message will be sent out (again with a 1 minute delay).

Notes:

  • As Outlook needs to be running for this rule to work, you might get a warning message if you try to close Outlook immediately after sending a message, as there still is a message waiting to be sent:Make sure to click Don't Exit and wait 1 minute to ensure your message is sent.
  • If you double-click the message in the Outbox-folder and don’t click the Send-button again, the message will stay in your Outbox and never be sent. Make sure to click the Send-button after making changes. (You can see that the message is ready to be sent as it will show in “Unread” status (i.e. using bold font)
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