Outlook 2010 – Keith Tuomi – Office 365 & SharePoint Consultant

Retract Outlook emails the effective way – Before they get sent

Written by Keith Tuomi on June 5, 2014. Posted in Office, Office 365, Outlook, Outlook 2010. Leave a Comment

Do you have fat fingers? Trying to format some picture in a draft email and you press “Send” by mistake? Do you regularly YELL SAILOR-WORTHY SWEARING in your email draft and then retract what you write? (that last one can be fixed with therapy btw)

Sounds like you need some risk mitigation – an ability to un-send an accidental email transmission that works a bit better then the generally ineffective Exchange-powered “Retract Email” functionality.

Enter: Delay or schedule sending email messages
http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/outlook-help/delay-or-sche…

Email messages are sent immediately when you click Send. In Microsoft Outlook, you can delay sending a single email message or use rules to delay the delivery of all messages. These messages are held in the Outbox for a specified time after you click Send.

Delay the delivery of all messages

1.Click the File tab.
2.Click Manage Rules & Alerts.
3.Click New Rule.
4.In the Step 1: Select a template box, under Start from a Blank Rule, click Apply rule on messages I send, and then click Next.
5.In the Step 1: Select condition(s) list, select the check boxes for any options that you want, and then click Next.

If you do not select any check boxes, a confirmation dialog box appears. If you click Yes, the rule that you are creating is applied to all messages that you send.
6.In the Step 1: Select action(s) list, select the defer delivery by a number of minutes check box.
7.In the Step 2: Edit the rule description (click an underlined value) box, click the underlined phrase a number of and enter the number of minutes for which you want the messages to be held before it is sent.

Delivery can be delayed up to 120 minutes. < Keith’s note: I find 1 minute to be just right to be able to strike the balance between “Oh crap I messed up with that message” and getting impatient with emails stuck in the Outbox.
8.Click OK, and then click Next.
9.Select the check boxes for any exceptions that you want.
10.Click Next.
11.In the Step 1: Specify a name for this rule box, type a name for the rule.
12.Select the Turn on this rule check box.
13.Click Finish.

After you click Send, each message remains in the Outbox folder for the time that you specified.

Note that these rules are performed only when you are sending from your desktop or web-based Outlook client- currently mobile device Outlook clients do not support running rules of this nature.

Why Outlook Pins All Day Events to the Top Day Header

Written by Keith Tuomi on July 2, 2012. Posted in Outlook 2010. 2 Comments

So we are all a bit ~~chuffed~~ annoyed that when designating an all-day event in Outlook, it doesn’t spread it’s display out over the whole day’s hour-by-hour view. Makes it easy to miss that someone has a holiday off.

The following forum explanation I found details in an end-round way (the person is requesting the actual “pinned” all-day feature that now exists in Outlook 2010) why this functionality is the way it is. In a nutshell, as many programmers know and as we’ve seen from Y2K and numerous actual major outages of computer systems over the years, dates are a pain and in particular time zones, daylight savings and more nuances make it tricky to cater to all scenarios and various integrated user interfaces.

In the Outlook Calendar view there is a distinction between “All Day” and just selecting a block of hours, because “All Day” is a date and a fixed hour range is actually a negotiable figure depending on your time zone.

From: http://www.tech-archive.net/Archive/Outlook/microsoft.public.outlook.calendaring/2010-04/msg00290.html

The all-day-event calender item type that is used for
birthdays/anniversaries/public holidays refers to an actual 24-hour period of
time and changes with time-zone, leading to these events overlapping two
days. There may be some all day events that should respond like this but not
birthdays/anniversaries. Public holidays are currently added in the time zone
of the user, not the country that has the holidays.

If you enter a birthday/anniversary in a contact item, it will give make it
a 24 hour period in the time zone you are in. That is wrong on many counts.
Firstly a birthday is not a particular 24 hour period of time independent of
place, it is a date. Secondly if it were a 24 hour period it would not be
your country but the user’s country that determines the time zone, or to be
very pedantic, his place of birth. Similarly for anniversaries.

If you are in one country A and want to know the national holidays from a
country B in another time zone, then they are added as 24 hour events in your
time zone. If then you move to country B then national holidays in that
country are listed as spanning 2 days.

There should be a type of event that is attached to a date, not a time-span.
Birthdays and anniversaries should create this type of event by default.
National holidays should either create this type of event by default or a
24-hour event in the time zone of the nation with the holidays, not the
user’s.

In importance national holidays are not very significant but birthdays and
anniversaries are useful things to be reminded about and with many contacts
having birthdays span two days is not only incorrect but results in a
confusing display of information.

Firefox Friday #2 – SharePoint & Firefox

Written by Keith Tuomi on December 9, 2011. Posted in Deployment, Development, Errors, Excel 2010, Office, Outlook 2010, SharePoint 2010, SharePoint Enterprise, SharePoint Foundation, SharePoint Standard, Word 2010. 2 Comments

Firefox does have issues when being used with SharePoint, let’s ID the known issues and workarounds:

Feature	Limitation
Connect to Outlook, Connect to Office, and Sync to SharePoint Workspace	Works with an ActiveX control, but requires a Firefox control adaptor. Microsoft Office 2010 does not provide a Firefox control adaptor for this control. The feature also requires an application that is compatible with the stssync:// protocol, such as Microsoft Outlook.
Datasheet view	Requires an ActiveX control, such as the one that is delivered in Microsoft Office 2010, and a Firefox control adaptor. Microsoft Office 2010 does not provide a Firefox control adaptor for this control.
Drag and Drop Web Parts	Cannot be moved by using drag and drop on Web Part pages. Users must click Edit on the Web Part, select Modify Web Part, and then select the zone from the Layout section of the Web Part properties page. Web Parts can be moved using drag and drop on Pages.
Edit in Microsoft Office application	Requires an ActiveX control, such as the one that is delivered in SharePoint Server 2010, and a Firefox control adaptor. For more information about Microsoft Office 2010 Firefox Plug-in, see FFWinPlugin Plug-in (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=199867). If you install and configure the Office Web Applications on the server, the Edit functionality works and you can modify Office documents in your browser. This functionality only works with Microsoft Office 2010 or an equivalent product together with a Firefox plug-in.
Explorer view	Removed in SharePoint Server 2010. Libraries that have been upgraded from earlier versions of SharePoint Server 2010 may still have Explorer views, and these may not work. Explorer view requires Internet Explorer.
Export to Excel	Downloads a file with an .iqy extension to the Web browser. If Microsoft Excel is not installed, and if no other application is configured to open this file, then this feature will not work.
File upload and copy	Requires an ActiveX control, such as the one that is delivered in Microsoft Office 2010, and a Firefox control adaptor. Microsoft Office 2010 does not provide a Firefox control adaptor for this control.
Microsoft InfoPath 2010 integration	Requires an ActiveX control, such as the one that is delivered in Microsoft Office 2010, and a Firefox control adaptor. Microsoft Office 2010 does not provide a Firefox control adaptor for this control.
Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 Picture Library integration	Requires an ActiveX control, such as the one that is delivered in Microsoft Office 2010, and a Firefox control adaptor. Microsoft Office 2010 does not provide a Firefox control adaptor for this control. The user can use the following workarounds when no control has been installed: If a user wants to upload multiple pictures in a picture library, the user must upload one picture at a time by using Upload.aspx. If a user wants to edit a picture in a picture library, the user must download the picture, edit it, and then upload the picture to the picture library. If a user wants to download more than one picture from a picture library, the user must download one picture at a time by clicking on the picture link.
Microsoft Visio 2010 diagram creation	Requires an ActiveX control, such as the one delivered in Microsoft Office 2010, and a Firefox control adaptor. Microsoft Office 2010 does not provide a Firefox control adaptor for this control.
New Document	Requires an ActiveX control, such as the one delivered in Microsoft Office 2010, and a Firefox control adaptor. For more information about Microsoft Office 2010 Firefox Plug-in, see FFWinPlugin Plug-in (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=199867). Although the New Document command may not work, you can use the Upload Document functionality. If you install and configure Office Web Applications on the server, the New Document command works, and you can create an Office document in your browser.
Rich Text Editor – Basic Toolbar	A user can update the Rich Text Editor basic toolbar to a Full Rich Text Editor that includes the ribbon by changing the field’s properties, as follows: On the FldEdit.aspx, in the List Settings menu, select Specific Field Settings. Next, under Columns, click Description. In the Additional Columns Settings section, under Specify the type of text to allow, select Enhanced rich text (Rich text with pictures, tables, and hyperlinks).
Send To	Can leverage an ActiveX control, such as the one that is delivered in Microsoft Office 2010, and a Firefox control adaptor. Microsoft Office 2010 does not provide a Firefox control adaptor for this control. Without the control, files cannot be sent from one SharePoint farm to another SharePoint farm. However, files can still be sent from one site to another site.
Signing Forms (InfoPath Form Services)	Requires an ActiveX control, such as the one that is delivered in Microsoft Office 2010, and a Firefox control adaptor. Microsoft Office 2010 does not provide a Firefox control adaptor for this control.
Spreadsheet and Database integration	Require ActiveX controls, such as those that are delivered in Microsoft Office 2010, and Firefox control adaptors. Microsoft Office 2010 does not provide a Firefox control adaptor for this control. The user can use the following workarounds when no control has been installed: If a user wants to edit a document, the user must download the document, edit it, and then save it back to the server. In a list that requires a document to be checked out for editing, a user must use the Edit menu to check out the document, edit it, and then check it in by using the Edit menu. Export to spreadsheet. Users can export a SharePoint list as a spreadsheet by clicking Export to Spreadsheet on the List tab on the ribbon.
Web Part to Web Part Connections	May require deactivation of browsers pop-up blockers for SharePoint sites.
Slide library and PowerPoint 2010 integration	Require ActiveX controls, such as those that are delivered in Microsoft Office 2010, and Firefox control adaptors. Microsoft Office 2010 does not provide a Firefox control adaptor for this control. The user can use the following workarounds when no control has been installed: Delete a slide. Users can delete a slide by first clicking the slide, and then clicking Delete Slide. Repeat for each slide. The following features do not work on this platform: Copy a slide to a presentation. This feature enables users to add a slide to a PowerPoint 2010 presentation. Publish a slide. This feature enables users to upload a single slide from a PowerPoint 2010 presentation to a slide library. Microsoft Office must be installed on the client computer.