Rosie's Reviews

By Sandra Rosenzweig
     
      Microsoft Office Outlook 2007
      Change for the sake of change?
      A few weeks or so ago (that's a few months ago in your time), I spent a few hours working in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, trying to figure out how to assign a category to a to-do task. I had about 25 categories (California Lawyer, Bills, Birthdays, Legal Tech news, International news, Education, AAA Today) so I could group the items in a findable way (for me). Over the years, and spanning a few versions of Outlook, I have used these categories for my tasks, and although it required a couple of clicks, the technique worked. Until now. Now
      I use Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 on some machines, and while I can still assign a color to an item, I can't apply the category rubrics the way I used them before.
      Ultimately I gave up, but only after I had searched the news groups and Microsoft's Help and Support websites, and even?heaven forefend?watched a Microsoft Web training video, then clicked through just about every part of the Outlook program. Got me nowhere. Yes, I can assign a red flag to, say, AAA Today, but I need to reserve Outlook's flags to apply priorities for follow-up (urgent, expires in a day, expires in a week ...)?another ingrained habit over my many years of use. And get this: Somewhere on one of the 3,000 websites I visited on my quest, Microsoft techies told me that they have made assigning categories much easier in 2007. Uhn-uh.
      They say they made improvements. I say they shook up categories?and a whole lot of other features?just to make good old Outlook look new again. As I review Office 2007 and Windows Vista in the next few months, you'll read this complaint a lot. So many features could use a good fixing now and then?why didn't Microsoft just do that and forget about all the glitz and glitter?
      Let's take Rules, for example. I use Rules (Tools menu, Rules and Alerts, Email Rules tab) to keep my mailboxes organized and to filter spam. I created Rules to automatically file the front-page news feeds of the San Francisco Chronicle, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post in the Headlines subfolder in Outlook. And product announcements from online computer- news sources and fan sites automatically go into my Product News folder. However, except for a few exceptions (this is the month of a few too many fews), you have to create a rule for each sender. This gives you way too many rules?for example, one rule to send each newspaper's front page to Headlines. To create each rule, you go through anywhere from 4 to 20 clicks?a boring, repetitive process that works (and looks) exactly like Outlook 2003's cumbersome process did. Didn't anyone at Microsoft bestow even a glance at Rules and Alerts?
      Ah, but there's another however. Most of my rules are set to run every time a new message arrives in the Inbox. However, they don't always obey. This wouldn't be much of a problem except that each time you want to run the rules manually (Tools menu, Rules and Alerts, Run Rules Now), you have to tick off the box for each separate rule you want to run. And when you have as many rules as I do, that's a lot of check boxes to click. There is no way?none?to select them all at once, the way Ctrl-A does in most Windows programs, such as for Outlook mailboxes. By the time I'm done checking off each box, my right ring finger has gone numb from the keystrokes. And I have yet to find a third-party applet that will do it right automatically.
      In the end, I did manage to find an Outlook add-in to calm my category nerves: Software Solutions' Aladdins Category Organizer sidebar, for Outlook versions back to XP (2002) (www.software-solutions.co.nz, $24.95). Once installed, it shows up in most views of Outlook, along with three icons along the top. Navigate to an Outlook folder that contains all or most of your old categories, then go to Tools, and then Synchronize Master List with the folder. In an instant, you can see all of your categories listed in the sidebar. From then on, all you have to do is click a check box to assign one or more categories to any item in your Outlook folders.
      Only thing is, it doesn't always install smoothly?or at least it acts like it's not there. So, a few caveats: Close Outlook before you start the installation. If Outlook, upon rebooting, disables Category Organizer's .DLL, go to the Help menu, Disabled items, and re-enable said DLL. If both these tips fail, reboot your computer, open Outlook, and check any Outlook page (email, contacts, whatever). If you still don't see the sidebar, re-download and reinstall the program. That should do it.
     

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