How To Use Microsoft Outlook 2003 (ver 4.4) This document can be found at www.econocaribe.net under FAQ, Email Problems Opening Outlook Double click on the Microsoft Outlook icon. The Outlook icon should always be showing in the gray bar (taskbar) at the bottom of the windows screen. IMPORTANT NOTE WHEN STARTING OUTLOOK: When you first open Outlook in the morning, follow these steps 1 – It will automatically startup and display the Inbox in your Personal area, but we do not use this, so, you must open up the area called ECI (IMAP), and click on the Inbox under there. 2 - When you click on this Inbox, it may seem like your computer is frozen for about 2 minutes. This is normal because it is downloading Header information. You should see a small box pop, with information on what it is doing, but if you don’t , press the Alt-Tab keys, and you should see the Headers box with a status bar. DO NOT TRY to use Outlook while it is downloading headers, just wait it out, or minimize and go to a different application. 3 - Once the headers are done, you will see a bunch of emails, with a small piece of paper next to each one, this means you only have received header information such as To,From, Subject… Now you should click on the Send/Receive button and it will quickly retrieve all your emails. You should only click on Send/Receive once a day, in the morning, no need to use it throughout the day as your emails automatically come in to your Inbox. 4 - Reminder: Any emails you create, will sit in your Outbox until you press the “Send All” button. 5 - Reminder: Keep your Inbox as small as possible, move emails to other mailboxes on a regular basis. This way outlook will work faster for you. 6 – When you switch in and out of outlook throughout your workday, you will notice it “freezing up” when you first go back to Outlook, this is normal, and should be short, and you may not see any Information box appear. Just wait it out, in general the freeze ups should be quick, but while they are happening you cannot use Outlook, but you can minimize it to do other things. 7 – DO NOT CREATE mailboxes inside of your IMAP Inbox. This is important. Are you having problems using outlook when out of the office? See Appendix A below for help with common problems. SECTION I: EMAIL Address Book – How to update and use There are 2 address books, with the following names: Smartermail – ECI Contacts (this shows all the email addresses of ECI employees and agents, and DLs) Smartermail – My Contacts (these are your own personal contacts, stored on our Email server) To update your ECI Contacts address book, simply click on Contacts in the lower left corner of your Outlook screen. Then underneath “Other Contacts” in the upper left corner, click once on each of the 2 address books Smartermail - ECI Contacts and Smartermail – My Contacts, and , and after clicking, you should see the lsit of names flash very fast for about a minute. Look in the bottom right corner for the update progress (percentage complete) This is because it is getting the updates from the email server. Once the flashing is done (100% complete), click on the next of the 2 address books. When done, in lower left corner, click on Mail to return to your Emails. To create a new message, and select a recipient from your address book Click the new message icon, and then click on the To button, and up pops the “Select Name” dialog box In the top right corner of this window, select one of the 2 address books listed above Then in the box on the left, type the first few characters of the persons name, Press enter when you find the name Press Ok at bottom of window, when done selecting all the names you want to send to. Adding Personal Contacts DO NOT add your personal contact directly into the Outlook program, because they will not be backed up. Here is how to add contacts: From www.econocaribe.net, login to the Employee Email system (Smartermail) On the left side, click on Contacts to open the contacts folder, then click on My Contacts To add a new contact, at the top of your contact list, click on Add Contact Fill out the fields with the information that you have, and click on the other tabs to see more information fields. Once done, click on “Save” right above the tabs. This will save the contact information on our Email server. Once you are back in Outlook, go into your Contacts area, and click on Smartermail – My Contacts at the top left. The screen may flash for a minute while it updates. Then you should see all the info you typed in before, right here in Outlook.
Sending Messages Creating a New Message Click on the New icon in upper left, Fill out the fields on screen, and the body Click SEND when done Use Ctrl-K to fetch an email address from the address book, after you type in a few letters of the persons name Requesting a Return Receipt When creating a new message, before you press SEND, click on Options, and then Options, and put a checkmark on : Request a delivery receipt, and Request a read receipt. Test it out with a friend. To mark your email as High Priority, click on the red exclamation point ( ! ) before you press SEND Send with Attachment: To attach a file to your email, click on the small icon of a paperclip at the top of the email, then choose the file from the “Open” window, and it will attach it to your email. IMPORTANT NOTE: When you press Send, the message will go into your Personal Outbox, and wait there until Send All is pressed. All sent emails will appear in the Sent Items folder under ECI (IMAP) Receiving Messages When you have new mail, simply double click on the message to view it, or use the Preview Pane After reading it, choose one of the following To Delete -> Click on the X
To Close -> Press the 'X' in the top right corner of message to close it To Reply -> Click on Reply To Forward -> Click on the Forward To icon To Move to another mailbox – Drag it to the other mailbox Content Filtering Must use Smartermail to set up filters. Ask IT dept to help you with this if you require it. Sorting your inbox (or any mailbox) Click on the header of the column you want to sort by. Sort By Conversation: Right click anywhere in the header line, choose Arrange By, and choose Conversation Creating new mailboxes On the left side, right click on ECI (IMAP), and choose New Folder Give it a name, MAKE SURE it is located under ECI (IMAP), and press OK. This way the folder will be stored on our mail server.
Distribution Lists A Distribution list is a list of email addresses that you want to group together, for example in an“Accounting Department” DL, you would have a list of the email addresses of all the people in that dept. To create a DL in our system, when in Outlook, click on Contacts in the lower left corner. Highlight “Contacts” in upper left, underneath “My Contacts.” In the top left, click on File, New, and choose Distribution List. Give the list a name, and then click on Select Members, and choose the people you want to be in that list. Click Save and Close when done. NOTE: Distribution Lists are not backed up, they are only saved on your computer. If you have a list stored in a text file, or a word file, you can import it into a DL. Copy all the addresses from your text file, then start a new DL, choose Select Members, and copy and paste your addresses into the Members box near the bottom. Save.
Views Scroll down underneath your mailboxes to the area that says current views. You will see some options there that you can select by clicking on the small circle (known as a radio button). You should always have it set to “ECI Standard View” You can view all of your deleted emails by clicking on “ECI Deleted Items” and You can view all of your Unread emails by clicking on “Unread” Make sure you return to “ECI Standard View” when done. THIS SHOULD ALWAYS BE THE SELECTED VIEW. Signature Tools, Options, Mail Format, Signatures. Click on the Signatures button. Click on New, give it a name, and start with a blank signature. Fill it out and save it. Choose it for “new messages” Make sure you add the Econocaribe disclaimer to the end of your message, EXAMPLE: ==================================== John Doe, Imports Coordinator Econocaribe Consolidators Inc. email: jdoe@econocaribe.com ph: 305-894-3999 fax: 305-735-9999 AOLIM: jdoe Skype: johndoe ====================================
****************************************************************************** This email is solely for the intended recipient. If you are not the intended recipient, then any copying or redistributing of this email is strictly prohibited. If you received this message in error, then you should immediately notify the sender by telephone or return email and then delete it from your computer. Any views or opinions expressed in this email are not necessarily those of Econocaribe Consolidators Inc. ******************************************************************************
Color Coding your emails manually Open the mailbox that you would like to set up the color coding for, i.e. Inbox, and make sure your view is set to ECI Standard View. Choose View, Arrange By, Current View, Customize Current View Choose Automatic Formatting, click on Add Name it the color of the flag you are creating, i.e. RedFlag Click on Font, and choose the Color that matches the name you created, i.e. the Red color, press OK Now click on condition and choose the Advanced tab Drop down the Field list, and point to All Mail Fields, and then choose Flag Color, leave condition as Equals, and under Value choose the name that matches the color you are creating. Press OK, Yes, OK, OK. Color Coding your emails that come in as cc (i.e. show all CC emails in Red color) Note: This can also be used for the FROM header (to highlight all emails from one person) Open the mailbox that you would like to set up the color coding for, i.e. Inbox Choose View, Arrange By, Current View, Customize Current View Choose Automatic Formatting, click on Add Name it CCinRed (or whichever color you are using) Click on Font, and choose the Color that matches the name you created, i.e. the Red color, press OK Now click on Condition and choose the Advanced tab
Drop down the Field list, and point to Address Fields, and then choose CC, leave condition as Contains, and under Value type your last name. Press OK, Yes, OK, OK. Color Coding your emails that come in as Bcc (i.e. show all Bcc emails in Red color) Note: The logic here, if you are not in the To box, or in the CC box, then you must be in the Bcc box. Open the mailbox that you would like to set up the color coding for, i.e. Inbox Choose View, Arrange By, Current View, Customize Current View Choose Automatic Formatting, click on Add Name it BccinRed (or whichever color you are using) Click on Font, and choose the Color that matches the name you created, i.e. the Red color, press OK Now click on Condition and choose the Advanced tab Drop down the Field list, and point to Address Fields, and then choose CC, change condition to doesn’t contain, and under Value type your last name. Click on Add to List. Drop down the Field list, and point to Address Fields, and then choose TO, change condition to doesn’t contain, and under Value type your last name. Click on Add to List. Press OK, Yes, OK, OK.
Attachments If you receive an email with an attachment, first open the email, then double click on the attachment to view it. You cannot modify an attachment that you opened from the Reading preview pane, but if you open the email completely, and then open the attachment, you will be able to modify it. When sending an attachment to a Eudora user, you must send the email in “Plain Text” format. To do this, right before you press the Send button, choose Format at the top, and then choose Plain Text. Otherwise outlook may automatically convert your attachment to a file called “winmail.dat” which is useless to non-Outlook email users.
Saving attachments for easy retrieval later on Normally, attachments are saved within an email (embedded), and you cannot separate them out, and search for attachments easily. However there is a feature you can use to save attachments in a folder , and you can easily find them later on. To do this, simply open the email that has and attachment, and then choose File, Save Attachments, and when the window pops up, on the left side, click on My Computer, then double click Drive-C, then double click the Attach folder on the C: drive, and press Save to save a copy of the attachment in that folder. You can then easily browse your attachments in that folder at anytime later on.
Forwarding Attachments When viewing the list of emails in your Inbox, click once on the email that has the attachment so that it is viewed in your reading pane. Now start a brand new message. At any time, you can right click on the attachment, choose Copy, and then go into your new email and right click and choose Paste. Now you are ready to send the email.
Find/Search - Basic Basic Search will search both the subject and body, but only looks at body if the email has already been downloaded. The Basic Search does not search on the From field Make sure you are in the mailbox you want to search Press the Find button in the toolbar at top, or press ctrl-E In the “Look for” box, type in what you are looking for, and press Find Now to the right. When done searching, press the Find button at the top again, to return to normal view. Find/Search TIPS/Info: Advanced Find NOTE: You can search on the From field using advanced find, even when offline You cannot search on the body of a message, until the message has been downloaded. For a multi word Search, put spaces between the words in order to find matches on all words entered (use commas between if you want to find any of the words, not all of the words) To do an Advanced Find, press Ctrl-Shift-F. You will have many more options here to fill out, when searching. You will be able to select more than one mailbox to search in. Also, you can specify date ranges to search between, and many other options. Example of using Advanced Find: press Ctrl-Shift-F Leave the “Look For” box set to Messages. Click on the Browse button, and put a checkmark on all mailboxes you want to search in. On the message tab below, type in the words you want to search for, and next to In, either leave at as Subject line, or change to Subject line and message body depending on what you want to search in. Click on the Advanced tab. To search in between a date range, click on the Field drop down list, and choose Date/Time fields, then choose Received. Under Condition, choose “between”. Then under value , type a date range such as “11/01/06 and 11/30/06” then click on Add to List. Now you are ready to click on the Find Now button and do your search. How To Download all of the emails in one mailbox All emails are stored on our email server, not on your PC. However your Inbox and your Sent Items are setup to also download to your PC, so that it is easier to do searches on those mailboxes. To download the entire emails in one mailbox, in order to help with searches, and to view emails when offline, do the following: Click on Tools, Options, and the Mail Setup tab. Click on Send/Receive, then click the Edit button. In the folder options box, you should see a list of all of your mailboxes. Find the mailbox of interest, and put a check mark to the left of it, then to the right click on the option that says “Download complete item including attachment.” Click OK, Close, Ok. The next time your program checks for mail, it will download all items in that mailbox so they are permanently on your computer. Be careful because Outlook 2003 has size limitations so the more mailboxes you do this with, the chances are you might hit the limit and then have problems. Ask the MIS dept, if you need to know if you are approaching your size limit (which is 2 Gigabytes). Spell checking
Use MS word as your editor (Tools, Options, Mail Format, check on MS Word to edit emails), and it will auto spell check for you. If you are not using MS Word as your editor (and most people should), then Click on Tools, Options, and the Spelling tab to turn on spell checking. Multi language spell checking: The following process should have already been done for you when outlook was first installed on your PC. To be able to spell check in multiple languages, i.e. Spanish, English, Portuguese, etc.., do the following, while using MS Word as your email editor. Start a new message, click once in the body of the message. Click on View, Toolbars, Customize, and make sure the Commands tab is selected. Choose Tools on the left side, and on the right look for “Language” with a box to the right of it. Drag this language bar up to your toolbar, make sure you drop it within the existing toolbar. Close. Now when typing a message, you can choose which language to spell check in. To open multiple mailboxes at the same time Simply right click on any mailbox, and choose Open in new window. To make the next email message open automatically after viewing or deleting an email: Tools, Options, Preferences, and Email Options. At the top where it says “After moving or deleting an open item” change the box to read “open the next item” How to retrieve deleted messages In outlook, underneath your mailbox list, under Current View, click once where it says ECI Deleted Items, and you will see all your deleted emails. To return to the normal view, click on ECI Standard View. NOTE: EVERY WEEKEND, YOUR DELETED EMAILS WILL BE PERMANENTLY REMOVED FROM THE SYSTEM AND WILL NOT BE RETRIEVABLE. If you are unhappy with the way Outlook handles deleted messages, then we can create a Trash button icon for you that will not delete your emails, but will move them to a Trash mailbox, and will never remove them. Webmail and Mail Forwarding, Auto Responder when on vacation You can view your email on the web by going to www.econocaribe.net. Here you can login and view emails. Forwarding your Email to another employee: To do this, after logging into the web site, click on Settings at the top, and choose My Settings, then click on the Forwarding tab. Type in the email address to forward your email to, and change the Exclusions to “Do not forward Medium and above”. Delete message on Forward means, if you check the box, you will never see the emails. Leave unchecked if you want to see all the emails when you return. Click the Save button above the “mailbox” tab when you are done. Auto-Responder: After loggin in, click on Settings, and My Auto Responder. Put a checkmark on “Enable auto responder” and click on Auto Responder message tab. Enter your away message, and then click on Save above. Make sure you Logout when done. Junk E-mail This mail folder in outlook is where spam email is stored. In outlook you can look in here for false positives which are emails that you should have received but were mistakenly marked as spam. Let us know if this happens to you, so we can whitelist the sender so it never happens again. Forwarding False Positives (Junk mail that should not be junk) to MIS Dept. See the FAQ page on www.econocaribe.net, under Email Problems, the first item there. =========================================================================================== APPENDIX A: Fixing common outlook problems when you are out of the office. You may sometimes have problems using Outlook when out of the office, usually due to slower internet connections, or your VPN software is not working like it should. Our system depends heavily on fast internet connections such as DSL, or T-1. Note: you can always view and work on your email at www.econocaribe.net if you cannot get Outlook working properly. Some common problems Outlook freezes on startup for longer than 5 minutes, You cannot see your Inbox, or there are no mails in your Inbox You see a small icon of a folded piece of paper next to every email in your inbox (on the left side next to the envelope icon). The send/receive message in lower right corner gets stuck once it gets to around 80% - 90%, and never moves from there. The shortcuts shown in the Favorites Folder on top left side are not working properly. Here are some steps you can take to improve things when having any of these problems: (You should change all these settings back to normal when you return to your office) 1 – Turn off the automatic send/receive function – To do this , in Outlook, click on Tools at the top, and choose Options, click on the Mail Setup tab, and click on the Send/Receive button near the middle. (shortcut to get here is Ctrl-Alt-S). Then Uncheck these 2 boxes: Schedule an automatic send/receive every Perform an automatic send/receive when exiting Click on Close, Click OK You will now have to click the Send/Receive button at the top of Outlook whenever you want to send or receive emails. 2 – Change Outlook to startup in your Personal Inbox instead of your ECI (IMAP) Inbox – To do this, in Outlook, click on Tools at the top, and choose Options, click on the Other tab, and click on the Advanced Options button. At the top of the window, next to “Startup in this folder” click the Browse button. Open up the Personal Folders area, and highlight the Inbox in there, and press OK on the right. Then click OK, OK. Now when Outlook starts it will start in your Personal Inbox, but there will/should be now email in there. Now you will have to click on your ECI (IMAP) Inbox to see your new email. 3 – Keep your Inbox small if possible - move your older emails to a different mailbox (for example 2007-In) so that your Inbox is relatively small. If you want to later be able to search for emails easily, then on this other mailbox (2007-In) you should use step 3
above and set it to “Download complete item including attachments”, otherwise you will only be able to search on header fields and not in the body of the email message. 4 – Remove the Inbox from your favorites area, this is just a shortcut to the Inbox in your ECI (IMAP) area. You can just right click on the favorite shortcut, and delete it. 5 – Set Outlook to NOT download the entire email messages, and just allow it to download the headers. This will make things much faster, however you will now see the small icon of the folded piece of paper next to each email, which means that only headers were downloaded, and not the entire email. However everytime you click on an email to read it, it will download the entire message. The downside to only downloading headers is that you will not be able to read the emails when offline (or on an airplane). To do this , in Outlook, click on Tools at the top, and choose Options, click on the Mail Setup tab, and click on the Send/Receive button near the middle. (Ctrl-Alt-S shortcut) Click on the Edit button on the right side. In the folder options box, look under ECI (IMAP) , and click once on Inbox. You should see a check mark, and on the right side, it has selected: Download complete item including attachment. Change the radio button to “Download headers only” and uncheck the Inbox. Click on OK, Close, Click OK How To Reduce your IMAP file size, so you do not reach the 2 GB limit (for 2003 users): 1 – Delete mail, then compact the entire IMAP folder, right click IMAP, Properties, Advanced , Compact now - expect to wait or 2 - Unsubscribe the mail boxes that have a lot of mail downloaded, may have to wait, then compact IMAP file, then uncheck boxes to Download attachments, then re-subscribe all boxes that were unsubscribed 3 – If you cannot free enough space, then you must move mail to a local PST file, and back it up to DVD. Sent Mail is not going to your Sent Items mailbox under IMAP: - check that the VB script is correct, for users of 2003 - make sure there is no smartermail content filtering set up for the user - make sure that Plus Addressing in smartermail is enabled NOTES: When sending attachments, you may have to change the format to Plain Text on each email to avoid winmail.dat problem. Laptop users should work offline when not connected, choose File, Work Offline Use scanpst.exe program built into WindowsXP in order to fix corrupt outlook files. Scanpst 2003 is found in ProgramFiles\Common Files\System\MSmapi\1033 2007 ProgramFiles\MicrosoftOffice\Office12 Also, to fix problems, try Help, Detect and Repair, when asked to reset, choose No In Internet Explorer, under Tools , Options, Programs, Email, choose Microsoft outlook. Attachments – must open email first then open attachment, so it is not in Read Only mode. Users cannot run Outlook for 2 mins once they close it If user is having problems with quick address autocomplete when starting a new email, then you must delete the username.NK2 file (i.e. rolster.nk2) , first close Outlook. This will erase the autocomplete list. For user to view their deleted Items, click on View, Arrange By, Current View, and choose Deleted Items. NOTE: If the folder list is not showing with plus signs for nested folders, (hierarchy), then delete the root.cfg file from the users folder in Smartermail, and then stop and restart smartermail. NOTE: To remove the old Contacts list, Global address list: In contacts, right click on both the ECI Agents, and the Global address list, and choose remove from other contacts. Tools, Email Accounts, View or change existing directories or Address books, Change, Highlight and remove Close and restart outlook. Now in Smartermail, attach to resource, and add to outlook, the new ECI Contacts list. When done, in Outlook, click on Tools, Address book, and show ECI Contacts as first option. Known Problems: 1 – User has not gotten any emails in their Outlook in box, for a number of hours, but you can see new emails on www.econocaribe.net Check IMAP pst file size, can’t be greater than 1.8GB Check that McAfee isn’t scanning, thus slowing Outlook, or the printer Microsoft office image writer, has a printout waiting Make sure the user is clicked on their IMAP inbox, underneath IMAP, and not using the Favorites at the top, in fact remove the favorite shortcut to Inbox. Make sure they are set to view = ECI Standard View Make sure they are not “Working OffLine” See if “Connect to ECI IMAP” is not gray, and if its not, then connect Unsubscribe and resubscribe the Inbox Run services.msc and check firewall ScanPST on IMAP pst file If they have a PDA, the PDA may be locking the mailbox, or stuck downloading. Make sure the are set to “Download entire body and attachments”, and do a Send/Receive 2 – When user deletes an email, it shows with the line thru it when looking at ECI Deleted Items view, but then in 5 minutes it is completely gone (purged) Check in Smartermail under the users account, My Settings, and Webmail tab, next to Delete Action, make sure it does NOT say Auto Purge Folder. It should say Move to Deleted Items 3 – User moves emails into a different mailbox, but they do not show up in there, but when you look on Webmail, they do show.
Unsubscribe and resubscribe the mailboxes that have problems. Also, may need to do ScanPst. To see the size of outlook.pst (IMAP) file, in Windows Commander go to: \DocumentsAndSettings\Username.ECI\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook Additonal Troubleshooting: TURN OFF ADD-INs - OL 2007 - Tools > Trust Center -> Click Add-ins -> At the bottom, change the dropdown menu to Exchange Client Extensions and click Go -> Disable any Extensions you see here. Also, dropdown the list to Com Add-Ins, and Disable all items there. - If in Vista, you might have to run Outlook as Administrator to remove some Com Add-Ins. Close Outlook, then right click the quick bar Outlook icon, and choose “Run as Administrator”, then proceed to follow the above step. - OL 2003 - Tools > Options -> Other -> Advanced Options -> Click Add-in Manager -> Uncheck all options. - OL 2003 - Tools > Options -> Other -> Advanced Options -> Click Com Add-ins -> Uncheck options IF you think they are unnecessary. - You can change the setting Tools, Options, Other, Advanced Options, "Sync RSS Feeds to the Common Systems Feed List", Uncheck. - VISTA - Go to Programs > Accessories, right-click on Command Prompt, and select “Run as Administrator” -> Type "netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disable" Resending an Email message after you update your address book: Outlook may show the wrong email addresses in the To or CC,Bcc section of the email, if you have updated your address book since the time that you originally sent the email message. =============== - Uninstall Windows Desktop Search - Remove Dell Media Connect if it exists. - VISTA - Control Panel -> Classic View -> Indexing Options -> Advanced button -> Rebuild - Test it in safe mode (Start, Run, "outlook /safe:3"). If you don't experience the issue then, then the problem is caused by an add-in. - "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\OUTLOOK.EXE" /noextensions /recycle - turns off add-ins and allows only one instance of Outlook. - Compact the PST regularly. Just moving things out of the PST won't reduce it in size. - The most important thing is not the overall PST size is a real performance issues, but rather the number of messages within a PST/folder. See http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2005/03/14/395229.aspx (this is for OST files, meaning when you use Outlook with an Exchange server, but it seems to apply to PSTs as well). Quite frankly, reducing some of my folders from 30,000 messages each to 2,000 or so did wonders for my performance. - Switch off any anti-virus integration into Outlook or email. It's plain unnecessary and just costs you performance. END