Dear Crabby: Creative Outlooking

People continually try to use Office programs in magical ways that neither I nor the people I work with even thought of. And when the magic works, all is well with the world once again. First up: Sue wants to create a virtual poke using Outlook

"Can I make Outlook send out nasty reminder e-mails? I would like to remind everyone every Thursday to leave their computers on so that the virus check can run. Our office manager would have even much more use for a feature like this..."

I like your style, Sue; nasty e-mails are my specialty. For what you want to do, a disguised weekly recurring meeting with a reminder that pops up on the recipients' screen is the way to go. You just create a recurring meeting request, add your recipients to the appropriate box, create something catchy for the Subject line, set the Show As time as Free, set up the Reminder, and if you want to, make it High Importance. Once people have accepted the request, a reminder will pop up on their screens at the time you specify. This method is not, of course, foolproof. There is a feature in Outlook that lets you turn off ALL reminders. The people in your company who've done that are the ones you'll have to baby-sit. You know, the rebels, the black sheep, the difficult children...

This next letter is from ChunkyMonkey who wants certain incoming emails to take precedence over others; make them stand out., as it were.

"I set up rules to send some of my incoming mail to specific folders but even though I try to go back and read what I think are the really important ones, I get so much email every day that I often forget about them. I don't want to start setting up appointments and reminders for myself but is there any other way to make these stand out?"

Oh, Chunky—I know what you mean. I, too, often forget about emails that are time-sensitive or require some sort of action on my part and I end up seeming like a lazy or uninspired employee (as if!). To answer your question,  you could flag the message; it's pretty easy and you can even set up a reminder for it. But i would take a look at Conditional formatting. This allows you to customize how different messages appear in the folder based on criteria that you set. it's basically a rule you set up. These messages can appear in bold or a different color, a larger font, or  even all three. It's's almost unlimited.

Josh Meisels, an Outlook program manager, wrote a great blog post about how to highlight your most important mail in Outlook 2010 and just about the same way for 2007. Also, Bruce wrote a really good how-to article about conditional formatting in Outlook 2010.

Okay, gang, keep those letters and comments coming. The more you talk, the more I can help. Otherwise I'll be forced to come up with useless blog post topics like "The use of PowerPoint in the military: The ultimate WMD?"

 "Please give me some good advice in your next letter. I promise not to follow it." — Edna St. Vincent Millay

— Crabby

More info on Outlook conditional formatting:

Conditional Formatting: Highlight your most important mails

Getting too many email messages? Outlook can help

Make the New Year great with a better organized Inbox

Automatically change incoming message colors and fonts based on sender, subject, or recipients

What happened to the Organize feature?

Best practices for Outlook 2010