Make Reading Your E-Mail Easier in Outlook: Minimize the To-Do Bar and the Navigation Pane

Do you ever feel like you just don’t have enough room to read your e-mail and RSS feeds in Outlook 2007? Here’s a tip: Minimize the To-Do Bar and the Navigation Pane!

Go from this:

To this:

To minimize the To-Do Bar and/or the Navigation Pane, you can either:

• Click on the expand/collapse widget at the top of the panes:
• Go to the View menu, click Navigation Pane, then Minimize to minimize the Navigation Pane. To minimize the To-Do Bar, go to the View menu, click To-Do Bar, then Minimize. From these same menus, you can also turn off the Navigation Pane and the To-Do Bar respectively.
• Double click on the border between the Navigation Pane and the Mail List to minimize the Navigation Pane, and then double click on the border between the Reading Pane and the To-Do Bar to minimize the To-Do Bar.
• Type Alt-F1 to minimize the Navigation Pane and Alt-F2 to minimize the To-Do Bar.

To see more on your screen, you may only need to minimize either the To-Do Bar or the Navigation Pane.

How to use Outlook in this “Minimized” state

Even when the Navigation Pane and the To-Do Bar are minimized you can still use them to switch between folders or to other modules such as the Calendar and to file mail. You can single click on “Navigation Pane” or “To-Do Bar” to get the pane to open the pop out panes:

Navigation Pane Pop Out Pane To-Do Bar Pop Out Pane

Minimized Navigation Pane

From the resizable pop out pane, you can do anything that you would do in the Navigation Pane, such as change folders, move folders around, rename folders, etc. When you click away, the pop out pane goes away letting you get back to your e-mail.

You can even drag your mail directly on top of the closed Navigation Pane, and the pop out pane will open, letting you file your mail without opening the full Navigation Pane.

At the top of the expanded Navigation Pane in Mail, there is a group called “Favorite Folders.” You can drag any folder in the Navigation Pane into your Favorite Folders and it will appear in the list. When you minimize the Navigation Pane, the folders in your Favorite Folders appear on the side, giving you easy access for dragging mail or switching to those folders.

 
Favorite folders in the Navigation Pane pop out

To switch to other modules in Outlook, like the Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks, you can click on the button in the lower left:

Navigation Pane Buttons

Minimized To-Do Bar

Just like the minimized Navigation Pane, you can click on the minimized To-Do Bar to get a resizable pop out pane that lets you do anything you would in the expanded To-Do Bar, such as rearranging tasks, opening appointments, going to the Calendar by clicking on the Date Navigator, etc.

Even with the To-Do Bar minimized, you can still see the time of your next appointment and how many tasks you have today.

For those of you who use the category arrangement, the minimized To-Do Bar shows how many tasks you have per category.

Enjoy!

Melissa MacBeth
Outlook Program Manager