Category: Outlook

why do some Outlook appointments not show a subject in month view?

I’ll cut to the chase: the window isn’t wide enough. Either maximize or stretch the window’s width and the subject will display. You’re welcome, feel free to buy me a cup of coffee. šŸ˜Ž ā†’

This had been driving me nuts for a few months, but it was sporadic, only happening once in a while and only to (seemingly) random appointments. This morning, I got tired enough of it to figure it out.

I’ve been working with Outlook for over a decade and this had never happened before. How and why now? Was it some sort of bug in Outlook? or was it something different or new that I’ve been doing?

It was something new I’ve been doing.

I recently bought a third monitor to make online meetings easier when instructing groups.

One monitor displayed my presentation, another displayed the Brady Bunch grid of faces and the third monitor, in portrait mode, allowed me to watch and manage the waiting room, the chat and the breakout rooms. It’s worked out very well, not only for online meetings, but for my tendency to have…more than a few windows open at one time.

As a matter of everyday practice, when I’m not in an online meeting, my middle monitor is my main monitor. Straight in front of me, good ergonomics…all that. My left monitor is for reference or source material and my right, portrait monitor became home to my Outlook calendar and email.

I typically don’t have outlook maximized because, as you might have guessed, I use the bottom half of the portrait monitor for another window, often youtube or amazon music.

My default view for calendar is month view and I’ve been noticing that some of my appointments didn’t have a subject line. It happened again today. Weird. I opened the the appointment to see if it actually HAD a subject line. It did. Weird. I googled. Lots of search results about scheduling resources and…what you probably found before you stumbled upon this post.

I figured it out when I dragged my Outlook calendar to my middle (landscape) monitor and poof. Subject line appeared. Here’s a screenshot of it happening last month.

It reminded me of a previous Pragmatic Computer Tip about Excel spreadsheet cells displaying pound signs because the cell wasn’t wide enough.

I dragged Outlook back to the portrait monitor and double clicked the title bar to maximize the window. The subject line appeared. Since I didn’t want to leave the Outlook window maximized and taking up the entire height of my monitor, I restored the window and then stretched it a bit. The subject line appeared.

If you notice, the times for the problem appointment have two digits in both the beginning and ending times, making it longer than the other appointments. That was enough to do it.

Annoying problem solved. I need coffee.

How to Set Outlook as your Default Mail Application in Windows 10

I admit, I like Windows 10, but there are a few settings that tend to annoy me because they exploit the everyday user’s unfamiliarity with Windows 10 in order to push built-in Windows 10 apps on the unsuspecting. One of those settings designates the Windows 10 Mail application as the default mail application – even after Outlook has been installed.

[Just to clarify: When you are reading an email in Outlook and you click “Reply” you get a new email Window in Outlook. That’s not the issue.]

Here’s how this setting can cause you problems: When you click an email link on a web page – or even an email link within the body of an email you may be reading in Outlook, instead of opening the new email window in Outlook, Windows 10 will open a new email window in its own email application.

If you’d like all new email windows to open in Outlook, follow the 3 steps below to change your Windows 10 default mail application to Outlook.

1. In the Windows 10 search bar, type the word “Default” and the window should expand upwards displaying ā€œDefault app settingsā€

2. Left-click ā€œDefault app settingsā€ and a window showing your Default Apps should appear with “Email” at the top.

3. Left-click somewhere over the envelope icon and select the email program you prefer.

(see the images below for more help and
click any image to view it larger on its own page)

When you begin typing, a menu similar to the one in the image below should pop up above the search bar.

After you click “Default app settings” you should see the following menu displaying the Mail icon under the word “Email”:

If you hover your mouse over the Mail icon, it will be highlighted with a gray bar as in the image below:

When you left-click anywhere on the gray bar, a menu will open similar to the one in the image below. Just click the email application you prefer (in this example, I’ve used “Outlook 2016”) and you’re done!

Hopefully, a Windows 10 update won’t hijack that setting and make you do this again. šŸ™‚

send someone a text via email.

Did you know you can send text messages from any email program to a cell phone? For example, to email a text message to someone who uses AT&T, you would address the email like this: 10digitcellnumber@txt.att.net

However, when sending text messages via email, follow a few best practices:

1. Keep the message to just text (no images or attachments).
2. Keep the text plain (no text formatting).
3. Keep these messages short. If you send a large message, it will be broken up into multiple smaller 140 or 160 character messages. #annoying
Continue reading “send someone a text via email.”

#outlook shortcuts: replying to messages

Quick and easy shortcut for you today. Regardless of whether you have an email open or if it’s just highlighted within your Inbox or email folder, you can press:

Ctrl+R to “Reply” to the sender, Ctrl+Shift+R to “Reply to All” or Ctrl+F to “Forward” the email.

pragmaticcomputingtips outlookshortcuts reply forward

Is Outlook Filling In the Wrong Email Addressess?

You begin typing an email address and Outlook automatically fills it in for you.
You think, cool. How did it know that?

This handy feature is called AutoComplete (also referred to as the cache).

Outlook stores the email addresses to which you’ve sent email before. You may have typed the address in manually or you may have used the ā€œReplyā€ button to send an email. Either way, Outlook remembers. Very nice.

Except:
when it remembers incorrect or invalid email addresses
when it fills in email addresses you don’t use anymore
when you want to send to an alternate email address for a particular contact.

You can’t stop Outlook from saving to the cache unless you completely turn it off or max it out (1,000 entries). Luckily, turning off the cache isn’t necessary if you know how to delete the unwanted entries.

1. Start a new email message and type the first few letters of the name you want to delete.
2. Outlook will display the list of matching entries,
3. Press the down arrow (no clicking!) to the entry you want to remove.
4. Press the Delete key on the keyboard.

Follow the same instructions to delete all your unwanted cache entries!