Categories in Outlook 07

[Vlad]

Hi,
I upgraded to Outlook 07. Where before I had highly useful categories like
Travel, Personal, Business, now I don't see those categories and instead see
a bunch of (useless to me) colors in the category list. All of my contacts
are categorized with the old categories and I want to continue doing this
going forward. Can anything be done about this?

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Right-click the top folder in your folder hierarchy (Outlook Today), choose Properties, and click Upgrade to Color Categories.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers
http://www.outlookcode.com/article.aspx?id=54

 

[Vlad]

Sue,
I did this, and the only effect I see is that for whatever contact I'm
editing, the old category appears among all the color categories. However, as
there is not a complete list of all the old categories, I'm not able to
reassign the contact to a new category. Furthermore, if I create a new
contact altogether, only the colors appear and none of the old categories.

Am I better off renaming all the color names to my old category names, and
then doing a mass reassignment of the contacts to these color categories?

Thanks, Vlad

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

I did this, and the only effect I see is that for whatever contact I'm

editing, the old category appears among all the color categories.

That is exactly what it's supposed to show. The Upgrade to Color Categories command scans the data in your folder and builds adds categories to the Master Category List from actual categories in use on the actual items.

However, as
there is not a complete list of all the old categories, I'm not able to
reassign the contact to a new category.

If a category isn't in the MCL, then it probably wasn't on any existing item. Just go ahead and add it to the MCL.

Am I better off renaming all the color names to my old category names, and
then doing a mass reassignment of the contacts to these color categories?

It doesn't matter. You can add any category you want to the MCL, remove the ones you don't plan to use, rename categories, assign colors, etc. The important point to grasp is that any changes you make in the MCL will not affect the categories already present on existing items. Those items will still have the same categories assign to them that they originally had.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers
http://www.outlookcode.com/article.aspx?id=54