Flag Color

[Thellers]

Hi all,

This is my first post on this forum and it may prove a lengthy one as I have
several inter-related questions. My issue(s) concern Color Categories and the
appearance of follow up flags. This has obvsiouly been heavily revised and,
to be honest, it all appears a bit of a backward step at the moment, but I
could well be doing things wrong...

So... question 1:
Follow-up flags are no longer colour-coded. Fine, I guess. But, given the 5
default flag types (Today, Tomorrow, This Week, Next Week, No Date), why only
3 colours of flag. More critically, why are the flags for "Today" the same as
for "No Date"? This means that items with no set date for a required response
have the same flag as those I need to respond to today. It's very, very odd
indeed. Any way round this? It just seems pointless to have flag symbols at
all if the only way to differentiate between various flag types is to look at
the various data columns (due date, etc.)

Question 2:
In Outlook 2003 and on my SmartPhone I have used categories extensively for
contacts, tasks, everything... many items I would have under several
categories (eg. "Business", "Projects", "Smith Project"). I could tag emails
and other items very quickly by typing the categories into the "Categories"
field, comma separated. This no longer appears possible as I have to click
the dropdown menu, choose one of the categories from the list, click it
again, choose the next category, click it again, choose the next category,
etc... This is a bit of a hinderance... any way around this?

Question 3:
Notes are yellow (in appearance) by default, which means they also appear
under the "Yellow" Color heading when viewing "By Color" in the Notes
section... Now, if I assign the "Yellow Category" Color Category to a note,
the note's icon changes appearance, it joins the "Yellow Category", but it
stays under the same colour group. Again, this is a bit weird to say the
least, as it appears that Outlook 2007 is "mixing its metaphors" on what the
colour of notes actually means. Shouldn't notes be no colour (or white) by
default and revert to this colour when "Clear All Categories" is hit? Again,
is there any way around this?

Thanks, and sorry for the lengthy mail.

Your help is much appreciated.

Regards,

Andy Thelwell

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

1) The changes that Microsoft made to categories, flags, and calendar color labels were based on user research both before and after the Office 2007 beta. They didn't just pull them out of a hat. But only Microsoft can give precise answers to your "why" questions. "How" questions are our stock in trade in these forums.

2) Not without designing a custom form, which would be terrible for messages and might not work so well with your SmartPhone data either.

3) Note colors have nothing to do with categories, as you've seen. My guess is that most people don't pay any attention to the color of the notes, if they use them at all, nor do they discover that the note color can be changed. Microsoft certainly hasn't seen enough interest in the notes feature to make any major changes in it in version after version.

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

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[Thellers]

Hi Sue,

First: thanks for your swift reply. It's much appreciated.

1) I certainly appreciate that this forum is about "how" to do stuff, rather
than "why" stuff has been changed, but I'm sure you can appreciate the two
are often inextricably linked. I'm sure MS do user testing, but for people
like myself who make a living out of trying to make usable software, things
like this -- which is a "usability 101" type design flaw -- they just leap
off the screen, slap you in the face and make you shout "WHY?!?!?!?!?"

2) Fair enough, it's not possible... thanks for the answer. Shame though as
this seems to be a bit of a backward step really.

3) OK, I understand that the colour of notes now is tied solely to the Color
Category, and notes in and of themselves have no custom 'colour' attribute.
However, imagine I've set up some Color Categories of significance, red,
yellow, green, blue... and I use each of these to carefully separate out
various bits of work. Doesn't it seem crazy that a note, even when it has NO
colour category, automatically ends up under the 'yellow' color group, simply
because notes happen to be yellow? It's a strange, odd, bizarre mixture of
two totally different metaphors using colour: the old one (whereby notes had
their own actual colours) and the new (whereby colour is dictated by the
Color Category).

Anyway, I appreciate these are not your concerns to answer, but I thought
I'd respond anyway.

Maybe I need to get myself signed up to the MS beta program!

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

No more crazy than than a message can be marked with Importance = Low and Categories = Important. They're two separate data values.

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

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers