O2003: Favorites bar to act more like Outlook Bar of O2K? Ideas .... ?

[StargateFan]

The thing that has been missing in Outlook since O2K's outlook bar is
how easy it was to navigate to folders. I had key root folders in the
Outlook bar and by clicking on an item, it would actually _take_ you
there in the folder tree so that then finding a subfolder was a snap.

Since O2K and the demise of the OB, I've always had the devil of a
time navigating the folders. I'm an admin so we have to store tons of
emails and that necessitates many, many subfolders. But I spend an
inordinate amount of time scanning through the folders because:

1. The favorites don't take you anywhere other than to the folder
itself but doesn't help in the folder tree;

2. Even when you search for an item, unlike Windows Explorer, there
is no "Explore" context menu or "Open containing folders" so, again,
I'm stucking wasting huge blocks of time looking for items.

How can we get around this deficiency please. I'm back in a position
with heavy email traffic and I absolutely must find a solution.

Is there some functionality that can be added, and add-in maybe or a
macro that we can run that will help? Please, please advise. Really
desperately need help with this.

Thanks. D

 

[VanguardLH]

The thing that has been missing in Outlook since O2K's outlook bar is
how easy it was to navigate to folders. I had key root folders in the
Outlook bar and by clicking on an item, it would actually _take_ you
there in the folder tree so that then finding a subfolder was a snap.

Since O2K and the demise of the OB, I've always had the devil of a
time navigating the folders. I'm an admin so we have to store tons of
emails and that necessitates many, many subfolders. But I spend an
inordinate amount of time scanning through the folders because:

1. The favorites don't take you anywhere other than to the folder
itself but doesn't help in the folder tree;

2. Even when you search for an item, unlike Windows Explorer, there
is no "Explore" context menu or "Open containing folders" so, again,
I'm stucking wasting huge blocks of time looking for items.

How can we get around this deficiency please. I'm back in a position
with heavy email traffic and I absolutely must find a solution.

Is there some functionality that can be added, and add-in maybe or a
macro that we can run that will help? Please, please advise. Really
desperately need help with this.

Thanks. D

I haven't bothered to use this but see the following is possile in
OL2003 (what I also use).

In the left-pane at the bottom where are all the buttons to navigate to
common folders, click on the chevron+down-arrow icon. This displays the
popup menu to organize the button bar (Show Fewer Buttons, Show More
Buttons, Navigation Pane Options, Add/Remove Buttons). Click on the
Add/Remove Buttons and enable the Shortcuts button. Now you've added
the Shortcuts button pane where you can click on Add New Shortcut to
create a shortcut (i.e., a favorite) to whatever folder you want to
quickly navigate in your message store. You can group shortcuts by some
commonality or just keep them in a flat list.

Use the Shortcuts button pane as a substitute for the Outlook Bar. It
seems to be the same functionality. Whether it's a listing of common
shortcuts to folders, a list of favorite folders, or a list of icons to
common/favorite folders, it's the same list but different appearance.

 

[StargateFan]

I haven't bothered to use this but see the following is possile in
OL2003 (what I also use).

In the left-pane at the bottom where are all the buttons to navigate to
common folders, click on the chevron+down-arrow icon. This displays the
popup menu to organize the button bar (Show Fewer Buttons, Show More
Buttons, Navigation Pane Options, Add/Remove Buttons). Click on the
Add/Remove Buttons and enable the Shortcuts button. Now you've added
the Shortcuts button pane where you can click on Add New Shortcut to
create a shortcut (i.e., a favorite) to whatever folder you want to
quickly navigate in your message store. You can group shortcuts by some
commonality or just keep them in a flat list.

Use the Shortcuts button pane as a substitute for the Outlook Bar. It
seems to be the same functionality. Whether it's a listing of common
shortcuts to folders, a list of favorite folders, or a list of icons to
common/favorite folders, it's the same list but different appearance.

Hi, I'm very sorry the question was not clear but I'll try to explain
better. Yes, I use the Favorites; they're a watered down version of
the Outlook Bar because although they give you a way to navigate to
one particular folder, unlike the Outlook Bar, they don't actually
_take_ you to that folder in the folder tree, hence the near complete
uselessness of the feature because it's only good for the actual and
specific folders you are pointing to in there. You are still left to
navigate all over the place so it's pretty useless.

The above just lists how to use the Favorites feature and I do thank
you but it's how to get the behaviour of the Outlook Bar _into_ the
so-called Favorites/Shortcuts replacement. That's what is needed here.

Does anyone know if we can get these Favorites to mimic the Outlook
Bar feature in any way? Perhaps via VB? I haven't a clue how so that
is why I've come here.

Anyone? This is a desperate call since as an admin, I absolutely have
to separate things into lots of folders but I waste an inordinate
amount of time looking for things which the Favorites only helps when
I need the specific folder the shortcut is for but if I relied on
that, I'd soon have as many shortcuts as I do folders so which is
silly so, again, it's really pretty useless.

Thanks.

 

[VanguardLH]

Hi, I'm very sorry the question was not clear but I'll try to explain
better. Yes, I use the Favorites; they're a watered down version of
the Outlook Bar because although they give you a way to navigate to
one particular folder, unlike the Outlook Bar, they don't actually
_take_ you to that folder in the folder tree, hence the near complete
uselessness of the feature because it's only good for the actual and
specific folders you are pointing to in there. You are still left to
navigate all over the place so it's pretty useless.

The above just lists how to use the Favorites feature and I do thank
you but it's how to get the behaviour of the Outlook Bar _into_ the
so-called Favorites/Shortcuts replacement. That's what is needed here.

Does anyone know if we can get these Favorites to mimic the Outlook
Bar feature in any way? Perhaps via VB? I haven't a clue how so that
is why I've come here.

Anyone? This is a desperate call since as an admin, I absolutely have
to separate things into lots of folders but I waste an inordinate
amount of time looking for things which the Favorites only helps when
I need the specific folder the shortcut is for but if I relied on
that, I'd soon have as many shortcuts as I do folders so which is
silly so, again, it's really pretty useless.

Thanks.

A bit of a workaround, but after using the Favorites (in the Mail pane)
or the Shortcuts pane to select a folder, won't using the Folders pane
(to change the view to show the entire tree) show you the currently
selected folder in the entire tree list?

I rearranged the buttons in the navigation panel so:

- They are all minimized. I don't want big fat buttons occupying the
navigation panel but just their minimized icons at the bottom. To
minimize them to just icon buttons, use the chevron-downarrow icon to
keep selecting Show Fewer until all of them have been minimized to icon
buttons (or as many as you want). With each Show Fewer action, the
button on the bottom of the button list changes from a fat button to an
icon.

- My particular order for the icon buttons along the bottom are:
Folders, Mail, Contacts, Notes, Tasks, Calendar, Journal, and Shortcuts.
That way, Folders is at the left and easily clickable to see the entire
tree list and whichever is the currently selected folder. Use the
chevron-downarrow icon to see the Navigation Pane Options menu and use
that dialog to select which buttons (views) you want to select in the
navigation pane and the Move Up/Down button to change their order.

So you could use Favorites or Shortcuts to quickly get to a folder and
then switch the navigation pane to the Folders view using that button to
see where that folder was positioned in the entire tree list of folders.
In fact, if you don't want anything other than the Folders and Shortcuts
views in the navigation pane, deselect all the other buttons (so they
won't show as fat buttons or bottom-row icons in the nav pane) so you
only have the Folders and Shortcuts buttons (then decide if you want
them to show as fat buttons or icons by using Show More/Fewer).

Personally I hate the view changing performed by the buttons/icons in
the nav pane. I just want the full tree list ALL THE TIME. If I go to
the Inbox for e-mails then I want to see that folder is selected in the
tree list of folders. If I'm in the Notes folder or some sub-Notes
folder then I want to see that folder highlighted in the tree list. So
eventually I may get rid of all the other buttons/icons in the nav pane
and just have the Folders icon to show the entire tree list that I
prefer. Alas, if you customize a toolbar with a "Goto -> <folder>"
entry, like adding Notes to a toolbar, Outlook reverts to showing you
that damn limited view for Notes instead of selecting it and
highlighting it in the full folders tree list, so I have to click on the
Folders button/icon to get back the full tree list again. The Folders
view will not show Shared Folders but then I'm not in a domain using
Exchange as the mail server so that is a trivial loss of functionality
to me.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/o...-view-in-the-navigation-pane-HA001189198.aspx
http://www.howto-outlook.com/howto/navigationpane.htm

So when the nav pane changes to a view (which is limited to showing only
the same *type* of items), you can use the Folders button/icon or hit
Ctrl+6 in Outlook to show the entire tree list with the currently
selected folder shown as highlighted. In your case, add the buried
folder in the Shortcuts view. When you click on it and if you need to
know where in the tree hierarchy it is positioned, click on the Folders
button/icon to switch to a full view of the treelist (the currently
selected folder will be highlighted). If the tree list had been
compacted (so your target folder was not shown), clicking on a shortcut
in the Shortcuts view and then switching to the Folders view will expand
the tree down to the currently selected folder.