opening wlm within Outlook

[Tim Mathews]

Having added the "news" item on the "go" menu in Outlook, I want to be able
to open WLM as my newsreader from Outlook as I could do with Outlook
Express in XP and Windows Mail since getting Vista. I've tried everything I
can think of to make WLM the default newsreader but no matter what I do,
Outlook still opens Windows Mail when I click on "news" in the "go" drop
down menu.

Any ideas, anyone?

 

[Gordon]

Having added the "news" item on the "go" menu in Outlook, I want to be
able to open WLM as my newsreader from Outlook as I could do with Outlook
Express in XP and Windows Mail since getting Vista. I've tried everything
I can think of to make WLM the default newsreader but no matter what I do,
Outlook still opens Windows Mail when I click on "news" in the "go" drop
down menu.

Any ideas, anyone?

Doesn't work at all in Vista - the ONLY news reader that the Go-News menu
function opens is WM. I've tried...... :-(

 

[Gary VanderMolen]

That's a common complaint. It seems to be hard-coded in Outlook.

 

[...winston]

On this Vista SP1 unit with Outlook 07...it works here, but it opens WLM to the Mail view rather than the newsgroup view.
My Vista default settings are as follows
Outlook - has all of its defaults
Windows Live Mail - has 1 out of 4 defaults, the only default is for .eml extension
Windows Live Mail(News) - has all its defaults(.nws extension and three protocols news, nntp, snews)
Windows Mail - has 0 of 3 defaults
Windows Mail(News) - has 0 or 4 defaults

Note: WLM also has a few other quirks on this unit when opened via the OL 'News' hotbutton.
a. The Quick views icon is present even though View/Layout/Folder pane/Quick Views is toggled off
b. All mail accounts are missing the inbox.

 

[Robert Aldwinckle]

Having added the "news" item on the "go" menu in Outlook,

Since you are cross-posting to WLMail it may help to explain how
you did that? Can you add other arbitrary things to that menu?
Then you could add a command line which does WLMail.exe /News ; )

I want to be able
to open WLM as my newsreader from Outlook as I could do with Outlook
Express in XP and Windows Mail since getting Vista. I've tried everything I
can think of to make WLM the default newsreader but no matter what I do,
Outlook still opens Windows Mail when I click on "news" in the "go" drop
down menu.

Any ideas, anyone?

Use ProcMon and find out what the implementation is. ; )


Good luck

Robert Aldwinckle
---

 

[...winston]

The post originated stand-alone from Windows Mail and was posted to the the Outlook and WLM newsgroup.

One doesn't post from Outlook, think of the 'News' button in OL as a item that opens a different application(similar to a url for
IE, a link in an html document, etc). The 'News' button can be added to the Outlook Menu bar(File-Edit etc..it is
normally place on the Go drop-down menu) or it can be added to the ToolBar(akin to adding an available command by customizing the
Word or Excel toolbar)


The OL 'news' button works for me in OL2007 on Vista SP1, but WLM has a few quirks(see earlier response) when WLM is not already
open. If WLM is opened, the OL News button switches focus to the current open WLM window(without any of those quirks mentioned).

Does ProcMon provide information on customizing a toolbar in Excel, Word, etc..?

 

[Tim Mathews]

If I understand you correctly, you're asking how I can post to two
newsgroups at the same time? After clicking "write" to start the post and
the current newsgroup is automatcally selected, I just click "newsgroups"
and the menu opens up to add other newsgroups. Since my solution--if it
exists--might be from either group, I posted to both simultaneously.

 

[Robert Aldwinckle]

If I understand you correctly, you're asking how I can post to two newsgroups at the same time?

No. I was inferring that the original post was being composed
in an Outlook NG and had added a cross-post to WLMail.
I am replying from the WLMail NG and know nothing
about Outlook's implementation of support for news.

After clicking "write" to start the post and the current newsgroup is automatcally selected, I just click "newsgroups" and the
menu opens up to add other newsgroups. Since my solution--if it exists--might be from either group, I posted to both
simultaneously.

Thank you for confirming my guess. ; }



So obviously "that" should have been interpreted as
meaning: "How did you do (whatever it was you said
that I quoted and you snipped)"...

Oh yes...

</quote>


(Rest snipped as there was no interest expressed in
the essence of my reply.)


---

 

[Robert Aldwinckle]

The post originated stand-alone from Windows Mail
and was posted to the the Outlook and WLM newsgroup.

In fact, we can't tell that for sure. I inferred that the OP
reads mainly in the Outlook NG and added WLMail as
an afterthought.

One doesn't post from Outlook, think of the 'News' button in OL
as a item that opens a different application(similar to a url for
IE, a link in an html document, etc). The 'News' button
can be added to the Outlook Menu bar(File-Edit etc..it is
normally place on the Go drop-down menu) or it can be added
to the ToolBar(akin to adding an available command by customizing
the Word or Excel toolbar)

In which case there is a implementation associated with the
menu and since the OP mentioned something was done to
activate the News menu item, it implies that there is some
kind of customization available. Often such customization
is implemented via registry values or (lately) an XML file.

The OL 'news' button works for me in OL2007 on Vista SP1,
but WLM has a few quirks(see earlier response) when WLM
is not already open. If WLM is opened, the OL News button
switches focus to the current open WLM window(without any
of those quirks mentioned).

I thought the OP said it switched to WM (not WLMail)?
In that case it would be a matter of changing the customization
(whatever the implementation is) to specify wlmail.exe
instead of wmail.exe

Does ProcMon provide information on customizing a toolbar in Excel, Word, etc..?

Provided the implementation is parameterized and not
hardcoded, yes. ProcMon integrates the tracing that
RegMon and FileMon provide. So, if the implementation
of the menu's parameterization is via the registry you
would be able to see the values read that way
or if the it's via a file you would have a clue about which
files are used by seeing one read. Note that these
things might not occur dynamically; so if your tracing
didn't expose them just any time you chose to use the
menu you might have to trace the initial opening of the
application and then try to guess how such values might
be used internally subsequently.


If you're right about Outlook being able to find WLMail
windows sometime, then that is information I did not have
when I replied and which would have substantially changed
my reply, if I had bothered replying then at all.


HTH

Robert
---

 

[Hal Hostetler [MVP P/I]]

I've noticed the same thing opening WLM with the /News switch, it opens
without email accounts, but shows the default email inbox folder which you
cannot return to, if you switch to a different folder. It's nice to see WLM
can be set as Outlook's newsreader; the farthest I've experimented was to
see if WLM actually had a "News Only" mode.

Hal
--
Hal Hostetler, CPBE -- (e-mail address removed)
Senior Engineer/MIS -- MS MVP-Print/Imaging -- WA7BGX
http://www.kvoa.com -- "When News breaks, we fix it!"
KVOA Television, Tucson, AZ. NBC Channel 4
Live at Hot Licks - www.badnewsbluesband.com

On this Vista SP1 unit with Outlook 07...it works here, but it opens WLM

to the Mail view rather than the newsgroup view.

My Vista default settings are as follows
Outlook - has all of its defaults
Windows Live Mail - has 1 out of 4 defaults, the only default is for .eml extension
Windows Live Mail(News) - has all its defaults(.nws extension and three protocols news, nntp, snews)
Windows Mail - has 0 of 3 defaults
Windows Mail(News) - has 0 or 4 defaults

Note: WLM also has a few other quirks on this unit when opened via the OL 'News' hotbutton.
a. The Quick views icon is present even though View/Layout/Folder

pane/Quick Views is toggled off

 

[...winston]

I must have missed that OL was not installed at your end..
It does help having used OL when one is trying to convey what the 'News' button does.

Fyi...you're not too far off in suggesting tweaking the button to point to a path, though if defaults are set properly its overkill
and may be problematic especially on later versions of OL that have a higher propensity to question any parsing that might affect
security.

On this machine(OL07) modifying the button is accomplished by selecting the customize option and then clicking the button on the
ToolBar to reveal a context menu. Choose Hyperlink(it contains a submenu option to point to a different program), choose Existing
File or WebPage, browse to a shortcut(e.g. one with the command "C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Mail\wlmail.exe" /news) to overide
the existing default for the added News button.
- The disadvantage(yes, security) and a rather annoying one. Outlook will scream twice...once for safety(hyperlinks can be
harmful etc), the other requiring user approval. Approval will open WLM. Imo, this approach while functional, defeats the purpose
of single click button when defaults are configured properly.

There may be a way to tweak OL to override the security complaints, I'll leave that to the OL gurus, since my button, and most
likely quite a few others with the proper default configuration, work in both XPSP3/OL2003/WLM and VistaSP1/OL2007/WLM.

 

[...winston]

Hal,
I keep two shortcuts on my Quick Launch..one for mail and one for "C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Mail\wlmail.exe" /mail
"C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Mail\wlmail.exe" /news

The missing email inbox can be avoided if WLM is still open(window or minimized in either mail or news) or if the wlmail.exe
process is still running(message being created in mail or news but main window closed). Thus the process is still active, it will
open(switch) to mail view in all cases except one...when a news window is minimized one will have 'news' view.