Jan 09, 2015
When you move to a new version of Outlook, such as Outlook 2013, some of the programs settings and how the screen looks may change. Instead of just ‘putting up with’ certain options, here are some ways you can configure Outlook to make it work better for you. The following are my personal settings choices, so have a read and choose how you want your Outlook to look. Navigation Bar The navigation bar is the grey bar at the bottom left of the screen that lists ‘Mail,’ ‘Calendar,' etc. You can now hover over each word to get a sneak preview of that area. For example, you can hover the mouse over Calendar to see your appointments for today. It is good but, to me, it takes up too much space. It goes across the entire screen. Click on the three little dots at the end (officially called an ellipsis, if you want the official name) and choose 'Navigation Options' and there is a menu that looks like this: Tick the box that says 'Compact Navigation.' Notice, how the Navigation Bar doesn't have words but now it has symbols. I like this because it now takes up a lot less space and the symbols are pretty intuitive. Reading Pane The Reading Pane is the preview pane that lets you read the body of the email without having click on it to open it. If you go: View – Layout – Reading Pane, you can choose to have the Reading Pane on the right, at the bottom, or turn it off.- Right: Having the Reading Pane on the right allows it to have a bit more of the screen, especially if you have a wide screen monitor, but I have found that some emails people send me with tables or other wide elements, like pictures, sometimes look a bit squished with this option.
- Bottom: Having the Reading Pane down the bottom means that it takes up a little less space, but you do get to see the email laid out nicely and you can adjust the divider up and down. The big bonus here is that you can now see a lot more of the columns for your emails up the top.
- Off: Turning off the Reading Pane means you have maximum space to see your emails, but it does mean you have to double click on an email to open it up.
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Previously
- Designing business continuity management strategies in SharePoint 2013
- The five stages of competence
- Compact and repair an Access database
- Say goodbye to an old friend – and other end of life facts
- So long 2014, hello 2015!
- Beguile for a while with a smile
- Use the Eyedropper tool in PowerPoint 2013
- Happy Holidays from New Horizons!
- Implementing external content types in SharePoint 2013
- Our interpersonal rights and responsibilities in the workplace