MS Office

Manage Tasks in Outlook

September 26, 2015 By Ravi Shankar 1 Comment

Here are some of the features and customization related with tasks in Outlook 2016, Outlook 2013, Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2007.

Changing task status color

A task in outlook has different status associated with it like Not Started, In Progress, Completed, Waiting for some one else and Deferred . Outlook 2013 and Outlook 2010 provide option for changing overdue task colour and completed task colour from their default colour. Listed below are the steps to change task status color in Outlook

Click on the File menu and select option from the list. In the Outlook Options window, navigate to Tasks tab.

Under Task options the settings for changing colour for Overdue and Completed task are available. You can set your desired colour using these options.

Demo Video – Change task status colour in Outlook 2010

Unhide task list

This tutorial provides the steps for unhiding the task list in Outlook. The task list is shown on the right hand sidebar below the Appointments section. And if you do not see the task list in your Outlook 2010 then you can do the following

Click the View menu, navigate to Layout section and then click the down arrow available below the To-Do Bar menu option. From the displayed menu list make sure to select Task List Option.

This would display the Task list below the Appointment section as shown below.

Changing default reminder time for task

In Outlook, when a task items are created, the default reminder time is set as 08:00 A.M. Using Outlook options you can change this default time.

Click on the File menu –> options and select Tasks link on the left hand side.

Under Task options section, there is dropdown available next to a label Default reminder time. Using this dropdown you can change the default reminder time to your choice.

Changing task work hours in Outlook

Task’s work hours in Outlook 2010 can changed using Outlook Options.

Click on the File menu –> select Options link and navigate to Tasks tab in Outlook Options window

Under Work hours section, using Task working hours per day and Task working hours per week you can set the working hours per day or week respectively.

How to change send and receive emails settings in Outlook

August 13, 2015 By Ravi Shankar 32 Comments

Microsoft Outlook 2013 and Outlook 2010 has option to automatically send or receive emails at a specified time interval. It also provides option to change this time period using the Send/Receive settings. List below are the steps to change send and receive email settings in Outlook 2013 and Outlook 2010.

Change send and receive email settings in Outlook 2013 and Outlook 2010

Click on the File menu –> Options

Navigate to Advanced tab and scrolled down to Send and receive section. Then click on the Send/Receive button.

How to hide send and receive progress dialog in Outlook 2013 and Outlook 2010

Using the Schedule an automatic send/receive every minutes field you can specify the time period at which the automatic send/receive emails needs to be done. The default value for this is 30 minutes.

Outlook 2010 displays a send and receive dialog box showing the progress of mails received and sent from the email Accounts. If you have configured more than one email accounts in Outlook then the time taken to complete Send/Receive will be more and the progress dialog will be displayed till the process is completed. Outlook provides allows users to hide the Send/Receive Progress. If you want to hide the dialog box then tick the check box with label as Don’t show this dialog box during Send/Receive.

Similarly if you want to turn on the display of progress message back then navigate to Send / Receive menu option and click the Show Progress option available under the Download section.

Change receive emails time for single mail account in Outlook 2013 and Outlook 2010

When you have more than one email account configured in Outlook 2010 and you want to specify a different send and receive time for a single account then you can follow the below mentioned steps.

Click the Send / Receive menu and navigate to Send & Receive section. Select Define Send/Receive Groups from the Send/Receive Groups menu list.

In the Send/Receive Groups window, you can see the default time specified in “Schedule an automatic send/receive” option for All Accounts.

Now click the New button and specify a name for the group. In the below example, I want to specify a change the send and receive time for my Yahoo account and I have named the group as Yahoo.

Then select the Account (Yahoo) in the Account section and click the Ok button.

Now change the value for “Schedule an automatic send/receive every” option for the Yahoo group and click the Close button.

Also See: How to quickly block a sender in Outlook

How to change default Auto Recover file location in Word

August 11, 2015 By Ravi Shankar 1 Comment

Microsoft has an auto recover feature using which a word document can be retrieved after an unplanned disruptions, such as a power outage or a crash. The word document gets saved to a default location during such as disruptions. If you want to change the default Auto Recover file location then you can use Word Advanced Options. Listed below procedure to change the default auto recover location in Word 2007, Word 2010 and Word 2013.

Change auto recover file location in Word 2013 and Word 2010

To the change the default Auto Recover file location in Word 2010 and Word 2013, click the File menu –> Options link. And then navigate to the Save tab. Under the Save documents, there is option for for specifying the Auto recover file location. This can be done by typing the required folder location in the text field available next to the label Auto Recover file location. You can also use the Browse button to locate the required folder. After the specifying the folder, click OK to apply the changes to the file location.

Auto Recover file location in Word 2007

The settings in Word 2007 can be accessed through Word Options -> Save menu

Under Save documents section, navigate to AutoRecover file location and specify the new location.

Also See: How to recover saved WiFi password on WIndows 7

How to search, print and unhide comments in Excel

July 24, 2015 By Ravi Shankar 2 Comments

Adding a comment to a cell in Microsoft Excel is very useful feature. You can always locate a comment by red arrow appearing at the top right corner of the cell.

List below are the steps to search, print and unhide comments in Excel 2013 and Excel 2010.

Search comment in Excel 2013 and Excel 2010

But searching and finding inserted comments in a excel worksheet with number of rows spanning across more than a page will be a huge task. This can be simplified using the Search Comments option available as part of the Find feature. To find comments in Excel 2010 and Excel 2013, navigate to Editing section and click the drop down arrow available next to Find & Select option.

This would display the following menu options as part of the Find & Select feature.

Click Comments from the list of available menus. This would locate the comment in your Excel Worksheet. And if you have more than one comment, then press tab to navigate to each comment.

Print cell comment in Excel 2013 and Excel 2010

Excel by default does not print the comments and you can enable this feature using the Page Setup option.

Let us added the following comment for a cell in Excel Worksheet.

Now when you navigate to Print Preview option (File –> Print), Excel will not show the added comments. Click the Page Setup option available under Print Preview Settings page.

In the Page Setup Window, click the Sheet tab and navigate to Print section. For comments drop down, choose “At end of sheet” or “As displayed on sheet” for Comments. Let us go with “At end of sheet”, click Ok button to confirm and save the changes.

Now the print preview screen will display the comments at the end of sheet and the same will get printed while printing the worksheet.

Unhide comment in Excel 2013 and Excel 2010

If you are not able see the comments in worksheet then you can try to use the unhide option available as part of the Excel Advanced Options.

Click the File menu and then the Options link.
In the Excel Option window, navigate to Advanced Options.
Scroll down to display section and For cells with comments radio option select your preferred choice i.e either Indicators only, and comments on hover or Comments and indicators.

Click Ok to save and confirm the changes.

Also See: How to Insert, Delete, Customize Comments in Excel 2010

How to use Outlook as a RSS reader

July 23, 2015 By Ravi Shankar 9 Comments

There are lot of RSS readers available but if you have already installed Microsoft Outlook (Outlook 2013, Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2007) then you can use that as a RSS reader. Listed below are the steps to add and read RSS feeds In Outlook 2013, Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2007

In Outlook 2013 and Outlook 2010, Click the File menu –> Info and click on the Account Settings

In Outlook 2007, Click the Tools menu and select Account Settings

Navigate to RSS feeds tab and click on New link

Enter the RSS feed of a blog or a website. In this example, I am going to enter this tech blog RSS feed.

Click on the Add button to add the RSS feed. The following RSS Feed Options dialog box would be displayed and if you want to change the delivery location of the RSS feed then click on the Change Folder button and specify the desired location. Click Ok to confirm the changes.

Navigate to RSS Feed delivery location, this would display the RSS feeds from the configured tech blog

How to share RSS feeds in Outlook 2013, Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2007

If you want to quickly mail the configured RSS feed to your email contacts then you can follow the below mentioned steps.

You can share the feed using the Share This Feed option available as part of Context menu or using Office Ribbon

Context menu – Right click on the any one feed post and select Share This feed option from the menu list.

Office Ribbon – Select the feed that you want to share then navigate to RSS section under Home menu and click the Share This Feed option.

This would launch the following Share RSS Feed window where you can enter the recipients email address and email them the feed details.

Also See: How to configure RSS feeds from YouTube channel in Outlook 2013

How to change hyperlink style in Word

July 14, 2015 By Ravi Shankar Leave a Comment

We had covered earlier about the steps required for adding hyperlink and email address in a Word document. Now let us see how to change the default style of hyperlink in Word 2013 and Word 2010.

Step 1: Open the Word 2013 app and select Hyperlink in the Word document.

Step 2: Click the Styles option available under Home menu.

Step 3: Navigate to Hyperlink in Styles list then select Modify option from the drop down.

Step 4: Now if you want to the change the font used for Hyperlink then click the dropdown under Formatting section and select a suitable font. Similarly you can change Font size, Font Style and Colour.

Changing Hyperlink Font

Changing Hyperlink Colour

How to turn on the automatic spell check in Word

June 16, 2015 By Ravi Shankar

In general Microsoft Office products provides options for automatic spell checkand you can find this feature in Word 2007, Word 2010, Word 2013 and Word 2016. This feature can be turned on or off using Microsoft Word options.

Click on the File menu –> Options (In Word 2007 it is under Office button –> Word Options)

Select Proofing options and navigate to When correcting spelling and grammar in Word section. This has a checkbox with label as Check spelling as you type. By checking this field, you can turn on the automatic spell check as you type in Word 2010.

Updated with readers comment, this seems to have solved the problem for most of the users- Thank You Maria. Find below the screen shot for the same

Spelling and grammar check in Word 2016, Word 2013 and Word 2010

The Review menu in Word 2013 has the option to check for spelling and grammar errors. Let us say you want to run through a document for spelling and grammatical errors then you can navigate to Review menu and click the Spelling and Grammar option under Proofing section.

If there any errors in the document then you should see a sidebar showing the error staring from the current page.

This should provide you with an option to Ignore or Change the error as shown in the above screenshot along with the suggestion. Once you choose either Ignore or Change, the next error will be display and this process would continue till there are no more errors left in the document.

In case you want to change the language used for Spell Check to English (United Kingdom) then you can use the language box available at the bottom of Spelling and Grammar sidebar.

If there no more errors left in the document then you should notice the following Spelling and grammar complete message.

How to hide spelling and grammar errors in Word

Word users can hide spelling and grammar errors clicking File menu –> Options link. (In Word 2007 it is under Office button –> Word Options)

Navigate to Proofing Options and scroll down Exception for section. Under this section there are check box available to hide spelling errors and grammar errors.

Disable highlighting spelling and grammatical errors

If your word document does not highlight the spelling and grammatical errorsthen probably you can check the settings mentioned below.

Let us say you have the following sentence with spelling and grammar errors and currently these errors are not highlighted.

Select the sentence and click the Review menu and navigate to Language section.

Select Set Proofing Language drop down value from the Language menu option.

This would display the following Language window. Un tick the check box with label as Do not check spelling or grammar and click Ok button to confirm and save the changes.

This would start highlighting the spelling and grammar errors in the sentence.

If this did not solve the problem then probably you check by enabling auto spell check feature

Change message format in Outlook 2007, 2010, 2013 and Outlook 2011 for Mac

May 2, 2015 By Ravi Shankar 3 Comments

Microsoft Outlook allows users to receive and send emails in their preferred email format. The three email formats provided to the users are HTML, Rich Text and Plain Text. This tutorial is about the steps required to change email format in Outlook.

Change message format in Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2013

The message format of email message in Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2013 can be changed using the Format Text menu option. This option is available as part of the compose new message window. To access the Format Text option, In the new message window, navigate to Format Text menu and then to Format section.

And using HTML, Plain Text and Rich Text menu options, one change the Format while composing a new email message.

HTML

This email messages can contain formatting and compatible with most of the email readers.

Plain Text

Plain Text messages contain no formatting but can be read by every one.

Rich Text

Rich Text messages contain formatting but are compatible with Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange.

Outlook 2010 also provides option for changing the default format for new messages. This can be done using the Mail Options. To change the format for compose messages, click File menu and then Options link. In the Outlook Options window, click Mail Options and then navigate to Compose messages section.

Using the Compose messages in this format, you can set the default format for new messages. After selecting desired value, click OK to apply and save the changes.

Message format in Outlook 2007

In Outlook 2007 message or mail format can be changed to any of the following three types

HTML
Rich Text
Plain Text

These options can be set depending upon user preferences. This setting can be accessed using Tools -> Options menu.

The options dialog box will display a Mail Format. Under Mail Format tab, the Message format contains drop down control – Compose in this message format, where you can specify format values such as HTML, Plain Text or Rich Text.

Change email message formatting in Outlook 2011 for Mac

Outlook 2011 for Mac allows users can send a new email message either in HTML or Plain Format. Users can change the email message format using the Message Options.

Click the Create a new message icon available under the Home menu. Then click the Options tab in the New Message Window.

The default composing email format in Outlook 2011 is set to HTML. If you want to change the format to plain then click the grey button next HTML.

Similarly if you want to change it from Plain to HTML then click the grey button before Plain

Outlook 2011 for Mac also provides users with option for changing the default HTML format to Plain. Click the Outlook menu and select Preferences from the menu list.

In the Preferences window, click Composing available under Email preferences.

Navigate to Format and account section under Composing Preferences and un mark the check box with label as Compose messages in HTML by default. This would turn off the default HTML format for new composing message.

Also See: How to always read mail in plain text using Outlook 2010

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