Chapter 19. Ten (Or So) Things You Can't Do with Outlook

In This Chapter

  • Put a phone number in your calendar

  • Drag and drop many items

  • Print on two sides

  • Search phone numbers in reverse

  • Search and replace area codes

  • Nix AutoPreview

  • Put pictures in notes

  • Record all contact info in the Journal

  • Do math with Journal phone call entries

  • Cross‐reference items

  • Prevent people from nitpicking

Maybe I sound crabby listing the things that Outlook can't do, considering all the things it can do. But it takes only a few minutes to find out something that a program can do, and you can spend all day trying to figure out something that a program can't do. I could easily list more than ten things that Outlook can't do (walk the dog, deflect incoming asteroids — the usual). This chapter lists just the first big ones that I've run into.

The Top Ten (or so) List

Bear in mind that Outlook can't do these ten things when you first get it. Because you can reprogram Outlook with Visual Basic, however, a clever person could make Outlook do many of these things.

Change the Inbox color

You can color the individual items that you create in Outlook, but you can't do anything about the overall, plain‐vanilla color scheme of the Inbox or any of the other modules. If you need more color in your life, dig out those rose‐colored glasses.

Insert a phone number into your calendar

When you're entering an appointment, it would be nice if Outlook could look up the phone number of the person you're meeting and insert the number into the appointment ...

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