Fixing your quirky spelling errors in Office

Admit it… you have a few(?) words that you always misspell or mistype when working on a Word document, a PowerPoint deck, an Excel file, a OneNote notebook, or an Outlook email. And, for whatever reason, the program decides that your quirky spelling isn’t important enough to fix for you automagically. Well, you can actually add your own spelling quirks to Office so that you don’t have to wear out the backspace key fixing your errors. And yes… this is a case where you can fix it once, and *all* the programs will pick up the change!

Adding background colors and images to Outlook emails

I hesitate to share this tip, as I see it abused all too often… but hey, it can be fun. 🙂

You can add images and colors as the background to emails you create in Outlook. This can be helpful if you need an email to stand out, or even if you just want to be a bit unique.

Finding folder names in Outlook search

This tip came to me via Sandra in the typical fashion… a Skype ping that starts “I just figured out something cool… wanna see?” She shared her screen and showed me how to search for items in your Outlook mail file and have it show you what folder it’s in! Here’s how it works…

The “Tell me what you want to do” feature in Office 2016

There’s no question that Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook have a ton of functionality. However, sometimes it’s nearly impossible to remember or find the right menu option to trigger it. In Office 2016, there’s a new feature called Tell me what you want to do. It is a lifesaver in finding what you need to know when you need to know it.

Adding color to your Outlook inbox

I’ve been asked a number of times, “Hey Tom! Is there a way I can make my inbox show emails from my boss in a different color?” To date, my answer was always an apologetic “no”. But a colleague recently sent me a screen print of her inbox doing just that, so I had to figure out how she made that happen… and I found it!

Replying to an Outlook email with a Skype Instant Message

We all suffer from Inbox Overload, and important things get lost as our emails pile up. But sometimes it’s easier to reply to an Outlook email with a quick Skype Instant Message (IM). Outlook makes that possible with a menu option I have overlooked for a long time…

Customizing AutoCorrect in Office programs

I think AutoCorrect in the different Office programs (such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) is a lifesaver when it comes to creating documents with no (or fewer) typos.

What you may not know is that you have the ability to do a lot of customization in AutoCorrect in order to make it work best for your particular situations.

Getting Outlook notifications for important emails

A colleague recently figured out a way to make sure that he’s notified in Outlook when he receives emails from specific people. He passed it along to us, and we’re passing it along to you. 🙂

When you set up this type of a mail rule, you’ll get a pop-up dialog box in Outlook when an email arrives from a specific person or group. You can then open the email from that pop-up.

Keep in mind that this only works from the Outlook client, and you have to be running Outlook at the time the email arrives for this to work.

Expanding all the folders in the Outlook Inbox

I was asked the other day if there was a way to expand all the Outlook Inbox folders without clicking each one separately. The person had inadvertently moved a folder somewhere else, and they wanted to be able to see all the expanded folders so they could easily spot it. My first pass at research made it appear there was no way to do that without writing macros and such, but then I found this tip that works pretty good (provided you’re running Windows)…