Outlook is handy for storing a list of all your contacts. However, it is also handy to have a printed copy of your contacts to reference if you are not sitting at your computer or do not have access to Outlook.

Outlook lets you print all your contacts or just a subset. You can also choose how to print them – card medium booklet, memo phone directory, or small booklet.

To print all your contacts:

1. Within Outlook, click the Contacts folder.
2. On the File menu, click Print.
3. In the Print style box, click the print style you want.
4. If you want to customize the style, click Define Styles.
5. Click Print.

To print a subset of your contacts:

1. Within Outlook, click the Contacts folder.
2. On the View menu, point to Current View, and then click Customize Current View.
3. Click Filter, and then use the options to display only those contacts that you want to print.
4. On the File menu, click Print.
5. In the Print style box, click the print style you want.
6. If you want to customize the style, click Define Styles.
7. Click Print.

The Outlook calendar is something that I use on a daily basis. I use it to schedule meetings, keep track of my appointments, when important tasks are due, and so on. Every evening I open my calendar to see what appointments and meetings I have booked for the next day. I also print a hard copy of my meetings and appointments to carry around with me, in the event that I don’t have access to Outlook.

To print appointments and meetings in Outlook:

1. On the File menu, click Print and then in the Print style box, click the print style you want. To print the details of appointments and meetings, in the Print Style box, click Calendar Details Style.
2. In the Start list and the End list, enter the first day and the last day to print.
3. To set other print options, such as the paper orientation or the fonts used, click Page Setup, and then select the options that you want.
4. To print the details of private appointments, clear the Hide Details of private appointments check box.
5. To print non-adjacent days, change to Week or Month view, select the days you want to print.
6. File menu, click Print.

Someone is using my email address and other info to sign me up online for various groups, seminars, etc. Are there laws regarding this? –Jim

While there are various federal and state laws against email “spoofing” and other forms of misleading or deceptive transmissions, the problem is tracking down and prosecuting the perpetrators.

You’re assumption that “someone” is doing it is the first problem. In many cases, automated processes written by those that have less than noble intent are “scraping” your email address from a legitimate source (a Web site, a forum, a blog or one of those infamous emails that someone sends to “everyone they know”) and using it for their malicious purposes.

If you are getting email from sources that seem legitimate that you’ve never signed up for, your assumption that “someone” is signing you up is more likely to be the result of something that you subscribed to that had a side relationship with another group buried deep within the ‘I agree’ page.

As a business owner, I am constantly barraged by marketing firms that claim that they have “clean” email lists that only contain addresses of folks that have “opted-in” to a list saying that they would be OK with being sent “special offers.”

The problem I have with these claims is that I have yet to meet anyone since the inception of the Internet who has ever knowingly said that they have approved some random marketing firm to send them “special offers” whenever they felt motivated to do so.

The most likely causes of what you are describing are from rogue automated systems that have subscribed to a service using your address (in order to gain access to something else they were after) or your own actions of signing up for something and not fully reading the legal psychobabble agreement that you were required to agree to in order to get what you wanted (free download, chance to win, register for, etc.)

This is why we have preached since the beginning of the spam problem that you always have two email addresses: one that you keep private and one that you use for all of the various sites that you make purchases on or register for or when you join a social networking group.

The Internet is infested with sites that have no other motive than to get you to sign up for something that seems legitimate, but in fact is nothing more than a front to mine for email addresses.

Unless you are paying very close attention to everything you ever do on the Internet, it’s nearly impossible to keep your email address from being manipulated by those that can profit from it.

If you don’t have a second email address, sign up for a free account at sites like Gmail.com (Google’s free Web mail service), Yahoo.com, and Hotmail.com (Microsoft’s free Web mail service) and use it for anything that isn’t important from now on.

If you are being sent newsletters or other correspondence from legitimate companies or Web sites that you recognize, you can usually be safe in clicking on the unsubscribe link located at the bottom of the messages. But be very careful not to unsubscribe from messages that are not from familiar companies, because this is often a tactic used by spammers to get you to verify your address so they can sell it to other spammers as a verified address.

Old world ethics like respect and civility don’t exist on most of the Internet and your email address is the currency of the new economy, so guard it as best you can!

Ken Colburn
President of Data Doctors Computer Services, Host of the award-winning Computer Corner radio show, and Author of Computer Q&A in the East Valley Tribune newspapers.

A distribution list (DL) is a grouping of contacts. It gives you a quick and easy way to send a message to a group of people. Once you create a distribution lists created, you might want to have a hard copy of all the contacts in the group for reference purposes. If so, all you have to do is print off a copy of your distribution list using the steps listed below.

To print a distribution list in Outlook 2002:

1. Click Contacts.
2. Open the distribution list you want to print.
3. From the File menu, click Print.
4. Choose any additional print options.
5. Click OK.

Here is a handy tip for those of you who frequently schedule meetings using Outlook 2007. It is sometimes handy to have a hard copy of the names of attendees invited to a meeting, along with the name of the meeting organizer. Although it requires a few steps, you can print this information in Outlook 2007.

Your first step is to copy the names of attendees and the organizer:

1. Within Outlook, click the Calendar.
2. Open the appropriate meeting request.
3. On the Meeting tab, click Scheduling Assistant.
4. Select the names in the All Attendees list.
5. On the Format Text tab, click Copy.The names of the meeting organizer and attendees are copied.

Your next step is to paste the names into Word and format them for printing:

1. Open a new Word document.
2. On the Home tab, click Paste. The names of the meeting organizer and attendees are separated by either semicolons or commas.
3. Select all the names.
4. On the Insert tab, in the Tables group, click Table.
5. Click Convert Text to Table.
6. In the Convert Text to Table dialog box, under Table size, set the number of columns to 1.
7. In the Convert Text to Table dialog box, under Separate text at, select Commas if the names are separated by commas. If the names are separated by semicolons, select Other, and then type a semicolon (;) in the adjacent box.
8. Click OK.

Now that the names are formatted into a single list, you can print the list for future reference.

Many people have hundreds of messages sitting in their Inbox. Outlook makes it simple to find out how many unread messages are sitting in your Inbox by displaying the amount beside the name of the folder. Outlook also makes it is easy to identify which messages are unread by displaying them in bold text.

The headings of unread messages are displayed in bold text in your Inbox.

What if you want to find all unread messages in your Inbox? Outlook also makes it easy to find unread messages using the Search Folders function. To find all unread messages in Outlook 2007:

1. Within Outlook, in the Navigation Pane, click the plus sign (+) next to Search Folders to display its subfolders.
2. Click the Unread Mail folder.
3. All unread items are displayed in the message list.

Outlook displays the number of unread items beside a folder name. If you have five unread items in your Inbox, the number five will appear beside your Inbox in bold letters.

You can configure outlook to display the total number of items within a folder, instead of the total number of unread items. The total number will then appear in blue text beside the folder name.

To configure Outlook to display the total number of items:

1. Within Outlook, right-click the folder you want to display the total number of items for.
2. From the shortcut menu, click Properties.
3. Verify that the General tab is selected.
4. Click Show total number of items.
5. Click OK.

Outlook automatically displays specific fields, with each field containing specific information. For example, when you click your Inbox, some of the fields displayed include Subject, Received, Size, From, and so on. The Subject field tells you who the message is from, while the received field tells you when the message was received.

Outlook lets you customize the fields that are displayed in a view. If you do not want a field displayed, you can simply remove it from the view. You can add or remove fields using the steps outlined below.

To add a field:

1. From the main Outlook window, on the View menu, point to Current View, and then click Customize Current View.
2. Click Fields.
3. In the Available fields list, click the field that you want to add, and then click Add.

To remove a field:

1. From the main Outlook window, on the View menu, point to Current View, and then click Customize Current View.
2. Click Fields.
3. In the Available fields list, click the field that you want to remove, and then click Remove.

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Do you want to create a new email message in Windows Mail? Assuming you have already set up an email account, creating a new message is relatively simple to do. Once you have the Windows Mail application open, complete the steps that are described below.

1. Within Windows Mail, click the Create Mail icon. The New Message window will appear.
2. In the To field, type in the email address of the appropriate recipient (this is the address of the person you want to send the message to).
3. In the Subject field, type in a few short words describing the purpose of the message. Although this is not required, adding a subject is good practice.
4. Type your message in the large box that appears under the subject line.

When you’re ready click the Send button in the top corner.

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Gnomie Tim Stapleton writes:

Chris,

Recently I was reading an article in my local newspaper about a local college student who has developed a new “all-in-one” IM program called Digsby that not only supports the regular AIM, Jabber, ICQ, Yahoo!, and Google Talk, but incorporates your email as well as your MySpace and Facebook accounts.

There are downloadable versions for Windows OS, Mac OS, as well as Linux. I downloaded it and, in my opinion, it works fairly well; it is still the beta version. The thing that I like most about it is, as mentioned, the incorporation of one’s social networks and email right into the program so that when you move your mouse over the status bar for the particular account that you want to look at, it brings up a pop up window so you can see your inbox or the status of your buddies on your social network of choice.

On the email end of things you can set up a variety of accounts including POP, IMAP, Yahoo!, Hotmail, and Gmail. Also, it has many different features with which you can personalize your account.

You can find the article about the program and a brief video about it here.

And the Web site for the program itself is here.

Outlook contains a Deleted Items folder that stores all the messages you delete from your inbox and other folders. The Deleted Items folder is very similar to the Windows Recycle Bin. You can open the Deleted Items folder within Outlook and recover your deleted items. You can also permanently delete items in this folder when you are confident that you no longer need them.

When you choose the empty your Deleted Items folder, Outlook 2007 will display a warning message prompting you to confirm your actions. You can disable this notification if you feel it is unnecessary using the steps listed below:

1. Open Outlook 2007
2. From the Tools menu, click Options.
3. Click the Other tab.
4. Click Advanced Options.
5. Clear the Warn before permanently deleting items check box.
6. Click OK.

Rules in Outlook can be imported and exported. In part I of this tip, I showed you how to export rules within Outlook 2007. When you import rules into Outlook they are added to the end of the existing list of rules. Bear in mind that only one set of rules can be imported at a time.

To import a set of rules into Outlook 2007:

1. Open Outlook 2007.
2. From the Tools menu, click Rules and Alerts.
3. If you have more than one e-mail account, in the Apply changes to this folder list, select the Inbox that you want.
4. Click Options.
5. Click Import Rules.
6. In the File name box, type the path and file name for the set of rules that you want to import. You will have exported them to a file with an .rwz extension.
7. If you want to import a file that contains rules other than those in the Rules and Alerts Wizard, such as rules that are compatible with previous versions of Microsoft Office Outlook, click the file type in the Files of type list.
8. Click Open.

Rules in Outlook can be imported and exported which means you can move your rules between computers and e-mail programs. When you export a set of rules, you save them to a file with a .rwz extension.
To export rules in Outlook 2007:

1. Open Outlook 2007.
2. From the Tools menu, click Rules and Alerts.
3. If you have more than one e-mail account, in the Apply changes to this folder list, select the Inbox that you want.
4. Click Options.
5. Click Export Rules.
6. In the File name box, type the path and file name for the set of rules that you want to export.
7. If you want to export a file that contains only rules that are compatible with a previous version of Microsoft Office Outlook, in the Save as type list, select one of the following:
   • Outlook 2002 Compatible Rules Wizard rules
   • Outlook 2000 Compatible Rules Wizard rules
   • Outlook 98 Compatible Rules Wizard rules
8. Click Save.

In a previous tip I showed you how to create a rule in Outlook 2007. At some point, after a rule is created, you may decide that you no longer want to use the rule. If this is the case, you can easily delete the rule, bearing in mind that should you decide to use the rule again, you will have to recreate it.

To delete a rule in Outlook 2007:

1. Open Outlook 2007.
2. From the Tools menu, click Rules and Alerts.
3. If you have more than one e-mail account, in the Apply changes to this folder list, select the Inbox that you want.
4. From the list of rules, select the rule that you want to delete.
5. Click Delete.
6. Click OK.

Rules in Outlook can be used for a number of different things. Many people use rules to keep their inboxes clutter free and organized. For example, you can have all messages from a specific sender placed in a separate folder.

In a previous tip I showed you how to create a rule in Outlook 2007. At some point, after a rule is created, you may decide that you want to temporarily disable the rule. If you delete the rule you will need to recreate it when you want to use it again. Therefore, a better option is to turn the rule off.

To turn a rule off in Outlook 2007:

1. Open Outlook 2007.
2. From the Tools menu, click Rules and Alerts.
3. If you have more than one e-mail account, in the Apply changes to this folder list, select the Inbox that you want.
4. From the list of rules, select or clear the check box next to the rule you want to turn off.
5. Click OK.

To turn the rule back on, repeat the steps described above.

Rules in Outlook can be used for a number of different things. Many people use rules to keep their inboxes clutter free and organized. For example, you can have all messages from a specific sender placed in a separate folder.

Once you create a rule, you might want to make a copy of it to use as a template for creating additional rules. For example, if you have a complicated rule with several actions and conditions, you may want to use the same actions and conditions for another situation but choose a different folder to move the message to.

To make a copy of a rule in Outlook 2007:

1. Open Outlook 2007.
2. From the Tools menu, click Rules and Alerts.
3. If you have more than one e-mail account, in the Apply changes to this folder list, select the Inbox that you want.
4. From the list of rules, select the rule that you want to copy.
5. Click Copy.
6. Proceed to make any changes you want to the copied rule.

Rules in Outlook can be used for a number of different things. For example, you can create a rule that will keep all email messages from unknown senders out of your inbox and place them in a separate folder instead. If you create several different rules to keep your inbox organized, you may want to create a backup copy of those rules. To create a backup of rules in Outlook 2007:

1. Open Outlook 2007.
2. From the Tools menu, click Rules and Alerts.
3. If you have more than one e-mail account, in the Apply changes to this folder list, select the Inbox that you want.
4. Click Options.
5. Click Export Rules.
6. In the File name box, type the path and file name for the set of rules that you want to export.
7. Click Save.

Windows Mail is the default e-mail program used by Vista and other programs. If you use a different e-mail client, such as Microsoft Outlook, you can configure a different e-mail program as the default.

To change the default e-mail program in Vista:

1. Click Start, Default Programs, and click Set program access and computer defaults.
2. Type in your administrator password if prompted.
3. Click Custom under Choose a configuration.
4. Under Choose a default e-mail program, select the program you want to set as the default.
5. Click OK.