A popular request is the ability to open Outlook Express  &  Live Mail’s *.eml files in Outlook.  If you have Outlook 2010, it supports opening *.eml files. If you use Outlook 2007, you can open them if you have either a hotfix or SP2 installed.

After installing the hotfix or SP2, you’ll need to edit the registry to enable it.

1. Open the registry editor – press Windows key + R to open the Run dialog then type regedit and press Enter.
2. Browse to the following registry subkey:
3. HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Microsoft Internet Mail Message\shell\open\command
4. Right-click on (Default) then click Modify.
5. Type (or copy and paste)
   “%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Office\Office12\OUTLOOK.EXE” /eml “%1″
   then click OK and exit the registry editor.

For more information and links to the hotfix, see
Files that have the .eml file name extension do not open in Outlook 2007
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/956693

 

I’ve heard a lot of complaints about Outlook 2010 crashing on a reply or forward. This is caused by not having a folder set as the default delivery location for the account.

With Outlook closed, go to Control panel, Mail and select Show Profiles. Select your profile and click Properties button, then E-mail Accounts. On the E-mail tab, select your POP3 account, and then click Change Folder button and select a delivery folder.

You can also do this from within Outlook by going to file, Account settings and making the change on the Email tab. You will need to restart Outlook.

Outlook crashes when you try to send email messages because of a nonexistent delivery location setting in your profile
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;2298962

I have a new poll at Outlook Forums. As always, this highly scientific poll (:)) is open to all; only those who want to add a comment will need an account.

Do you edit and save attachment back to an email message?
http://www.outlookforums.com/showthread.php?68554-Do-you-edit-and-save-attachment-back-to-an-email-message    

Outlook has a nifty feature (or design flaw, depending on who you talk to): you can open an attachment and edit it, then save it and the changes save to the original email message. (The feature was removed from Outlook 2010.)

You had to work in this order:

1. Open message
2. Open attachment
3. Edit attachment
4. Save and close attachment
5. Save and close message

This sounds simple but its easy to mess up: If you closed the message first, the changes to the attachment didn’t save back to the message. Then, if you closed the attachment without saving it to your documents folder, all of your edits could be lost (or hard to find in the secturetemp folder). If you saved and closed the attachment first then closed the message but didn’t save changes, the attachment wasn’t updated.

Because there were so many ways this could go wrong, administrators generally hate this feature.

Over the last 6 weeks or so, I’ve had/seen several questions about the junk mail folder icon and didn’t understand why they insisted the icon was wrong…  I do now.

“My junk email folder is blocked, how do I unblock it?  Nothing goes into the  folder automatically.  There is a small red circle with a diagonal line thru it on the folder symbol.  Outlook 2007.”

This is the correct icon for the folder and doesn’t mean the junk mail filter is blocked or broken.

Over the last few months we’ve seen a number of complaints where all new messages are delivered to the Deleted Items folder.  A hotfix released this week addresses this problem (and many more).

Additionally, the hotfix provides a design change: the Secure Temp folder for Outlook 2007 is automatically cleared when you exit Outlook. This behavior change is important to note as users will no longer be able to recover attachments accidently saved to the secure temp folder after they close Outlook.

This hotfix fixes a number of other issues -  a complete list is in the following KB article.
Description of the Office Outlook 2007 hotfix package (Outlook-x-none.msp): June 29, 2010
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/983316

Outlook 2010 gets the maximum message size from Exchange server and prevents you from sending the message instead of sending it then bouncing it back. For those without Exchange, the limit is 20 MB. If you need to send larger messages or Outlook is incorrectly telling you the message is too large, you can edit the registry.

Open the registry editor and browse to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\Preferences
Create a DWORD called MaximumAttachmentSize
Set it to the maximum your ISP allows (in KB) or 0 for unlimited message size. 

I wasn’t planning on writing about Outlook 2010 for the next few tips, but I thought I should mention a bug in Quick Steps, especially since I recently wrote about Quick Steps on the Office blog.

If you have a profile with only POP3, IMAP, or Outlook connector accounts and attempt to create a quick step that sends a message, you’ll need to type (or paste) the address in the To field.

When you press the To button, it brings up the Windows Address book. (Oops!) If there is an address card in the address book for the email address you entered in the To field, the quick step will not save. You need to remove the contact from the Windows address book or remove the email address from the contact. Expect a fix at a later date.

If you have an Exchange account in your profile, adding address to quick steps works as expected.

For more information and screenshots of the correct and wrong address book dialogs, see
Quick Steps Address Book Bug
http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/ol2010/qs_bug.asp

My Office blog post: Cut the email drudge work with Outlook Quick Steps: MVP #9 on Office 2010
http://blogs.office.com/b/office_blog/archive/2010/05/24/Cut-the-email-drudge-work-with-Outlook-Quick-Steps_3A00_-MVP-_2300_9-on-Office-2010.aspx

If you have more than one account in Outlook 2010, you can configure different Junk Email settings for each account. Select a folder or message in the account’s data store, then open the Junk Email Options dialog and check the settings. If you are using one Inbox for more than one account,  select a message and the settings for the associated account will display when you open the Junk Email dialog.

We’re seeing a number of people report receiving Error 4202 when they sync Outlook 2010 with the Hotmail server. This error happens when Outlook syncs email addresses in the blocked sender and safe sender with Hotmail and one or more addresses contain an underscore or is malformed. It shouldn’t prevent a person from sending or receiving messages, as synchronization of mail, calendar, contacts and other data (including the junk lists) continues.

The short term fix is to delete the suspect addresses from the Safe and Blocked Senders lists in Outlook.

An Outlook user asked: “I have no idea what setting I must of hit, but I’m seeing my first name appear in the middle of a sentence with brackets around it, i.e., [name].  It only happens when I’m composing email messages in Outlook.  How can I adjust settings to get rid of this nuisance?”

You should only see this when you reply to messages and type within the quoted text. Check your settings in Tools, Options, Email Options button -Mark my comments with at the bottom of the dialog. In Outlook 2010, its on File, Options, Mail tab.