Creating your own keyboard shortcuts in Outlook

re: Creating your own keyboard shortcuts in Outlook

Wes — Sat, 01 May 2004 21:00:00 GMT

I just always hold down Alt and hit E twice, which marks all as read in current folder. I do this a lot, for email-lists and news postings from newsgator.

re: Creating your own keyboard shortcuts in Outlook

Jonathan Hardwick [MSFT] — Sun, 02 May 2004 06:10:00 GMT

Which version of Outlook does that work for? In Outlook 2003, the first Alt-E takes me into the Edit menu, but then the second Alt-E beeps forlornly, since there's no command in that menu with an underlined "e".

re: Creating your own keyboard shortcuts in Outlook

Raymond Chen — Sun, 02 May 2004 15:50:00 GMT

It's there in Outlook 2003 11.5608.5606 at least. Alt+EE is what I use too.

re: Creating your own keyboard shortcuts in Outlook

Wes — Sun, 02 May 2004 16:27:00 GMT

Jonathan,
I've used it in Outlook XP and now Outlook 2003.

I'm looking for an Empty "Junk Email" Folder shortcut key. I have only found the option by right clicking on the Junk Email folder. I've tried to customized the menu bar but I can't even find the command anywhere.

Wes

re: Creating your own keyboard shortcuts in Outlook

Jonathan Hardwick [MSFT] — Sun, 02 May 2004 21:53:00 GMT

Grrr. Alt-EE doesn't work for me in two different installs of 11.5608.6530. I guess I'm stuck with my Alt-Q hack.

Wes, I can't find the command for Empty Junk Mail either. I'm thinking that you might have to write a macro to call the right Outlook object, and then bind that macro to a key?

We should probably both go over to KC Lemson's blog and ask our questions there... :-)

re: Creating your own keyboard shortcuts in Outlook

Wes — Mon, 03 May 2004 00:38:00 GMT

I'm going to be interning this summer in the Outlook group so I will see if I can't find an answer. Its funny everyone I tell that I'm going to be interning in the Outlook group gives me a list of things that they don't like about Outlook. As if I'm going to be able to do much, but anyways I will see what I can do.

re: Creating your own keyboard shortcuts in Outlook

KC Lemson — Thu, 20 May 2004 19:45:00 GMT

Jonathan - &E on the edit menu is "Mark all as read". Is the option not there, or is the option there but _E is not the accelerator? You should be able to modify either with customizable toolbars.

I don't know how to do this just using customizable toolbars, but I blogged a macro option today: http://blogs.msdn.com/kclemson/archive/2004/05/20/136101.aspx

re: Creating your own keyboard shortcuts in Outlook

Jonathan Hardwick [MSFT] — Thu, 20 May 2004 20:45:00 GMT

The option isn't on the Edit menu. It's present in the list of Edit commands in the Customize Toolbars dialog, but it's definitely not shown on the Edit menu...

Thanks for the Empty Junk Mail tip - I'll let Wes know!

re: Creating your own keyboard shortcuts in Outlook

HelpDeskScott of WhoKnowsDotInfo — Tue, 20 Jul 2004 07:37:00 GMT

For me the long sought for combo trick has been figuring out how to add MULTIPLE senders to the JunkMail Senders Blocked list. For inevitably by the time I finally find the time to takle the overflowing contents of my various 'Certainly Spam, "Probably SPAM", and very possibly SPAM' folders, seeking out those at last rare instances of a new White Listable sender, or the even rarer eMail suggesting some new 'Light-Grey-List' rule for aiming the likely spam into a more frequently audited folder, when but the time I've handled that mind numbingly dull task, which nevertheless can ONLY be done effectively if one's careful NOT to become mind-numbed by same, the last thing I then want to be doing is sitting there holding down that Block'em key and listening to that noxious near rythym of bleeps and blorts as the system folds some hundreds or thousands of new SPAMs into the far smaller list of newly found Spammers to be added into the lists...

Yet I'm reluctant to automate the process lest it be too easily accidentally triggerable, for the list seems to be stored for efficiency in a purely alphabetical list, without any means for being regarded from the perspective of who was just now added, thereby preventing any hope of having a fall-back 'safety net' approach of being able to 'merely' have to skim through the most recently added few hundred addresses.

Thus if the task is left ignored for too long it becomes ever more tempting to then let it wait yet a bit longer still, and making the desire for such a block mode blocking mode function ever more desirable as the Hundreds of unprocessed SPAMs become THOUSANDS of unprocessed SPAMs...

My appolgies Wes for being like the oh so many others you'd spoken of, but I'm hoping it might be possible to hope that the notion of your passing along this thought might not be too unreasonable.

The only thing that's made this a less even a slightly objectionable process than in the past, if one can stretch to thinging of it as a 'saving grace', is that with the escallations in Mal-Ware propagation methodologies available having finally forced a begrudging acceptance of once and for all turning off the auto downloading of eMail graphics, at least I'm no longer also as likely as not to be accidentally also doing a this-address-is-live signalling to each and every SPAMMER whose message is so touch individually, due to that one at a time blocking rule, merely for forgetting to turn off the pictures downloader each time before undertaking that hated task.

Mark all as read in Outlook - and why the long tail means that web search engines beat Office help

Jonathan Hardwick — Tue, 12 Apr 2005 08:28:37 GMT

Cameron Reilly found my post on keyboard shortcuts in Outlook while trying to figure out a better way...

Outlook Macro to mark everything in certain folders as read

s0lar1s8 — Wed, 18 May 2005 16:36:01 GMT

Sub MarkRead()
'misc notes:
'outlook 2002 written 3/2004 by s0lar1s8
'create a toolbar button to run this.
'note: due to security you'll get a prompt.
'The event that fires when a user displays any item -- new or otherwise -- is
'Inspectors.NewInspect. A new item will have a blank EntryID property.
Dim app As New Outlook.Application
Dim ns As NameSpace
'Dim tempname As String
On Error GoTo ErrorHandler
Set ns = app.GetNamespace("MAPI")
'tempname = ns.CurrentUser.name
FindtoMark ns.Folders, 0
'MsgBox "Completed", vbOKOnly, "Macro"
Exit Sub
ErrorHandler:
MsgBox "Error " & Err & " " & Err.Description, vbCritical, "MarkRead"

End Sub

Sub FindtoMark(parent As Folders, depth As Integer)
Dim flr As MAPIFolder
Dim s As String
Dim MarkThisFolder As Boolean
Dim FindString As String
On Error Resume Next

s = String(depth * 2, " ")
For Each flr In parent
'Debug.Print s; flr.Name; ": "; flr.DefaultMessageClass;
'mark all as read in a particular folder.
MarkThisFolder = False

Select Case flr.name
Case "SPAM E-mail"
MarkThisFolder = True
Case "Junk E-mail"
MarkThisFolder = True
Case Else
MarkThisFolder = False
End Select
If MarkThisFolder Then
'Dim lngCount As Long
'Dim i As Long

'lngCount = flr.Items.Count ' objMailItem.Count
'If lngCount > 0 Then
' We need to use a count down loop for
' removing items from a collection. Otherwise,
' the loop counter gets confused and only every
' other item is removed.
'For i = lngCount To 1 Step -1
For Each objMailItem In flr.Items
' all cases

If objMailItem.UnRead = True Then
objMailItem.UnRead = False
End If
Next
'Next i
' End If

'Next
DoEvents ' do any windows background processing
End If
FindtoMark flr.Folders, depth + 1
Next flr

DoEvents ' do any windows background processing
End Sub

re: Creating your own keyboard shortcuts in Outlook

Allen Oliver — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 11:51:00 GMT

I have Outlook 2003 installed and I would like to know to turn off all keyboard shortcuts.
allen.oliver@cit.com

re: Creating your own keyboard shortcuts in Outlook

Sarah — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 15:40:43 GMT

Awesome macro - thanks!

re: Creating your own keyboard shortcuts in Outlook

john — Sat, 06 May 2006 06:05:57 GMT

Would anyone know how to make outlook 2003 auto complete entries by hitting the enter key instead of using Ctil + K?

Or how to assign a function key to do the same thing

re: Creating your own keyboard shortcuts in Outlook

Chris — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 21:59:11 GMT

Hey, thanks Jonathan! I didn't think to do it that way. I was trying to find the shortcut key for that command when I saw your site. Works elegantly.

Thanks again!

re: Creating your own keyboard shortcuts in Outlook

Paul Ford — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 00:05:46 GMT

Hi Jonathan,
The tips you accumulated a couple of years ago from KC were useful. I set up shortcut keys to flag email as completed or needing action. What would be helpful is to have a macro associated with the shortcuts that both flagged the item and moved to the next item in one key stroke.

re: Creating your own keyboard shortcuts in Outlook

Tobin Coziahr — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 12:24:18 GMT

What I've been looking for all night is a way to define a keystroke that moves an item from my inbox to another predefined folder. For example, I move everything out of my inbox into an "archive" when I've processed it, and having to drag the emails from one to the other is tedious. I'd love a single button like "a" that moves an email to a new folder. Any ideas?

re: Creating your own keyboard shortcuts in Outlook

Andy K — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 17:28:23 GMT

The macro is a cool idea. But when I run the macro, it never stops and it seems to lock up the program. I'm using Outlook 2003. Has anybody else seen the problem?