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Making Outlook a little quieter

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I’m a big fan of reducing the amount of ways that applications can interrupt me with notifications, messages, etc. Since I spend so much time in Outlook and receive an enormous amount of e-mail, I find that turning off all of the notifications for new messages is a great way to ‘quiet down’ Outlook. This includes things like:

  • the New Mail Desktop Alert
  • the envelope icon that appears in the system tray
  • the cursor briefly changing to an envelope
  • the ‘ding’ sound that accompanies all of the above

They’re a bit hard to find in our Options dialogs, and that’s something we hope to address in a future release of Outlook. Until then, if you want to eliminate some or all of these notifications, here’s where to find the controls for turning them off:

Go to the Tools menu, then choose Options. In the ‘Email’ section at the top of the dialog, click E-mail Options…, then Advanced E-Mail Options in the next dialog.

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Still with me? :) Good, since you’ve now found the options:

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I like to turn all of them off, but feel free to change them however you would like. You can also edit some of the settings of the New Message Alert pop-up using the Desktop Alert Settings button…

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That’s it! I hope you find a quiet Outlook as helpful to your productivity as I do.

Michael Affronti
Outlook Program Manager

Posted: Thursday, July 03, 2008 6:59 PM by outblog

Comments

puvenlee@live.com said:

HI Michael，

 Is there a way to display an envelope icon in the notification area, when a mail is coming to the Archive Folder too?

 Because I set rules to outlook and some mails are moved to my archive folder directly upon receive.

# July 4, 2008 5:21 AM

Rogue Tiger said:

Thanks for the tip.  I can't wean myself completely off the alerts but I've been able to cut down to a 4 second alert and completely eliminate the envelope and ding!

Keep the outlook tips coming!

# July 6, 2008 8:31 PM

Beverly Ostrowiecki said:

Thanks for the path to managing interuptions I can control! Onward to increased focus.

# July 10, 2008 4:53 PM

Steve said:

I would pay money to disable the prompt you get when you change a message from HTML or RTF to plain text, "Warning: Changing the message format ... are you sure you want to do this?". This you get EVERY time you do this.

Jesus wept, Microsoft.

BTW, another tip is to open Outlook in with your calendar as the start page, instead of your inbox, that way you can avoid processing your mail just 'cause it's there - go to "Tools > Options > Other > Advanced > Startup in this folder..."

# July 13, 2008 2:56 AM

PatrickDickey said:

I agree with puvenlee.  I'd like to see the Desktop Alert work with other folders.  Especially the folders assigned to the Outlook Connector (my @hotmail, @live and @msn accounts).  They are the e-mail accounts that I use on a minute-by-minute basis, and my "Default" was just put in to get Outlook to actually run properly.

Also, I would like to see the "Rules and Alerts" actually work for these accounts.  I have the majority of my rules set up for these accounts, and the ONLY way I can get them to run is to manually do it.  Kind of a waste of having a feature, if it doesn't work for everything you want it to.

Have a great day:)

Patrick.

# July 13, 2008 2:36 PM

Phoenix said:

Thx for the tip.

Really usefull.

# July 19, 2008 9:48 AM

Judy Gleeson said:

If you combine this quietening method with the use of Rules, you can effectively determine which emails you DO want to be interrupted by.

Now that's the way a power user sets up Outlook to help them be productive.

Cheers

Judy Gleeson, MVP Outlook

aka The Desk Doctor

www.judygleeson.com

www.deskdoctors.com

# July 31, 2008 10:41 PM

BECKYGF said:

I AM A "NEWBIE" (1yr), AND LIKED THE "FEEDBACK" FROM MY PC, IT HELPED KEEP ME ABREAST OF MY ACTIVITIES.  NOW, I DON'T NEED THE "SOUND" AND ANNOYANCES BUT I AM GLAD THEY ARE HERE FOR ME TO HAVE A SELECTION HOW I WANT TO "CUSTOMIZE" MY PC AND LET IT "TALK-BACK" WHEN I DECIDE.  I'D RATHER HAVE A CHOICE THAN NOT.

# August 8, 2008 3:59 PM
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