Getting More from Outlook

Tom Kelliher, CS 102

Nov. 20, 2006

Introduction

In this lab, you'll learn how to use several advanced features of Outlook:

  1. Personal Folders.
  2. Handling junk and ``adult'' messages in Outlook.
  3. Automatically delete messages from the Deleted Items folder.
  4. ``Out of office'' auto-replies.
  5. Message signatures.
  6. Introduction to Rules and Alerts.
  7. Introduction to the College's SPAM filter.

Outlook

Creating Personal Folders

First off, you may not have to do this. Open Outlook (do not open Outlook Express) and check the Folders List pane on the left. If you already have a ``Personal Folders'' folder, skip this part. If not, do the following:

  1. Within your G: drive, create a folder named Exchange.

  2. In Outlook, open the File menu and choose Data File Management.

  3. In the dialog which will pop up, choose Add... and then Select Office Outlook Personal Folders File and click OK.

  4. In the Create or Open Outlook Data File dialog box, navigate to the Exchange folder you just created on your G: drive. Set the file name to personal and click OK.

  5. Close the dialog boxes.

  6. Back in Outlook, verify that you now have a ``Personal Folders'' folder.

Handling Junk E-Mail in Outlook

  1. This is how you designate an e-mail sender as a junk e-mailer: right click on the e-mail from them, choose Junk E-Mail, and select Add Sender to Blocked Senders list.

  2. Go back to your inbox, select the e-mail from me (kelliher AT phoenix.goucher.edu) with a subject line of ``Do not delete'' and add me to your junk senders list.

  3. I'll now send you another piece of e-mail from that account so that you can see that it goes straight to your Junk E-Mail folder.

    Once you've verified this, move on to the next step.

  4. You can now remove me from your blocked senders list by opening the Tools menu, selecting Options and clicking the Preferences tab. Click Junk E-Mail (ignore the warning message). Select the Blocked Senders tab and then select the appropriate items on the list and remove them.

    Or, maybe you want to keep me on your blocked senders list!

Deleted Items Management

Have you ever been locked out of your inbox because it was full, even though you had deleted a lot of e-mail? Maybe all the deleted e-mail is still sitting in your Deleted Items folder, waiting for you to delete it from there. The ``quick and dirty'' way to do this is to right click on that folder and choose Empty Deleted Items folder. But, you have to remember to do this. If you want to have these deleted items deleted permanently every time you exit Outlook, follow these instructions:

  1. Open the Tools menu, select Options..., and select the Other tab. Enable Empty the Deleted Items folder upon exiting.

Letting People know you're away

Outlook has a service which automatically sends a reply to an e-mail. This is useful if you won't be reading your e-mail for an extended period of time and want to let people know this. In Outlook, this feature is called the ``Out of Office Assistant.'' Here's how to set it up:

  1. Open the Tools menu and select Out of Office Assistant....

  2. Select I am currently Out of the office and type the text for your Out of Office message. Click OK when finished.

  3. To see how it looks when it works, send an e-mail to yourself.

  4. Don't forget to go back and select I am currently In the office!!!

Signatures

An e-mail signature is just a few lines of text which some people like to have at the bottom of each of their e-mail messages. Some use the signature to provide contact information while others use it to display a meaningful quote. For example, here's my signature: 

Thomas P. Kelliher                        | Voice: (410) 337-6189
Dept. of Mathematics and Computer Science | Fax: (410) 337-6408
Goucher College                   --------| kelliher AT bluebird.goucher.edu
1021 Dulaney Valley Rd.           | http://phoenix.goucher.edu/~kelliher/
Baltimore, MD 21204               |
In any case, netiquette prescribes that a signature shouldn't be more than four or five lines long. Here's how to create a signature in Outlook:

  1. Open the Tools menu, choose Options..., and then select the Mail Format tab.

  2. Click on Signatures.

  3. Click New and follow the dialog box to create and save a new signature.

  4. Get back to the Mail Format tab and select the signature you want to use for new messages and replies and forwards.

  5. Compose a new e-mail message and note that the signature is automatically appended to your message for you.

  6. If you'd rather not have a signature, get back to Mail Format and choose <None> for your signature.

Using Rules and Alerts

Rules and Alerts is a powerful tool (this means it can take a while to learn all its features) for organizing your inbox. I'll show you how to create a rule to send all your CS 102 messages to a folder inside your Personal Folders folder. You'll see how to move messages based on keywords in the subject line or based upon the sender of the message. You can experiment with Rules and Alerts on your own to see what else it can do for you (or to you if you're not careful).

First things first: In Outlook, right click on your Personal Folders folder and choose New Folder... to create a new personal folder. Name the folder CS 102.

  1. Moving messages to a folder based on subject line keywords:
    1. Open the Tools menu and select Rules and Alerts.

    2. Select New Rule to create a new rule.

    3. We want this rule to apply when specific words occur in the Subject, so select the best choice for that and then, in the window below, click on specific words and enter CS 102 as a keyword phrase. Click OK then Next.

    4. We want to move this message to our CS 102 folder, so select the option to move e-mail to a specified folder, then click on specified in the window below. Navigate to your CS 102 folder and select it. Click OK then Next.

    5. You can scroll through the exceptions. We won't make any, so just click Next.

    6. Name the rule (CS 102 works) and turn it on.

    7. Send yourself an e-mail with CS 102 in the subject line to test the rule. Did it work?

    8. If you don't want to continue using this rule return to the Rules Wizard, select the rule, and delete it.

  2. Moving messages to a folder based on sender:
    1. Open the Tools menu and select Rules and Alerts.

    2. Select New Rule to create a new rule.

    3. We want this rule to apply when the sender is a specific person, so select the best choice for that, then click on people or distribution list in the window below.

    4. Add your e-mail address to the list. Note that you may enter more than one e-mail address if you like, but one is enough here. Click OK then Next.

    5. We want to move this message to our CS 102 folder, so select that option, then click on specified in the window below. Navigate to your CS 102 folder and select it. Click OK then Next.

    6. You can scroll through the exceptions. We won't make any, so just click Next.

    7. Name the rule (your name works) and turn it on.

    8. Send yourself an e-mail, without CS 102 in the subject line, to test the rule. Did it work?

    9. If you don't want to continue using this rule return to Rules and Alerts, select the rule, and delete it.

Junk E-Mail Filtering

Now we'll take a look at the College's junk mail filter. Open a Web browser and use it to visit SonicWALL -- Login (https://pegasus.goucher.edu/login.html). Login using your Goucher network credentials.

  1. The initial page you'll see, once you've logged in, is a report of all the junk mail that has been blocked by the filter. There are buttons that allow you to scroll through the report. If you see a piece of e-mail that isn't junk, you can click the checkbox on the lefthand side and then click the ``Unjunk'' button. The e-mail will then be sent to your Outlook account. It's also possible for you to permanently delete these junk e-mails, but it's not important to do so. They get deleted automatically after 30 days or so, and these e-mails don't count against your Outlook storage quota.

  2. Using the button at the top of the Web page, visit the Reports page. The initial report is an overview of all e-mail processed by the filter. The amount of junk mail we receive is staggering! You can view the other report types to get a more detailed breakdown of the junk mail problem here.

  3. Next, visit the ``Anti-Spam Techniques'' page.

    The ``People'' sub-page allows you to explicitly allow or block individual e-mail addresses. If e-mail from one of your friends is getting constantly classified as junk, you would come here and add their e-mail address as an allowed sender. (Or, find their e-mail in the junk e-mail report and ``Unjunk'' it. That will also add their e-mail address to the allowed sender list.

    If you want to allow or block an entire e-mail domain (for example, hotmail.com), you would do that using the ``Companies'' sub-page.

    The ``Anti-Spam Aggressiveness'' sub-page allows you to adjust SonicWALL to make it more or less likely to categorize a piece of e-mail as junk. There are several settings that you can adjust on this page. The defaults are probably a good starting point.

  4. Finally, using the button at the top of the Web page, visit the ``Settings'' page. The ``Spam Management'' sub-page allows you to specify what happens with a piece of junk e-mail. Using the ``Junk Box Summary'' page, you can have a listing of your junked e-mails sent to you on a schedule you determine, in case you want to sort through them for legitimate messages.


Thomas P. Kelliher 2006-11-16
Tom Kelliher