We ran into an issue with a user who’s Exchange mailbox had grown to a size that was very large, too large in fact. We needed to find a way to shrink it and usually this means to archive a significant portion of the messages. But as we were about to find out, this wasn’t going to be as easy as we thought.

Outlook users have many options when it comes to managing email archives and even ExMerge can run fairly selective archive routines, but this person was an Entourage user. Those other programs all have one thing in common, they output in PST, of which Entourage cannot handle natively. Yes there were other options, I could export to PST and then import to Thunderbird and then export to mbox format and then import to Entourage. What I would have been left with is a heap of ugly plain text email that wasn’t easily searchable nor sortable. I could also try and just move everything manually using click/drag but the folder structure was too complex and there was just too much mail.

What I really needed for this user was a way to have their somewhat complex email structure replicated in their local Entourage folders. Then we could move messages that were older than say, 6 months, into those corresponding locations. After a short and frustrating effort to do this manually, I spent some more time looking for a script that could possibly automate the action. I didn’t find a script but what I did end up finding was a program called the Entourage Exchange Accounts Optimizer. I know, the name could use some work but the program is brilliant.

For just $15 It does exactly what I needed it to do. Replicates the Exchange folder structure onto the local machine, moves the email that is older than the date specified, and is able to be scheduled to run daily. Why MS decided to leave this out, I can only guess but this program is certainly the bee’s knees.

Before doing a clean install of Leopard my “Open With” menu was cluttered with duplicate entries (and I’m sure over time it will happen again). I’d right-click an image wanting to open it with Seashore and the menu would have Firefox listed twice, Seashore listed twice, Preview listed twice, and so on. It certainly didn’t keep me from opening with the desired app, but it was such a blemish on the beautiful OS X aesthetic. Well this month’s MacWorld magazine has a solution easier than reinstalling the OS. From the terminal enter the following (no spaces until -kill):

/System/Library/Framworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/
Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister
-kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

Reboot and voila!, menus are duplicate free.

I’ve been enjoying practicing Inbox Zero as described by Merlin Mann at 43Folders. For the last couple of weeks I have kept my inbox close to or at zero and WOW, it’s an amazing feeling.

Merlin’s got quite a rant going on the subject which is well worth reading.

Get yourself over to www.inboxzero.com and then let us know in the comments what you think about it.

Did you know that if you delete a a mail message in Outlook, it’s not necessarily gone from the system? The message is simply moved to your “Deleted Items” folder. Over time, your “Deleted Items” folder can become very large, and take up precious space on the mail server.

One way to think of it: You’ve got some really old potato salad in back of your fridge that you finally get around to relocating to your kitchen garbage can. It then sits in your kitchen garbage can, festering, until you take it out to the curbside trash.

Here’s how to take out the festering trash in Outlook:
1. Open Outlook. Go to the Tools menu and select the Empty Deleted Items Folder option.
2. You will be prompted to confirm that you want to permanently delete all the items in your Deleted Items folder. Click Yes.

Bonus Round:
Automatically Empty the Trash every time you exit Outlook:
1. Open Outlook. Go to the Tools menu and select Options.
2. Click on the Other tab
3. Check the “Empty Deleted Items Folder upon exiting” box. Click on “Advanced Options” button.
4. Check or uncheck the “Warn before permanently deleting items” box. If you leave this box checked, Outlook will prompt you to confirm the deletion every time you close outlook.
5. Click OK.

We’ve been buying HP 3800n laser printers this year and have a few of them scattered around the businesses at this point. We are finding that the price per page for color printing, for text enhancement color, not full page graphics, comes out at a good price per page of around 4.5 cents. However, that is still an adjustment from the 1 to 2 cent per page for black and white that people have come to expect. The key is to buy decent OEM toner at a good price and to not print what doesn’t need to be printed in color. I’ve found a good price on toner at buy.com with free shipping that seems to be the best price from a reputable retailer for OEM cartridges.

The default setup in Outlook 2003 has a Navigation pane that runs along the left side of the screen. It contains a button for each type of Outlook folder:
-Mail
-Calendar
-Contacts
-Tasks
You’ll notice that as you click on those buttons, you get different context-specific options. For example, clicking on the Contacts button gives you various viewing options, including a formatted phone list–kinda nice.
Below those four buttons is another button containing the following icons:
-Notes
-Folder List
-Shortcuts
-Configure (represented by the cryptic “>>” icon)

If you’d like to make Outlook look more like the old Outlook, then the Configure button is your key:
- Click the “>>” icon and select “Show fewer buttons”
- Repeat the above step 3 more times to remove the 4 buttons.

Lastly, to get the full folder view found in the old Outlook, click on the “Folder List” icon at the bottom of the navigation pane.

In Outlook 2003 the default setup has a Reading Pane (also known as a preview window) on the right side of the screen. This is a change from older versions of Outlook that had the pane on the bottom of the screen. Microsoft felt the new way made it easier to read the message being previewed.

Your opinion may differ, in fact, you may want to turn off the Reading Pane altogether. Although it saves opening a message to read, you may find that it does slow down moving from message to message.

Under the View menu is an option titled Reading Pane. Sliding out on that choice reveals Right, Bottom, and Off as choices. Select your favorite. Try each one!

As a bonus round: Some folks like the brief summary in blue beneath each email. To turn this on, in View menu, just below Reading Pane, is an option for Autopreview. Select and witness the beauty of blue text. Select again to turn it off.

Any questions? See our web site: http://zsn-it.com/, email IT, or call cx 0325.