Assessments

This section contains the answers to the questions from all the chapters.

Chapter 1 – Getting Started with Outlook

1. When you delete an email, it is moved to the Deleted Items folder. Once you delete the email, it will be available or recoverable for 14 days. Anything that has been deleted for 14 days can no longer be recovered. To empty the Deleted Items folder upon exiting Outlook, click on Tools | Options | Other and check the box that says Empty the deleted items folder upon exiting.
2. The default name on an account when it is set up is the email ID. To change this name, click File | Info | Account Settings | Account Settings. From the list of accounts, select the one that you want to change the name of and click on the Change button. In the Account name field, change the name to the one you prefer and click Next. You will be shown that your account was successfully updated, and you can then click Done.
3. If you are running Outlook 2007, you are running a 32-bit version, but since 2010, you could be running either version. You need to know what version Outlook is running when installing Outlook plugins and add-ons, as some of these are not compatible with the 64-bit version. To check what version your computer is running, select File | Office Account | About Outlook, and you will see a line of text indicating 64-bit (as shown in the following figure) or 32-bit:

Figure 1.1 – 64-bit

There are so many Outlook apps and services that you can use to access Outlook. It’s in your best interest to know which version of Outlook you have. To locate your version, select File | Office Account. The version will be listed under Product Information.

4. The To Do list is a collection of items that have been flagged for follow-up in Outlook. This is the list that will appear on the To Do bar (if it is displayed). This list also includes an Outlook task, which is a task that has been stored in the Tasks folder. Tasks are created and stored in the Tasks folder, and currently, the To Do list doesn’t yet support Outlook Task fields, such as start and end dates, task status, task completion percentage, multiple priority levels, work hours, colors, or categories.
5. When you delete an email, it is moved to the deleted items folder. Once you delete the email it will be available or recoverable for 14 days. Anything that has been deleted for 14 days can no longer be recovered. To empty the deleted items folder upon exiting Outlook, click on Tools | Options | Other, check the box that says “Empty the deleted items folder upon exiting”.

Chapter 2 – Sending and Receiving Emails

1. Create a new email message (you can also reply to or forward an email) and select Insert and the drop-down arrow next to Link. Choose a file from the most recently used items, or at the bottom of this list, choose Insert Link… and the file to attach, and click OK. To attach more than one file, hold Ctrl while selecting multiple files. The link for the file or picture, if selected, will appear in the message of your email.
2. This is most likely due to a temporary hiccup in the connectivity to the network/Virtual Private Network (VPN). Check to see whether you are still online by looking at the status bar, which will display Connected to: Microsoft Exchange or Working offline.

Figure 2.18 – Working offline

Outlook will automatically try to reconnect to the server, but if that does not work, you can click on the Send/Receive tab and then the Work Offline button. If this button is grayed out, you are offline, and no shading indicates that you are working online.

3. In a new email message window, select the Message tab and click on the Signature drop-down arrow. Any previously created signatures will appear in this selection. Select the signature that you want to swap the current signature for. You can also select the signature… option to create a new signature from this menu button.
4. Outlook Web App (OWA) allows you to access your email account from a web browser. Outlook on the web does not include all the features found in the Outlook desktop version. It is a slimmed-down version that allows you to access your email while away. You can access the web browser at outlook.office.com.
5. Microsoft has a 20 MB limit on attachments that you can send through email. It does not matter if this is a single file or several files attached to one email. The total size of all attachments cannot exceed 10 MB to 35 MB, depending on your plan. If you need to attach a file that is larger than what your plan allows, you should consider putting the file in a shared location and emailing a link to that location instead. See Further reading for the Exchange Online limits.

Chapter 3 – Managing Email Accounts

1. Outlook is a software application that can be installed on your computer, tablet, and mobile device. It is used to communicate and synchronize with Exchange. Exchange is the software that provides an integrated system for your email, calendar, messaging, and tasks. The two applications, Outlook and Exchange, must work together to run Outlook. With Exchange Server, you or your IT support company maintain the server and have full control of the infrastructure, whereas with Office 365, you do not have control of it, and it is maintained by Microsoft in the cloud.
2. The simple answer is no. Despite providing access to your email, they are not email marketers and do not allow you to use email contact lists and send campaigns to subscribers. An example of this type of provider would be Mailchimp or Constant Contact, and there are several others to choose from.
3. In one Outlook account, you can add up to 20 different email accounts. These accounts do not have to be Outlook accounts; they can be Gmail, Yahoo, and various others.
4. Outlook 365 does not exist. It was rebranded as Microsoft 365 on April 21, 2020, with the same productivity suite or services still being offered, including Outlook. The reason for the rebranding was the inclusion of additional software beyond the core Office software, such as cloud-based productivity tools and features with artificial intelligence.
5. Profiles in Outlook are created when you set up Outlook. Most people don’t realize that you can have multiple profiles and so they only use one profile. It is convenient to set up separate profiles to help organize your emails – for example, you can have one profile for work and another for home. If you have several people using the same computer, you can set up a separate profile for each user. To set up profiles, go to Control Panel | Mail | Show Profiles | Add….

Chapter 4 – Organizing Your Outlook Environment

1. Quick Parts (New Email | Insert | Quick Parts) are messages/text that can be inserted into a new email without retyping the text. Quick Steps are preformatted actions that are assigned to a Quick Step button to streamline a task, as was discussed in this chapter.
2. Turn the Focused Inbox on or off by going to View | Show Focused Inbox. Turning this on will show at the top of the inbox with tabs for Focused and Other. Bulk emails will be pushed to the Other folder so that you can use the Focused inbox for important emails. If an email gets through that you don’t want in Focused, simply right-click on the message and choose Move to Other.
3. There are 25 color tiles available to apply a category to an email message. You can assign the same color to multiple emails.
4. For the email to switch to the next email, use Ctrl + the . key. To switch back to the previous email, use Ctrl + the , key.
5. Flagging an email message also adds a task to the To-Do list folder. If you delete the message, it also disappears from the To-Do list. Don’t confuse the To-Do list with a task. A task is an Outlook item that is saved to the Tasks folder. However, the To-Do list contains all the flagged items and tasks, allowing users to see a list of all items that need to be done.

Chapter 5 – Outlook Mail Merge

1. Emails, letters, envelopes or labels, and directories.
2. Many people try to find the Mail Merge tool on the ribbon in the Mail object view, but it is not located there. You can find the Mail Merge tool in the Contacts object view under the Actions section.
3. Yes, you can send the emails through Outlook by selecting email as the output type for the merge.
4. You can set the date in Mail Merge to a future date using the delayed delivery feature. This, however, will only work if you are using Microsoft Exchange.
5. For Office 365 you can send a maximum of 10,000 emails per day. A single email can be addressed to a maximum of 500 recipients. In Outlook.com you can send up to 300 emails per day with a maximum of 100 recipients per message. These limits can be adjusted by your administrator, so it is best to check limits with that person. To see the Microsoft Exchange limits, go to https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/exchange-online-service-description/exchange-online-limits.

Chapter 6 – Managing the Calendars

1. The two calendars on the left side of the Navigation pane are a way to navigate and select days you want to view in the main Calendar window. You can use the arrows to navigate to other months. When you change the month of the calendar, the other calendar will change as well. You can also click on a date in these calendars to navigate to that date in your main Calendar window or even select two or more dates (by holding down the Ctrl key) to compare them side by side. This is a very useful tool that many users do not use because they don’t know about its power.
2. Click File | Options | Calendar | Calendar Options, then uncheck the Default reminders box; you can change the reminder time here as well.
3. Yes, click View | To-Do Bar | Check To-Do. This will add the calendar to the To-Do Bar, which will appear on the right side of the calendar.
4. Yes, select the email that you want to convert to a meeting request and then click Home | Reply with Meeting (Ctrl + Alt + R). This creates a New meeting request, with the message sender on the To line and the email message included in the body of the meeting request.
5. As of now, the Board view is only available in the Calendar view for Outlook on the web. It is not yet on the desktop version. If you like Kanban boards, then you may want to sign in to Office 365 on the web and give this a try.

Chapter 7 – Contacts in Outlook

1. The social connector (which people also refer to as the People pane) is available in versions 2016 and earlier. Microsoft has retired that product now in Outlook 365 as of late July 2020
2. You can show people in the Favorites section of the To-Do pane; right-click on the sender’s email address and select Add to Favorites. You will see the person’s picture and email available for use in Outlook. The search box in Favorites will allow you to find people in your emails. Once you click on them in Favorites, you can email them from the open dialog box.
3. Yes, this can be done with Mail Merge with limitations: refer to Chapter 5, Outlook Mail Merge.
4. The easiest and fastest way to organize your contacts is in Categories, which allows you to apply color to the contact. Use red for family, blue for coworkers, or something that makes sense to you. Then, you can sort by color and focus on the group you want. Refer to Chapter 4 for a detailed explanation of Categories.
5. It can be assumed that you are using either a POP or IMAP account for email, as was discussed in Chapter 3, Managing Email Accounts. POP accounts will not sync anything, but IMAP will sync email and folders only. Contacts and Calendar items can only be synced with an Exchange account, which is included with an Microsoft 365 subscription as well as Gmail’s Google Sync.

Chapter 8 – Outlook Notes

1. Ctrl + 5 is the shortcut key combination to open the Notes workspace.
2. Sticky notes appear on Windows computers as well as inside OneNote and the OneNote app. When you add a note inside OneNote – a sticky note on your phone, for example – that note will automatically sync with the note in Outlook. If you turn on the sync feature and select your Microsoft 365 account on the Windows sticky notes, the notes created will also sync with OneDrive.
3. In Outlook 2010 and 2007, you can change the fonts in the notes by clicking File | Options | Notes and Journal. This option was taken away in Outlook 2016 versions and later. The default font in these later versions is 11-point Calibri.
4. You can retrieve a deleted note as long as it still resides in your Deleted folder in the Navigation pane. Click on the Mail button on the Navigation pane, then open the contents of the Deleted Items folder. You will find your deleted notes in this folder as well. To retrieve the note, move it to another folder.
5. To open the Notes folder in a new window, click on the Notes button in the Navigation pane to display the notes in the workspace. Right-click on the Notes folder, which displays your email ID located on the Navigation pane for the notes, and click on Open in New Window.

Chapter 9 – Tasks and To-Dos

1. The shortcut keys for creating a task in Outlook are Ctrl + Shift + K. You can use this shortcut combination within any window inside Outlook.
2. To add a reminder to a task that is already created, you can either double-click on the task and add a time to the Reminder field, or in the Tasks view, you can right-click on the flag for the task and click Add Reminder..., and then set the time for the reminder in the Custom dialog box in the Reminder section.
3. To rename a task, right-click on the task name and click Rename Task. You can then change the name of the task as desired, as the Name field will be in edit mode. Click Enter when done.
4. You can make the To-Do bar display a combination of calendar items, people, and tasks. The items that show at the top will be the first items you select and will appear in the order selected. To have your tasks appear at the top, simply unselect all the current options and reselect the items again in the order that you want them to appear.
5. Yes, you can change the settings for how the icons appear in the Navigation pane. Click on the … button, then click Navigation Options.... Select the desired object in the Display in this order box in the Navigation Options dialog box and then click the Move Up button as needed to move the selected object to the top of the list. Click OK and the selected icon will show as specified.

Chapter 10 – Save Time Searching

1. When you delete an email from the inbox it gets placed in the Deleted Items folder by default. This will reside in the Sent items for 30 days unless it is permanently deleted. To delete permanently, select the message, and click Shift | Delete on the keyboard.
2. All Mailboxes would include a search in all your emails within your mailboxes. All Outlook items will search your mailboxes, calendar, and task items.
3. You can change this in the options for the search. Click File | Options | Search. Under the Results section for the include results only from, select All mailboxes | OK.
4. Yes, the Outlook limit for search results is to display 200 items with Outlook default settings.
5. Yes, you can delete the entire contents of the Deleted Items folder at once or you can select each email and delete it individually. Emails will stay in Deleted Items for 30 days, but you can change this setting by going to File | Options for emails going forward. To delete all emails currently in the Deleted Items folder, right-click on the Deleted Items folder, and select Empty Folder.

Chapter 11 – Sharing Mail, Calendars, and Contacts

1. Unfortunately, giving too much authority to several people is not a great idea. Remember that with delegates, the last change wins. If an executive accepts a meeting invite and then the delegate declines the invite, the last change would win and, in this case, the delegate would overwrite the executive authority. You need to have one person who will be responsible for making any changes to appointments.
2. If the Share your Calendar button is grayed out and you can not click on it to activate the command, it’s most likely because your administrator of the account or IT department has prevented you from sharing calendars.
3. If you don’t want to assign a delegate for others to view your calendar, you can email the calendar:

1. Click Calendar | E-mail Calendar, enter the calendar Name and Date Range that you want to email, then click OK.
2. The new email will open the address of the recipient or the To field, then add any message, and click Send.
3. The recipient of the email will see a snapshot image of your calendar.
4. Sign in to Office 365 on the web (www.office.com). Click Admin | Settings | Org settings | Service Tab | Calendar. From this page, select the settings you want to allow for the user to share the calendar.
5. Open Outlook and click File | Office Account | Update Options | Update Now.

Chapter 12 – Archiving and Backup

1. AutoArchive is on the Advanced tab underneath the Outlook Start and Exit title. If you do not see this, it is probably due to your IT department in your corporation not giving you the rights on the server to access this feature. Another reason for this is that you have an Exchange account, and the online archiving has been enabled for you with automatic settings.
2. If your Inbox is storing a lot of emails, usually because you never delete any messages, you will want to check the size of your folders. Click File | Folder | properties | Storage. If you have more than 2 GB of emails used, you need to archive some of your emails.
3. This message appears when your PST file reached its maximum storage limit. To fix this, you can manage the mailbox size by clicking File | Info | Tools | Mailbox Cleanup….
4. Occasionally, your files may become corrupt in Outlook. To repair, click File | Account Settings…, select the account to repair, then click Repair…. If you don’t have access to Outlook, you can run Repair in the Programs and Features object in the Windows Control Panel.
5. A .pst file is a file that is stored on your computer. This is typically the case for files created before Office 2016. If your file is a .ost file, you have a file that is maintained on an Exchange Server, and you will need to contact the administrator of your Microsoft 365 account to maintain this file.

Chapter 13 – Collaboration & Integration within Outlook

1. Translator for Outlook is an app that you can purchase in the Microsoft Store, and is used to translate documents. The translation will appear on the right of the Reading pane when selected and will display the translated text in the language you have requested. The link for downloading the translator can be found in the Further reading section.
2. One possible answer is that the Teams add-in was disabled. To check this, click File | Options | Add-ins. Confirm that the Microsoft Teams Meeting add-in for Microsoft Office is in the list. Select Com Add-ins | Go |Select Microsoft Teams Meeting Add-in for Microsoft Office.
3. Insights and My Analytics are add-ins that you may have seen on the ribbon in previous versions of Outlook. These two applications have now been rolled into or rebranded as Viva Insights. Once you select Viva Insights, you will be able to control your time, meetings, and events through this add-in and you will also start receiving emails on a regular basis from Viva Insights with analytic data, suggestions, and history of how Microsoft 365 tools can help you be more productive.
4. You can access the Office store to get more information about Add-ins and purchase and download Add-ins. You can get information about the Add-ins such as ratings, price, and reviews. To access the Office store, go to appsource.microsoft.com.
5. Upon creating a group inside of your Microsoft 365 account, you can begin collaborating with others with a set of tools that include a shared Outlook inbox to share between group members and a SharePoint document library for sharing files. Groups will also have a shared calendar, OneNote notebook, and Planner. This is the best tool for those that prefer to collaborate through email.

Chapter 14 – Nine Useful Rules

1. Server-based rules run on an Exchange Server and apply to messages as they are delivered to your inbox. The rules cannot run until they have been completed on the Server. If the rule can’t run on the server, it is applied once Outlook starts. Client-only rules are only run on your computer through Outlook and do not get processed through the server. Client-only rules can only run when Outlook is open, whereas server-based rules run on the server only.
2. If your rule contains server-based and client-based rules, the server-based rule must process before the client-only rule.
3. No, the rules do not support the use of wildcard characters.
4. When you see the rules listed in the Manage Rules & Alerts dialog box, they will run in the order listed from top to bottom. You can select a rule and move it up or down within the list to create your desired order to process.
5. Everybody has an email joker in their inbox. Use a rule that finds terms that go along with jokes, such as funny, chain letter, pass this along, or simply Fwd. The rule could automatically forward these to a Jokes folder, archive them, or delete these emails.

Chapter 15 – Programming with Macros

1. VBA is currently supported in the desktop version for Microsoft 365 and will be for some time in the future. However, keeping it working on all versions of Outlook will probably not happen. As of the writing of this book, there are no plans to retire VBA. Microsoft will continue to encourage users to learn JavaScript APIs as the VBA replacement.
2. Macros can pose a threat to your Outlook environment and Microsoft has now set the default to disable macros coming from the internet. To change this setting, click File | Options | Trust Center | Trust Center Settings… | Macro Settings and select the desired setting.
3. Back up or create a Word document with your Outlook macros. Open the VBA Editor in Outlook and copy the code for the macros. Paste the copied code into a Word document and save it to your computer.
4. The shortcut key for opening the VBA editor within Outlook is Alt + F11.
5. The current available MOS Outlook exam is Exam MO-400. Macros are not included in the objective domains for this exam. See the Further reading section for the MO-400 exam objectives.

Chapter 16 – Managing Your Day System

1. At the time of the writing of this book, the new Bookings feature was announced by Microsoft to be released to selected subscriptions beginning in June 2022. Bookings is a web-based scheduling page that integrates information from your free/busy calendar. It will streamline the process of scheduling an appointment with others.
2. Great questions. This is an example of what I call You don’t know what you don’t know! Open the email that you received and click Message | Respond | Reply with Meeting. Ctrl + Alt + R is the keyboard shortcut for this button.
3. Research shows that it can take 18 to 254 days for a habit to form. The average time for a habit to form is 66 days. A simple way to create a habit is to use the three Rs technique: reminders, routines, and rewards.
4. Outlook can not enhance your productivity. Only you can make the changes necessary to enhance your productivity. Learning and creating habits for the tips and tricks that are offered in this book is one of several ways you can start to be a productivity ninja using Outlook.
5. In 2021, Outlook launched a Kanban-style board. The board can be viewed within the calendar in the Outlook web app (OWA). It is not available in the Desktop version as of the writing of this book.