If you use Google Calendar sync and have upgraded to Microsoft Office 2010 you’ve no doubt discovered that the two don’t work together. Here’s the world’s easiest fix:

1. Download this file: GoogleCalendarSync.zip
2. Unzip it
3. Go to C:\Program Files\Google\Google Calendar Sync
4. Rename GoogleCalendarSync.exe to OLDGoogleCalendarSync.exe
5. Move the new GoogleCalendarSync file to this folder.
6. Launch  Goggle Calendar Sync.exe
7. Fixed.

In the simplest of terms, the latest version of the Sync.exe file reads the version of Microsoft Outlook differently from the way the older version of the same file does. We are simply replacing the latest version of the file with a slightly older one.

Cheers!

UPDATE 17Aug: Google has released an update that should work with the 32 bit version of Outlook 2010

Almost all mail client program send e-mail using port 25, which is also the port used by mail servers to talk to each other. But port 25 is widely abused by malware to spread worms and spam. As a result, many ISPs are restricting its use.

Hang on – it will make sense in a second:

Most people having a setup where they are on an Internet Service Provider (ISP) like ATT and have an email address like “MyEmail@ATT.net”  You connect to the internet using ATT and send mail through the ATT server – no problem.

But if you have your own domain email address or an email address from another ISP you may hit a snag. In these cases you are connecting to the internet through your ISP (like Comcast, SpeakEasy, ATT, etc) and trying to send email through your third party host like “MyEmail@SuperCoolWebsite.com”

Your ISP says “Hey! There is someone on my network trying to send email through someone elses address! This might be spam or malware!” You can receive mail, but you can’t send mail.

Recently ATT and Verizon both made changes that affected outgoing mail. Here’s the fix:

If you cannot SEND MAIL

1. Open OUTLOOK
2. Select TOOLS
3. Select ACCOUNT SETTINGS
4. Highlight the account in question and select CHANGE
5. Select MORE SETTINGS
6. Select ADVANCED
7. Change from PORT 25 to PORT 587
8. Save everything and restart Outlook

Other email programs will have similar settings. Look for PROPERTIES or PREFERENCES and find the outgoing mail server option.

One other option to check is that you are authenticating before sending. In other words. logging in with your username and password to both check and send email.

In Outlook the options window looks like this:

This tells Outlook to send your username and password before trying to send mail. If you have problems try enabling or disabling this setting.

The screen shots used in this how-to are my actual settings and they work just fine with SpeakEasy and ATT.

Sometimes when you want to upload photographs to online services or self-maintained systems like WordPress you may find yourself in the position of needing to reduce the file-size of the images. After all, your 8 mega-pixel camera takes pictures that are just that – around 8MB sometimes!

There are several programs you can use to reduce the file size of your images but if you have Microsoft Outlook installed then you have everything you need!

Here is a super-fast and easy way to reduce those image file sizes using Microsoft Outlook.

1 ) Put the original image files in one folder on your desktop.

2 ) Create another folder that will hold the set we will make. Lets name them “Start” and “Finish”

3 ) Open the “Start” Folder, and select all the images in that folder.

- Highlight them all, or select one and then CNTRL-A to select all, etc.

4 ) While all of the files are selected, Right Click and SEND TO –> MAIL RECIPIENT

5 ) The “Send Pictures via E-Mail” prompt will open. Choose “MAKE ALL MY PICTURES SMALLER”

6 ) Select the size you want, I usually use LARGE and I find this to be plenty of compression.

- In Vista the option for picture size appears as another window.
- In XP click the SHOW MORE OPTIONS link and the pop-up window will expand.

7 ) Give your computer a few seconds to work its magic. The more files you are reducing, the longer it will take. I have done over 100 at a time before – no problem.

8 ) An email message will appear with all of the reduced size files in the attachments area.

9 ) Select one of the attachments, hit CNTRL-A to select them all, and save them to the FINISH folder you created.

- You can also click once on one of the files, then right click and choose SELECT ALL
- Once all of the files are selected you can drag and drop them into the FINISH folder or cut and paste – whatever is easier for you!

Now you have a folder of images that are usually less than 100KB instead of 4-8 (or higher!) MB a piece.

How easy was that!

How many times have I been asked this – let me count the ways . . .

How can I set up an excel document with suspense dates and get alerts from Outlook to remind me when they are due?

I built an Excel project management spreadsheet that uses start and end dates to track tasks. One field shows remaining days to complete the task. My question, is there a way to have excel utilize my Outlook to send me an email once a task is within 3 days of completion or past due? (I do not have the funds to license all my staff with Microsoft Project)

And a dozen more in the comments of various articles. Here’s the deal gang, while this sounds like an excellent idea – automatic Outlook reminders from an Excel spreadsheet – its not.

If you approach this with VBA code that says “Send an email to Outlook when . . .” that “When” statement has the potential to really screw some things up. First off, the spreadsheet needs to be open for the code to run. What happens when you go on vacation for two weeks and come back and open the file? What if you just forget to open the actual file because you are relying on an automatic reminder? How many pop-up meail windows are you going to get? How do you know everyone was emailed that needed to be emailed?

This is a case where automation sounds fantastic but in my opinion its really not a good idea.

Soapbox aside . . . Of course I have figured out an alternative for you.

I think the original script for this came from Martin Green over at FontStuff.com, or I found it in a discussion board. Disclaimer: I have modified the script to bend it to my will but I want to give props to whoever wrote the original core script. OK, props given – lets solve this mystery!

Do you want Excel to alert you of an approaching due date? Do you want to be able to send an automatic email to a person related to an item in that spreadsheet? Try it this way:

1. Download this file: Outlook eMail from Excel. (17k zip)
It is the example we will work from. I am going to show you a few tricks and then leave you to your own devices. Copy the pieces that work for your unique situation, ignore the ones you don’t need.

2. We are going to be working in developer mode so make sure you know how to enable it in Excel. The directions are in this posting.

3. Open up the spreadsheet you downloaded and follow along… Oh, and the spreadsheet has a Macro in it that you have to enable. Its safe, Trust me. I used to work for the Government.

So what are we looking at?

These columns can be rearranged anyway you see fit for your unique project. In this example we have people’s names, an email subject, an imaginary due date, an “email sent?” column, the person’s email address and a custom body message.

Click on any cell in a row to select it and then click the SEND MAIL button at the top of the spreadsheet. I’ll choose row 6, “Bill Jones”, the email generated looks like this:

What happened? The email address was filled, the subject line of the email was filled in and the custom body message was put in the body between two other lines of text.

Light-bulbs going off yet?

Where did those other lines of text in the body come from? A Macro. Let’s take a look at that macro so you can customize it.

Choose the DEVELOPER tab in Excel and click Macros (Again, the directions for enabling the Developer tab are in this posting.)

With the Macro box open select SendEmail and Edit.

Here is the code that does the magic.

There are 3 lines of code you need to be aware of so you can modify them if need be:

1. Email = Cells(ActiveCell.Row, 10)
2. Subj = Cells(ActiveCell.Row, 4)
3. Msg = Msg & “Dear ” & Cells(ActiveCell.Row, 1) & “,” & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & “Here is some precanned text before the BODY info in the spreadsheet. ” & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & Cells(ActiveCell.Row, 13) & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & ” And here is some more precanned text in the macro AFTER the Body stuff.”

Line 1 says “Get the email address from Row 10 of the active cell.” This is a little misleading, its actually column 10 or “J”.

Line 2? Get the email subject from row (column) 4 or “D”

And Line 3? Prints “Dear” and whatever in is column 1 or “A”, and then the precanned text before and after whatever in in the spreadsheet in column 13 or “M”.

If you change around the columns in your spreadsheet, simply change the numbers to correspond to the data’s new location! You can even add more information in the email from your spreadsheet – the magic term is “Cells(ActiveCell.Row, ????)”

Not too bad! Not too complicated either.

Now lets take a look at the date information back in the spreadsheet:

In the top right hand corner of the spreadsheet is Today’s Date, Excel formula being “=TODAY()”

The dates in column “F” are “Due Dates” I entered in manually. Maybe your spreadsheet will calculate these cells from other data you have. The color change is based on a “Rule” that is comparing the date we entered to today’s date. You could just as easily give yourself a heads-up by referencing a date in the future instead of today’s date “=Today () +7″, etc.

Back to the rule:

1. Highlight cell F4
2. Select Conditional Formatting
3. Select Manage Rules

And there is the rule that says “Blank Cells are just white” and “If the value of this cell (the date of this cell) is less than or equal to Today’s Date in R1 – color me reddish.”

You know have a visual flag that the item is due or past due and action needs to be taken!  Again, change this to whatever suits your need! Make it red, make it green – your choice!

The red X in the sent column is just another “food for thought” column. A reminder to yourself that you actually acted on the due or overdue item. So let’s look at this from the beginning on a typical work day:

1. Come in to the office.
2. Have Coffee
3. Chit Chat
4. Check Facebook
5. Etc.
6. Open Spreadsheet
7. Look at the DATE column. Is anything highlighted that doesn’t have a Sent notification?
8. Yes? Click a cell in that row and click the SEND EMAIL button.
9. Send the email
10. Put an X in the Sent box!
11. Check Facebook

That’s pretty labor unintensive! Seriously? 3 Steps

1. Look at the DATE column. Is anything highlighted that doesn’t have a Sent notification?
2. Yes? Click a cell in that row and click the SEND EMAIL button.
3. Put an X in the Sent box!

I am looking forward to see how all of you will improve upon this simple concept. This has been a hot topic in the comments section. There is no one size fits all solution but I hope that by taking this simplistic approach I save a lot of people a lot of time.

It doesn’t have to be complicated, and you don’t need to be a programmer!

For many people the default setting in the Outlook calendar of 30 minutes time increments is not granular enough. For some, a 15 minute schedule is more useful. But the problem people run into with Outlook 2007 is trying to print showing 15 minute increments!

Need to print your schedule in 15 minute blocks? I’ll show you how in less than 2:

First off, lets make sure your Outlook calendar is showing the 15 minute day.

Open your calendar, select DAY or WEEK

Right click on the time bar to the left like this:

Select 15 Minute from the menu. Now you can see your daily schedule in the time increment of your choice. OK, lets get to the printing part.

In your Outlook Calendar select FILE –> PRINT and for the sake of this tutorial we’ll select a Daily Style – BUT WAIT! We need to DEFINE STYLES.. So click on DEFINE STYLES..

Then, let’s select Daily Style and choose EDIT like so:

And here comes the magic - reduce the time in the Print From – Print To range to 8 hours. For example, 9am to 5pm:

That’s it! That’s what you have been pulling out your hair over!

You can play around with other settings (I like really small fonts in my calendars) to customize the look and feel of your printouts. But just to show it really works, I present to you, an Outlook 15 minute day print preview:

Seems I’m free on the 17th . . .

Every once-in-a-while a tip come along that makes you say “Huh! I didn’t know you could do that!” This is one of those tips.

Did you know you can display non-consecutive days in your Microsoft Outlook calendar view? You can. Here’s how easy it is:

1. Open Outlook.
2. Switch to Calendar view
3. Click any day in the small calendar view on the left in the Navigation pane.
   (No Navigation Pane? View–>Navigation Pane –> Normal)
4. You will now see just the day you selected in the main calendar window

Now hang on Cowboys and Girls – Hold down the ALT key and click 2 or 3 or more days like this:

Holy Smokes! Look at the main window now – It’s the 3rd, 17th and 22nd – all in one window:

This will also work if you are viewing multiple calendars! Extremely handy when you want to see what everyone is doing next Thursday, Saturday and Tuesday . . . Or what you are doing for the next 3 Mondays and Fridays . . .Etc!

Play with it – you can select an entire week with random days attached . . . What do you think?!

I am using Outlook 2007 w/ Windows Vista.  In previous versions, I was able to wrap the text of calendar appointments when printing my calendar so that all meeting details would actually print.  How do I do this in outlook 2007?

Or not . . .

In Outlook 2007 the printing feature has a lot of little quirks that are being discovered – the calendar printing assistant I discussed in another article fixes some of them, but not this problem.

The Calendar Printing Assistant for Office Outlook 2007 is an application for people who need an easy way to print and customize their Outlook 2007 calendar information. It puts you in control of the tools you need and helps you plan and create designer-quality output.

Slipstick has a list of Outlook tools that may fix the problem. See if one of those addressess your need and if anyone else has a suggestion or an answer, please add a comment!

Reader D. Rogers Asked:

“Is there a way to embed a powerpoint document in Outlook so that you can actually view the presentation from the body of the email?”

Yes there is! If you are using Outlook 2007 there is a built-in preview function. There are two ways to use it.

I personally like to use the Reading Pane function in Outlook (set to the right) to see the entire body of an email message I have selected. To enable this option open Outlook and select View -> Reading Pane:

Then, click on an email in your inbox that contains a PowerPoint attachment (or a Word Document or Excel File) and you will see the following warning:

Selecting Preview File will start the preview engine and you will see the contents of the attachments right in the the email message itself!

If you choose not to use the reading pane, you can open any email with a previewable attachment and you will get the same option to preview the file:

Select Preview File and and you never have to fire up PowerPoint, Word, Excel, etc – the contents of the file will be viewed right in the email body!

Steven sent the following question:

This is a problem that apparently no one has been able to come up with a solution for. I have 8 different calendars in outlook that sync with my iPhone and Google calendars. I’d like to start using outlook and see my calendar in the “To-Do” Bar, however, there doesn’t appear to be a way to show multiple calendars in this. Can you figure out a solution to this?

Sorry Steven, in Outlook 2007 only the main calendar is supported and it can’t be changed in the current version.

The only work around that comes to mind is to use categories and custom views instead, but with 8 calendars that might not be feasible either.

Anyone believe otherwise or have a solution? Let me know in the comments!

Reader Question: “I have 2 companies that I work for and I do not want to share outlook. Is there a way to have 2 outlook accounts that I can log into to make sure they stay separate?”

Yes indeed and it’s fairly simple! Here is how to configure Outlook so that it opens a specific profile and how to configure it so that it prompts you for a specific e-mail profile when you start the program.

1. Go to your CONTROL PANEL
2. Click on MAIL
3. Click SHOW PROFILES
4. Click ADD

You will get the “New Email Account” Wizard asking you for the email settings of this new profile. You can fill it all in or just cancel and get back to it later inside Outlook.

You should now see the following Profiles, your original Outlook and the new one you created – I used the name Test in this example:

Note that you have two options:

• Prompt for a profile to be used
• Always use this profile.

Choose the one that fits your need! Fire up Outlook and you will see your default profile or be prompted to choose the one you want to use for that session.