Thursday, May 06, 2004

Display a custom alert when you receive new mail. Outlook has had a 'new mail alert' dialog for years, but until the new mail desktop alert in Outlook 2003, it was, well, sucky. There's another way you can create a custom alert for new mail as well that is not immediately obvious, so I wanted to mention it: 1. Tools | Rules Wizard 2. Create a rule and make the action “Display a specific message in the new item alert window” 3. Choose your custom text and save the rule Then when new mail arrives that matches your conditions, you'll get a dialog like this: (guess which string was the 'specific message' I chose?) Why would you want to do this? I think it's mostly useful when you only use it for certain types of mail that you choose with the rules criteria. You may turn off the overall desktop alert (tools options email options advanced email options) and only want to get an alert for messages that match certain criteria - maybe they're from your boss, are sent to you specifically rather than a distribution list, etc. And of course, you're not just limited to boring ol ASCII: [KC on Exchange and Outlook] 10:52:51 AM