Delete suggested contacts no longer needed

Posted by on June 17th, 2013
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Question: Someone sent me an email from their Gmail account from their phone and now every time  I type their name to send them a message from Outlook it automatically fills in that Gmail address instead of the UNMC account. How can I remove that email address, as I forgot to check the address every time and they miss my emails.

Answer: With Outlook 2010, go back and type in the person’s name and when you see the Gmail address display in the suggested names, click the x on the right side of the name. This will delete it from the suggested contacts.

Filter out unwanted Excel records

Posted by on June 10th, 2013
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Question: We have a spreadsheet that is a several thousand lines made up of three types of rows: User:, Patient:, and those that start with a plus sign.  Do you know a way to remove (delete) all of the rows that start with a plus sign without changing the order of the rows?

Answer: You may select the sort/filter icon from the Home tab in the ribbon (or from Data tab). Then click the filter down arrow on the heading of that column and unselect the plus sign on the + entries and keep checks in the User and Patient fields. This filters out the plus signs and only the User and Patient rows will display. You can then copy and paste those records to a new file, just in case you need to refer back to the original data.

Messages moved to a folder automatically delete after a few days

Posted by on June 10th, 2013
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Question:  There are emails that are sent to me that I wish to retain.  If I try to move some of these messages to another folder a message appears saying that they will expire in so many days unless I change the retention policy.  How does one change the retention policy so when these messages expire they don’t delete from the folder I wish to store them in?

Answer: This question was a real stumper. But since the problem wasn’t consistent, I determined that the folder she was trying to move it to was placed under the Deleted Items folder. UNMC’s retention policy deletes anything in the deleted items folder after 7 days. All that this person needed to do was move those folders from the deleted items folder and drag to the Inbox or another folder, and those messages should no longer appear.

Create calendar entry from Outlook email

Posted by on June 10th, 2013
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Question:  If a message is received in Outlook with information for a meeting time, location, date, subject, is it possible to convert or transfer all of the meeting information to the Outlook Calendar without entering it manually?

Answer: If you have you are using Outlook 2010, you can drag and drop the message to the calendar on the To Do bar (if it is displayed on your mail screen). You can change the calendar to the correct month and drag to the day, then all you would need to do is change the time but the subject will be the subject of the message and the contents of the message will be in the description of the calendar entry.

You can also drag and drop the message to the Calendar icon (at the bottom) of the window but then you need to change the date too. You can also right click on the message and select Move To and then select your calendar folder. If you select Copy, it will retain the message in your inbox, otherwise Move will delete it from the inbox. But you still have to add the information, but at least you have the contents in the description where you can to see and copy and paste.

Unfortunately, I have been testing Outlook 2013 and that drag and drop feature to the To Do bar was removed, which annoys me greatly, as I loved that feature. We are not yet promoting moving to Office 2013.

Excel currency values don’t merge to Word properly

Posted by on June 10th, 2013
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Question: How can one merge excel currency cell into Word letter mailing to print correctly?  All things that I have tried prints the amount as15897 instead of $15,897. I just wondered if you have a quick fix so I don’t have to go in manually and fix all of the amounts.

Answer: I have a fix, but it isn’t a real quick fix, but it is much faster than manually entering  hundreds of values. And once you have it set up in your Word options, you just have to remember to select the correct conversion for all formatting to convert properly. Follow the steps below for Word 2007/2010.

  1. The most important step is to change your Word options (File > Options) Click Advanced and in the General settings place a check mark on “Confirm File Format conversion on Open” and click OK.
  2. You must re-create your merge file (I prefer to use the Mail Merge Wizard pane under Mailings > Start Mail Merge).
  3. Indicate your document type and click Next. of and browse for your Excel file to select.
  4. You will be prompted with a screen “Confirm Data Source” with OLE DB database files. Do NOT select this. Instead, check Show All, which will display several data sources.
  5. Scroll to select MS Excel Worksheets via DDE (*.xls) and the entire spreadsheet or a specific spreadsheet if the workbook contains more than one.
  6. You’ll see your columns display (not necessarily in the same order as it was in Excel) and the currency format (as well as other cell formatting) should be retained.
  7. Continue your mail merge.

For help with general mail merge steps, go to Microsoft free online training. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/mail-merge-i-use-mail-merge-for-mass-mailings-RZ010277841.aspx?CTT=5&origin=HA010215566