Outlook opens each email in a new window

[Callan101]

Is there any way of changing this?

We're moving to Outlook from Notes, and one nice thing about Notes is that everything you open shows as a tab within Notes, making navigation very easy, (a bit like tabs in IE7 or Firefox if you're not familiar with Notes).

In Outlook, of you open, say, four emails, they each open in a new window. These have their own icons on the taskbar, which may get mixed up with icons for other applications, the windows may get hidden behind other apps, and the whole thing can get cluttered and messy. Is there a way of keeping them in the main Outlook screen so that the taskbar is neater? I've seen posts on how to open calendar and contacts in a new window but nothing on a "don't open in a new window" option. Is there such an option?

Thanks

 

[SimonDavies]

As far as I am aware you can't, however one thing to remember is that in Notes if you had too many opened mails you were likely to crash the Notes client (I think it was at about 16 or so opened mails).

One other thing, when you open mails they do have seperate icons from other apps (little envelopes) so should be easy to track. You could always right click on the taskbar, click on properties and click on the Group Similar Task Bar buttons option, this then stacks your mails in one group.

SimonD.

The real world is not about exam scores, it's about ability.

 

[kjv1611]

Don't know of an option for opening in a new window or not, but you can control how the Taskbar handles grouping of windows there, if you're using at least Windows XP - maybe some prior, but I don't remember for sure.

If this is not setup, and you want to set it up, it's easy on a per computer basis (not sure how on a batch level for all machines affected):
[OL]
[LI]Right-click on Task Bar[/LI]
[LI]Select "Properties"[/LI]
[LI]Make sure "Group similar taskbar buttons" is checked.[/LI]
[/OL]

I believe there is at least one way to tell Windows how to handle the grouping, but I forget how. Perhaps with Tweak UI. Also, I found this link that might offer a better option, or at least start of the option, if you need to "push" the change out to multiple computers:

http://www.pctools.com/guides/registry/detail/916/

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[Callan101]

An excellent tip, thanks both.

We use Citrix on Windows Server 2003, and the option is actually set, but doesn't kick in until the taskbar runs out of space, so I didn't see it working till I squashed the taskbar up a bit. I'll see if there's a way to force it regardless of how much is on the taskbar - at least I can avoid wasting time trying to get Outlook to do it!

Thanks again

 

[Callan101]

Found an interesting registry hack (which I haven't tried yet) to avoid grouped icons ungouping when there is more room on the taskbar -

"Navigate to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE
\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENTVERSION\EXPLORER\Advanced subkey. Then, right-click an empty area of the right pane, point to New, and select DWORD value. Name the new DWORD value TaskbarGroupSize. Now, double-click the TaskbarGroupSize entry and enter a new value. The value 0 causes buttons to be grouped by age (with the oldest group first), 1 groups buttons by size (largest group first), 2 groups two or more windows, 3 groups three or more windows, and so on."

My reading of that is that setting a value of 2 will always group similar items, regardless of the amount of space on the taskbar.