A colleague wants a way to flag his contacts to keep from sending them inappropriate mail. I saw that there is a way to categorize contacts; is there a way to warn (or prevent) if I’m about to send an off-color joke to a distribution list of clergy, or an important internal memo to a competitor?
Dunno about that, but wouldn’t it be easiest to just create distribtion lists for each category of intended recipients? Make, say, a distribution list called “Smutty Jokes,” and select for it only the e-mail addresses of known perverts?
Sure, that would be easy. He is a bit of a Luddite though.
Hmmm. Well, I dunno what other options he might have which would be simpler and more foolproof. Maybe create additional contact folders which would force him to make a conscious decision to grab a recipient from those other locations.
I think that the original problem was he sent a joke, fortunately not offcolor, to a group that he thought was his joke distribution but was in fact his professional organization. So he was trying to do what you suggested but failed. He thought maybe some color or something could warn him, but I have no idea how to make contacts appear as different colors or even if that is possible.
Hmmm. I seem to recall that there was some way to make certain categories of contacts appear in a different color text. Except it was only applied in a contact folder view. That is, when you open the list of contacts from the “To:” button on an e-mail message, the listing is just the normal black text.
Ah ha! From the Outlook Help:
[quote]
You can add color to items in any table (table: A view type that displays a list of items (rows) and their attributes (columns). Use this view to display details about items. Table is the default view type for Inbox and Tasks.) view by applying the color and text formatting you want to use.
On the View menu, point to Arrange By, point to Current View, and then click a view based on the table view type (view type: The basic structure of a view. When you create a view, you must first select one of five view types (table, timeline, day/week/month, card, or icon) to determine how information will be arranged and formatted in your new view.).
[ol]
- On the View menu, point to Arrange By, point to Current View, and then click Customize Current View.
- Click Automatic Formatting.
- Click Add.
- In the Name box, type a name for the rule.
- Click Condition, and then select the options you want.
- Click OK.
- Click Font, and then select the options you want.
[/ol]
This seems like a hell of a lot more trouble though, than making a distribution list. In order for this to work, all the contact entries are gonna have to be assigned to a “category.” It is the “category” field on which the rule is applied. And before assigning a “category” to a contact, you’ll probably need to edit the so-called “Master Category List.” I’ve just verified all this stuff works (in my Outlook 2003 anyway, but I remember encountering it initially in Outlook 2000), but as I noted before, if you add recipient names from an open E-mail, where it is normally done, the list of contacts is black; the colors that are applied in the when viewing the contact folder, are ignored in the list view. I guess though, that he could select all the red (or whatever color) contacts from a contact view and then select “New Message to Contact” from the “Actions” menu. Still sounds like a pain in the tookus, tho’. And certainly not foolproof like a distribution list.