Sharing a Category List

If you work in a department, or if you share similar tasks and responsibilities with others, it’s helpful to be able to share the same set of categories with those other users. Doing so helps to ensure that everyone is using the same categories, an important point when you’re sharing items or receiving items from others that have categories assigned to them. For example, assume that your department is working on a handful of projects. Having everyone use the same project category names helps you organize your Outlook 2007 items and ensures that searches or sorts based on a given project display all items related to the project, including those you’ve received from others.

Sharing Categories with a Registry File

Outlook 2007 stores your category list in the Calendar folder as a hidden Outlook 2007 item, not in a file. This means that you can’t simply share a file to share your categories. Instead, you can create a registry file to share categories.

Caution!

An incorrect modification to the registry can prevent Outlook 2007 from running or could even prevent Microsoft Windows® from starting. Be careful when editing the registry.

These steps outline the registry method, which copies categories into the registry:

  1. Open Notepad, and then add the following text to the file:

    Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
    
    [HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice12.0OutlookPreferences]
    "NewCategories"="Toy Show;New Products;Research"
  2. In the text string, replace "Toy Show;New Products;Research" with your own category names, separating each category from the next with a semicolon.

  3. Save the file with a .reg file name extension, and then close Notepad.

At this point, you have a registry file that other Outlook 2007 users can use to import the category list into their systems. Place the .reg file on a network share where the other users can access it, or share it on a CD, a USB drive, or other media. Then have the other users simply double-click the file to add the categories to their registry.

Sharing Categories with E-Mail

Another (and perhaps easier) way to share categories is through e-mail. By default, Outlook 2007 strips categories out of incoming messages so that they are not added automatically to your category list. Outlook 2007 uses a rule to enforce this behavior. If you turn off the rule, categories arrive with incoming messages. However, only the category text arrives; the color is set to None for these categories, but you can modify the categories to add your own color.

Follow these steps to turn off the rule:

  1. Choose Tools, Rules And Alerts.

  2. In the Rules And Alerts dialog box, clear the Clear Categories On Mail rule.

  3. Click OK.

Note

In Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Clear Categories is enabled by default and is controlled by the server administrator, so the Clear Categories On Mail rule does not appear in the Rules And Alerts dialog box for Exchange Server 2007 accounts. See the Exchange Server 2007 Help documentation for the Set-TransportConfig command to learn how to enable and disable Clear Categories for Exchange Server 2007.

With the rule turned off on the recipients’ systems, you can now create a message, assign to it all of the categories you want to share, and then send the message. Follow these steps to add the categories to the outgoing message:

  1. Start a new message.

  2. In the message form, click the small arrow in the Options area on the Message tab.

  3. In the Message Options dialog box, click Categories, and then assign categories to the message as desired.

  4. Close the Message Options dialog box, and then send the message.

Note

You can use two registry settings to control whether Outlook 2007 will strip out categories for outgoing and incoming messages. These settings reside in HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice12.0OutlookPreferences (although the settings do not exist by default). The setting AcceptCategories controls incoming messages, and the setting SendPersonalCategories controls outgoing messages.

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