By Joe Dolittle
Reader John Montel sure knows how to appeal to our egos, and apparently it works. The subject line of the email I received was "Outlook Gods II Question". Anyway, here's what he wants to know:
Okay, you guys know more about Microsoft Outlook than most Microsoft employees and I have to tell you, please don't stop informing us!
However here's a questions I can't figure out. I have Outlook 2007 and when I start Outlook I like my "Outlook Today" page to be the first page loaded. In that context how do I customize the display to select "Unread Messages" in the "Messages" option? Is that not considered a folder? Help of super Gods, help.
While I'm certainly grooving on the ego strokes, I've got to say that I've met a lot of Microsoft people and they're some of the most scary smart humans I've ever met. Those guys know their stuff. But we'll do our best to help out as best as we can.
John sent in a screenshot, shown in Figure A, of what he's trying to accomplish. I'm glad he did, because it all became very clear, very quickly.
FIGURE A
John's folders just won't show up. (click for larger image)
Unfortunately, sometimes gods don't grant wishes, and in this case we can't grant John's wish. It turns out that what he's talking about aren't folders at all.
Do you see the little magnifying glass graphic over the folders like "Unread Mail1" and "Yesterday's Mail"? Those mean that these are Search Folders. And that, strangely enough, means they're not folders at all.
Search Folders are basically saved searches. They're represented in the user interface as folders, but they're not. As a result, when trying to select folders in Outlook Today, you won't see the searches.
And that's why it's not working.
So is there any option that'll get John what he wants? Yes, as it turns out, there is. The only gotcha is he's going to have to hack the page. Outlook Today is, essentially, an HTML Web page, so you can edit it and change it as much as you'd like (depending on your technical and detective skills).
Rather than provide you with one set of answers, here's a Google search that'll get you started with many resources for customizing the page.
