Manage Outlook 2007 Notes

Sticking notes all around your monitor and desk? Clear the clutter and use Outlook 2007 Notes. Using Outlook's Notes instead of sticky notes protects your information since it's stored on your computer instead of out in the open for all to see. You can categorize, print, and organize these electronic notes.

Open the notes from anywhere in Outlook by clicking the yellow sticky note icon at the bottom of the Navigation Pane.

When you have Notes open, you can click New from the Standard toolbar to create a new note like with any other item in Outlook. Use the Ctrl+Shift+N shortcut to create a Note from any place in Outlook. Start typing notes and Outlook automatically saves the Note even if it stays open while you do other tasks. Outlook also saves when you click the X to close the Note.

The first line becomes the title for the note for easier finding within the Notes list. But if you don't want the entire first sentence to appear, hit Enter at the cut off point.

Notice the bottom of the note displays the date and time you created the Note. Close the note, wait a few minutes and open it again to see the time has not changed. The date and time reflects the Note's last edit.

Enter a URL as a hyperlink, and Notes turns the link into a clickable one. You can just enter "www.address.com" without the "http" and Outlook instantly creates a clickable link.

Click once on the Note icon that appears in the upper left corner to see a menu. With this menu, you have all the options for managing Notes that include the following:

• Create a new note.
• Use Save As to save the note in another format such as Rich Text Format, Text Only, and Outlook Message Format.
• Delete the note.
• Forward the note.
• Cut, copy, and paste selected text from the note.
• Categorize the note.
• Associate the note with Contacts.
• Print the note.
• Close the note, but clicking X is faster.

Outlook provides other ways to manage and organize notes, but this menu contains all the items in one place. To edit a note, double-click the note while you're in the Notes folder to open and edit it.

Outlook 2007 improves how its applications interact with one another to become a complete personal information manager as opposed to one with five different applications doing their own thing. You can associate notes with Contacts and the notes appear on the Contacts' Activities page. The following steps associate a note with Contacts:

1. Click the Notes icon in the note and select Contacts.
2. Click Contacts to select Contacts to associate with the note. To select more than one, select a name and click Apply. Repeat for each name and click OK when finished.
3. Verify the right names appear in the Contacts for Note window. To delete a name from the list, select it and click Delete.
4. Click Close.

To see the contacts' association with the Note, do the following:

1. Open the Contacts folder.
2. Open the contact's card.
3. Click Activities from the Show group on the Contact tab.