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The Ultra Mobile Portable Computers (UMPC) are generically referred to as "Netbooks".  As the name might suggest, a lot of peoples prime reason for buying a "Netbook" is for internet browsing and communication purposes.  Unfortunately the small form factor of  the Ultra Mobile Personal Computer means a screen, typically 8.9 or 10 inch widescreens.  With a 1024 x 600 resolution, or even less, things can get a little cramped when you are checking out you e-mail with Outlook 07.

In this article Justblair takes you through some steps you can take to tailor your Microsoft Outlook 07 application to make the most of the screen area that you have.  The hints and tips here can be applied to other Microsoft applications as well.

Lets start by having a look at a pretty much standard Microsoft Outlook 07 interface.  This one is straight from my own 8.9 inch EEE PC 901.  Forgive the blurring, but you wouldn’t find my mail to be that interesting anyway…

 

Its a bit busy isn’t it?  The key to making Outlook 07 a bit easier on the eye, and lets face it easier to use we are going to tidy things up a bit.

 

The main issue with netbook screens is not so much the width of the screen, but the height.  600 pixels high doesn’t leave a lot of space on the screen.  There are a couple elements that we can remove from the screen to give us more display area for the important stuff like the task pane, inbox and preview panes.  Lets start with the easiest element to deal with, the status bar.

 

Step 1:  Remove the Status Bar

 

The status bar gives us information on how many items are in our inbox, send receive status and other stuff.  However we don’t use it all the time and given we need the space, lets hide it for now and make the most of the space we have.

 

To do so click your mouse on the view item in your menu bar.  Looking down the list of options here, you should see an item named status bar.  It will have a tick next to it with an orange background.  Click this once with your left hand mouse button, this will toggle the status bar to off.

 

Congratulations, you have just gained yourself some precious real estate for your Outlook 07 e-mail content.  Don’t worry if you need that status bar back at any point.  Just repeat the same action and it will come back.

 

Step 2: Merge your Menu Items

The Menu Bar at the top of the screen takes up some space that we could be using for something else.  If like me you use it only once in a while, what you can do is merger all the menu items into a single drop down menu.  This will of course mean accessing menu items will take slightly longer, but the tool bar items tend to be what we use frequently anyway.

 

Lets see what we can do with this then.  To begin with, give the toolbar are at the top of the screen a click with your right hand mouse button.

 

A context specific menu should appear with four items on it.  The last of the four is named “Customize…”, give this a click.

 

The customize tool allows us to edit the Menu bar items and also the tool bar items.  It’s going to work hard for us today.

 

The Customize dialogue box should appear.  Across the top are three tabs for selecting.  Toolbars, Commands and Options.  We are going to select Commands.  Looking at the left hand column we can see various categories available for selection.

 

Use the scroll bar to navigate to the bottom of the categories list and select “New Menu”.  You should see the “New Menu” item in the right hand pane.

 

Now drag this item from the “Customize” dialogue box up to your Menu Bar by holding down the left hand mouse button when over the item and pulling it to the bar.

 

You should end up with a menu item called “New Menu”.  As this won’t be new for very long, we will change its name to “Menu”  To give it a new name, simply give it a right hand click and from the context specific menu that appears we can edit the name of the item in the Name box.

 

A useful tip here is the use of the & symbol.  If you replace the text “New Menu” with “&Menu”, once edited the text  “Menu”.  You may have noticed the underlined letters before on your Menu items.  This is an indicator of a keyboard shortcut letter.  Holding the Alt Key down and then hitting the letter M will open that menu.  Keyboard shortcuts can be really useful to “Netbook” users as those little touchpads are not that easy to use sometimes.

 

With the “Customize” Dialogue box still open, we can now drag the “File”, “Edit”, “Go”, “Tools”, “Actions” and “Help” Menu buttons into the new “Menu” button that we just made.  It might take a little practice to arrange the items just as you like, but when you are done, you should be able to close the “Customize” dialogue box and test out your new menu.

 

All going well, clicking on “Menu” or using the Alt+M keyboard shortcut should open up the “Menu” to reveal all of your other menus.  I think you will agree, we have just freed up some more space that will be useful to us.

 

Step 3:  Transfer Your Toolbar Icons to the Empty Menu Bar

In order to free up even more vertical space on our Outlook 07 application, its time to move all of the toolbar buttons onto the now virtually empty Menu Bar.  As you have seen on my initial screen shot, I currently have two toolbar buttons open.  The Standard toolbar and the Advanced Toolbar.

 

If you right hand click on the toolbar again and choose “Customize…”, all of these buttons can be dragged and dropped onto the empty space on the menu bar above.  Be selective here.  If there are buttons there that you never use, don’t move them onto the Menu Bar.  We will hide the Standard and Advanced toolbars in a minute, freeing up that extra space for our main working area.

 

 

You can see here the selection of tools that I prefer to use.  You may decide on a different set of tools.  Be aware that some of the items on the default toolbars appear and disappear depending on what section of outlook you are working within.  Next what we will do is to navigate using the navigation pane on the left hand side to each section in turn… That is Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Tasks and Notes if you use them all.

 

For each section, again move the buttons that you use from their toolbars and onto the menu bar,  If you are getting bored from doing the right hand click/customize move for each section, there is a quick way of moving toolbar buttons around.  You can hold the alt key down and then drag a button to a new location.

 

 

By now you should have a mostly full menu bar, and probably one or two depleted toolbars just below it.  We are just about ready now to claim back that extra space.

 

Step 4:  Removing the Obsolete Toolbars.

 

This is an easy one now.  Right hand click on the toolbar area and this time click on any item that has a tick next to it.  Repeat this action until Standard, Advanced and Web are all un-ticked.  As you do so the toolbars will disappear.

 

By now we have compressed several rows of toolbar buttons into the single Menu Bar.  That extra space we have enabled may not be a lot, but combined with the removal of the status bar, we now have space for 3 or 4 more e-mail messages.  Its amazing what a difference this makes.  Things should look a bit tidier now as well.  Especially if you have been prudent about what buttons you have kept.

 

Step 5:  Tidy up the navigation Pane

On the left hand side of your Outlook screen is the Navigation Pane.  When freshly installed this pane is configured by Microsoft with bigger screens than your Netbook sports.  Next we will tidy up this element of Outlook 07 to simplify the view and let us see more of what is going on.

 

The first thing that we will do is look to the bottom right hand corner of the pane.  If you now click on the menu item “Add or Remove Buttons”.  This will give you a list of all of the sections of Outlook 07.  You can decide now which ones you use and which ones you don’t.

 

I personally don’t ever use the Notes, Shortcuts or Journal Features within

 

 

 

 

Outlook 07, so those I deselect by clicking on them if they are highlighted orange.  Repeat this action until you have hidden all the unused features.  You may already start to notice your Navigation Pane becoming less cluttered.

 

Something else that you can control from the bottom left pull down menu is which of the features get large buttons.  Click the downwards facing arrow in the bottom left of the pane and click on the menu option “Show Fewer Buttons”.  This will remove one of those big space consuming bar shaped buttons in the Navigation Pane and change it to a much smaller icon placed on the bottom bar.  Repeat this action until the Navigation Pane is as clear as you need it.

 

You can resize the Pane width by moving your mouse to the split point and dragging the Pane to an optimal size.  Things should look a lot tidier now within your Navigation Pane.

 

Step 6:  Layout Options

 

Now that we have optimised the interface and gained quite a bit more space for dealing with our e-mails, it is worth trying out some different locations for our reading pane.  Previously the only option open to me was to place the reading pane to the right of the message pane.  However that little extra gained makes a difference to the options available.

 

Thats a fair bit of optimisation now done to the Outlook 07 Interface.  Now lets have a look at what we have achieved.

 

Step 7:  Go Really Minimal by Minimising Outlook 07’s Navigation and To Do Panes

Here is the sucker punch.  Outlook 07 has a neat feature that allows you to minimise the Panes to the left and right.  If you look at the top of the panes you will see a double arrow at the top left hand side.  Clicking on this puts the pane into a minimised mode.

 

Unlike hiding the pane or switching it off, the main features of the panes are still available via long slim buttons that remain in view.

 

Clicking on the Navigation Pane side buttons opens up a temporary pop out Navigation Pane that disappears after you have used it.

 

Considering the two areas that you are most likely to visit with via the navigation Pane are going to be Unread Mail and your Inbox, this view offers pretty much all the functionality that you require yet still leaves your UMPC with an incredibly practical mail view.  I think this may just be perfection!

 

Conclusion

Now you can see my final clean as clean can be layout for Microsoft’s Outlook 07 interface.  All the outlook features that I regularly use are within easy reach of my mouse pointer, yet the maximum amount of screen space is available for use by productive tasks.

 

Using the techniques that I have detailed in this article, you to can have a clean functional Outlook 07 that lets you use your Netbook to its full potential

Now its over to you.  You won’t regret spending half an hour to tailor your Outlook 07 View you your Small screen.  You will save that time back pretty quickly with the new lean mean e-mail machine.  Good Luck