Gmail: Blast from the Past!

I've subscribed to Office 365 and installed Outlook to access my Gmail account. Just for testing. I haven't gone insane.

One of the interesting default features of Outlook is that it downloads every single email you've ever received. Every one. By default. Given that GDPR is on the horizon (7 days and counting!) I thought you might be interested in this one before the bonfire of the emails begins.

Gmail was launched on 1st April 2004 (the entire History of which is available here via Wikipedia), I purchased a beta key off of eBay (I think!) and signed up in February 2005.

Here's the first ever email I received in my Gmail account; a Welcome from the Gmail Team:

Original Gmail "welcome" email

My particular favourite section;

"As you're using Gmail, you might also see some ads or related links. We believe that you shouldn't have to share your inbox with large, blinking, irrelevant ads. Gmail's small text ads are matched by computers, and designed to be relevant to the messages you're viewing. Which means for once, you might even find ads to be interesting and useful."

See? Outlook can be useful for some things ...

Searching vs Filtering

This is one of the questions that keeps coming up (usually in discussion featuring Microsoft SharePoint and equally usually starting with a complaint about not being able to find something they "know is there").

Mostly the issues come down to the differences between searching and filtering and I put together the little example below which helped explain things;

Bob lives in a house. He's got lot of books one of which is the Great Gatsby. His bookshelf is in his lounge and everything in his life is nicely indexed and searchable and all result sets include the location. 

Bob wants to find his book. 

He does a search "book=great gatsby AND location=lounge". He gets the result that the book he's looking for is in the bedroom (where he left it). 

Now if he'd used the same text as a filter then he'd have had no results as the book wasn't in the lounge and filters don't have the flexibility to, if no result matches exactly, to widen out to include "close enough"-matches that, in this case, give him the result he's looking for.

This worked quite well so I thought I'd share it.

As a side note this also demonstrates the effectiveness of a really good search engine. Take, for instance, the majority of users habit of "filing" their emails into folders. If everyone in an enterprise was reliably able to search for things just think of all the time that could be saved by everyone just archiving emails out of their inbox rather than filing them away.

Outlook 2016 (for Mac) Email Formatting/ Image Display Issue

I've been working today on an interesting issue with email formatting when you send HTML emails between the Mac and PC versions of Outlook. The issue only seems to occur one way - from Outlook 2016 on a Mac to Outlook 2013 on a Windows machine. In addition to font issues it also seems to be doing something "weird" with a PNG image I've embedded as a test.

So here's the problem. On the left is the test signature in Outlook 2016 (Mac) and on the right is the signature as it appears when it arrives in Outlook 2013 (PC);

As you can see the image shows that when the email arrives in Outlook 2013 the colour of the image changes (although if you save the file and open it in preview it is actually still the same colour - it's the way it's rendered that's different, not the image itself).

Clicking "reply" (which lets you see the font information being used) shows that while the email signature was build using the font Calibri (which is installed on both devices) it's being rendered in Outlook using "Times New Roman".

From what I can see (i.e. "thank you google") it looks like Outlook 2016 isn't including font information in the email so Outlook 2013 is reverting to it's standard font. The problem seems to persist if rather than using Outlook 2013 on a PC you use the mail client on an iPhone - this suggests Outlook 2016 is doing some odd rather than 2013 just not displaying it correctly.

What's going on with the image is a mystery! Which slightly deepens if you copy/ paste your email signature into Mail on the Mac. You still get the image problem, but not the font problem. However if you save the image to disk from the Outlook signature, open in preview, and then copy/paste into the email signature in Mail from there you don't get the same issue. Again the light image is also visible on an iPhone which suggests it's the information in the email message being rendered that is causing the issue.


Neither issue occurs if you use Apple Mail on a Mac, it's something specifically done by the latest version of Outlook.

Should I work out how to address this I'll make another post, just thought this was odd enough to justify a specific post ...

Sharing your Microsoft Outlook 2007 Calendar Within Your Organisation

This is something quite a few people want to do every now and then, it tends to make booking meeting for a large number of people a lot easier if you can see the couple of people who can't make it have, for example, just block-booked the time to work at their desks and could be persuaded to move it!

Open Microsoft Outlook and click on "Calendar";

Calendars in Microsoft Outlook 2007

Now right-click your Calendar under "My Calendars" on the left and select "Share Calendar" from the list which appears;

Microsoft Outlook 2007 "Sharing Invitation" Dialog

Now you just need to enter the individuals (or distribution list) that you want to Share your Calendar with in the "To" box and click "Send".

They will then receive an email along the lines of;

Microsoft Outlook "Sharing Invitation" Email Notification

The user receiving the email just had to click "Open" and your Calendar will be visible.

Opening Additional Mailboxes in Outlook 2007

A simple step-by-step guide for end users on how to open additional mailboxes (assuming you have been granted the appropirate permissions) using Outlook 2007 and Microsft Exchange Mailboxes in a Corporate Environment.

Open Outlook 2007 as you would normally

Access the “Tools” menu and select “Account Settings ...”

Ensure that “Microsoft Exchange” is selected and click the button marked “Change...” just above and to the right of it.

Click on “More Settings ...” at the bottom right.

Select the “Advanced” tab (second from the left).

Click on the “Add...” button in the “Mailboxes” group at the top.

Enter the email address for the mailbox you wish to add and click “OK” on this dialog.

Providing you have entered the details correctly the new mailbox will be displayed under “Open these additional mailboxes” in the dialog. If you have additional mailboxes to add you can click on “Add ...” again and repeat the previous step.

When you’ve added all the mailboxes you require click “OK”.

The “Next” button at the bottom right will now be available on this dialog. Click “Next”.

Click “Finish”.

Click “Close”.

The shared mailbox will now be available.