Outlook 2013 introduced some changes to the way the standard inbox view is presented. It’s basically a good thing, though if you have a lot of email and a small screen, it will certainly reduce the number of items on your default view. This means that once an email is (say) 15 from the top on your mailbox, then it’s off the screen and, for some people, it might as well be dead.

You could adopt an Inbox Zero policy and keep your inbox to as few items as possible, or you could admit defeat and become a piler like most people. We have computers to search stuff for us, so why does it matter if we delete or file things away? Meh.

Anyway, there are a few tweaks you can make to your Outlook view if you don’t much like the new version. Let’s look at a comparison between Outlook 2010 and 2013:

It’s easy to see the screen real-estate effect – though 2013 is clearer, it’s a little larger.

If you’d like to restore the view to more like 2010:

• In the main Outlook window, go to the View tab, and look under View Settings
• Click on the Conditional Formatting button.
• Create a new rule (Add), and call it something like “Look like 2010”. Choose a Font by clicking on the Font button, and select “Smaller”. You may want to try some italic and bold settings just to spice things up a bit, but you can always go back and change it later.
• Press OK, and when you are prompted, say that it’s OK for this rule to run on everything (since we haven’t created a condition for it to apply).

Now this will apply to all messages and will reset the default view to have smaller “From” lines.

If you’d like to change the way unread messages are displayed (where, in Outlook 2010, they were just emboldened and with an appropriate message icon), repeat the exercise above but instead of creating a new rule, just edit the “Unread Messages” rule – set the font and colour, and party on!

There are many other inbox formatting tips which will take the views back into the mists of time – if there’s demand to find out more, maybe I’ll cover them in future ToWs.

Previous ToW entries have covered the need to sometimes tell Outlook to pipe down and let you get on with what your job is supposed to be. Where, after all, does it say on your job description, “Sits in front of a screen reading & writing email all day”?

The Pomodoro time management method is one potential solution to the problem, where the user forces themselves to focus for a period of time by avoiding distraction. The continuously excellent series of Photo Tips from Robert Deupree (JR) featured a simpler solution…

Robert also recommends a shortcut for the keyboard junkies so dedicated to extreme productivity that they can’t afford to lift their hands away to touch a mouse – to toggle Online and Offline modes in Outlook, simply press ALT+S then W.

When Outlook is offline it obviously won’t receive any new email, but it will let you work on existing mail, calendar etc and you’ll still be online for Lync distractions, and able to while away time browsing the web.

Whilst on the subject of Outlook and distractions, do yourself a favour and switch off the new mail alert – it’s even more intrusive in Outlook 2013 than previously. We all get enough email that we don’t need to know when another one has arrived, so try it now and you can always switch it back on if you feel that nobody loves you anymore.

Simply go to File / Options / Mail within the main Outlook window, and tweak the settings as required:

Sometimes, the best bits of content benefit from revisiting, improving or just being done in a different way. It was good enough for Sgt. Pepper, and a mainstay of any self-respecting 1970s concept album (try and hear the Supper’s Ready lyrics at the end of the Squonk reprise in Los Endos, for example. Now, take the anorak off and get back to work). Actors reprise previously-starred roles, to keep the tills ringing, if not the critics singing.

Anyway, this week’s Tip revisits and reprises a topic that’s had a bit of coverage of late – namely, searching in Outlook 2013. See ToW’s passim: #130, #144… and numerous other snippets.

Woody wrote a blog post about today’s topic – namely the way that Outlook now handles searching. Outlook has had built-in search capabilities for ages, but in 2013, it’s much easier to switch between searching within just the current folder (eg Inbox) and searching everywhere. It has also introduced further granularity like searching across just the current mailbox (or archive file).

Care must be taken, though – you might search for a term and find that the results include folders where you’ve archived stuff, or could be your Sent Items folder… so take it easy on the Delete key. The “Current Mailbox” | “Current Folder” selection is remembered for certain folders, so might change as you move from one to the other.

If you do search across multiple folders, when you hover your mouse over a result that’s of interest, and you’ll see a little bubble which tells you the folder that it’s in.

Alternatively, right-click on the “ALL Unread” menu immediately below the search box and choose “Folder”, and you’ll see your search results grouped by the folder the messages come from.

Tidy.