Category Archives: Outlook

XP logon screen tells you about unread mail

Okay, this is from the Windows XP logon screen.

XP Logon prompt: 188 unread mail messages

Leaving aside for a moment the fact that I have nearly 200 unread mails, I want to know three things:

After all that messy anti-trust business, surely Windows XP and Office 2003 shouldn’t be so closely coupled as to provide this information on the logon screen.

Who decided providing this on the logon screen would be a good idea? What other surprise supposedly private items might popup for all to see?

How the smeg do I turn this off, while still using the Welcome screen, and preferably leaving Fast User Switching on?

This KB article describes it in more detail. I’ll need to do a little more digging to figure out how to turn it off.

Update 12:45pm. This article describes a registry hack that effectively disables it, by removing the privilege that updates the message count.

7:30pm. Yes, that registry hack seems to work. (And thanks to Wilson, who spotted it before I spotted it).

Outlook won’t undo

One of my long-term Outlook gripes: Undo can catch a lot of things, but one of the things I use it most for is when I’ve changed my mind about deleting an email, so I want it back out of the Deleted Items. But it only works if you deleted from the folder, not from within the email itself, which then returns you to the folder. Would it be that hard for the logic to say “hey, he pressed undo, he must mean undo the last action” (well duh) “so I’ll undo the mail delete he just did.”

Lookout is so frelling useful

I can’t believe it hasn’t been part of Outlook since the beginning.

I’ve had it for like a month. I stopped noticing how hard it was to search through Outlook’s folders a few years back because I stopped *trying* to search through Outlook’s folders. It was too pointless an exercise. I just found other ways to do things. I treated Outlook’s search feature as damage and routed around it.

Now, I want to know the IP address of the XYZ Server, I search my mail for “XYZ Server.” I want to know when we’re supposed to be at the restaurant, I search on the name of the restaurant.

In hindsight, I can’t believe how much Outlook sucks at some things.

—Jekke

(oh, yeah. Lookout is available for free at http://sandbox.msn.com)