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Outlook tip: Delay or schedule sending an email message

I wrote previously (on work-life balance) that “one manager I know is so serious about work/life balance that he all but forbids his team from sending emails late into the night (sure, there are exceptions to the rule). But he is able to live within the boundaries by responding to mail ofline after the family goes to bed and then sync’ing mail the next morning at the office.”


I admit it: after the kids go to bed, I’ll use Outlook in offline mode and answer a few mails. (I’ve even been known to respond to a few urgent ones that tend to hit my mailbox late on a Sunday night…)


Well, there’s another way to do this if you use Outlook on an Exchange Server: you can delay delivery of an individual message.


To do this in Outlook, while the message is open, click ‘Options’ and under Delivery options, click on the ‘Do not deliver before check box.’ You can then select the delivery date and time you want the mail to be sent. (This tip is also available on Office Online here, but without the lovely graphic.)


According to Office help, you can even set up rules to delay delivery of all messages by having them held in the Outbox for a specified time after clicking Send. (This is also summarized in the OO article above.)


Not a bad idea for those times I hit ‘send’ in error: no more having to ‘recall and resend’ mail.


More Office Online “Outlook 2003 Help and How-to” is available, including these tips on organizing your emails. Many of these tips also apply to Office 2007.



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Your questions: “What about Mac Office, Entourage and Daylight Saving Time?”

Great to hear from an old friend in Silicon Valley who works for a certain company in Cupertino, who asks: “I read your posts on the impact of the chnages to Daylight Saving Time. What about Mac Office — is it OK with the new DST change?”


Glad you asked. 😉


News from the Mac team WRT Entourage 2004: it was updated in this week’s 11.3.3 release to support DST.  A brief note about this can be found on the MacBU public blog…



Today’s release of the 11.3.3 update delivers a significant change to Entourage’s time zone support, including support for the new DST dates. Prior to this fix, events in the month of March 2007 (starting 3/11) were off by an hour for the majority of US customers. I highly recommend customers update to this release of Entourage prior to the beginning of Daylight Savings observation in 2007. The update seamlessy ensures that your calendar is updated to reflect the new DST rules and improves overall time zone reliability.” 


As for other Mac Office applications and DST, I believe that current Mac Office applications should not be affected as they derive their date functionality from the OS.  In order to ensure that DST observations are correct, end users should update to the latest version of the Mac OS X (which I think is 10.4.6). More info as it is available. See http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303411


My thanks to the MacBU for the update.


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What do candy, Microsoft products and Congress have in common?

And the answer? Daylight Saving Time. Let’s just say it’s been a popular discussion topic around the office this week.


A 2001 public service announcement for the upcoming turning back of the clocksFor the history of how this came to be — and to know who you can thank for the extra hour of sleep once a year — look to none other than our multi-talented founding father, Benjamin Franklin. You can read more about DST on NPR’s site. Note that it is not “Daylight Savings Time” (with an extra “s”) as it’s often referred: according to the Wikipedia, this is a “common variant… frequently heard in speech and appears in some dictionaries.”


Now, back to our story. As reported in the news, there’s a change coming in the calendar as we will all be asked to move to Daylight Saving Time a full three weeks earlier than in previous years. This year, we’ll move our clocks on March 11 rather than on the first Sunday in April. To be precise: “daylight saving time (DST) start and end dates for the United States will transition to comply with the Energy Policy Act of 2005. DST dates in the United States will start three weeks earlier (2:00 A.M. on the second Sunday in March) and will end one week later (2:00 A.M. on the first Sunday in November).”


You can also thank the US Congress for enacting the Energy Policy Act of 2005, much to the joy of one industry in particular: candy manufacturers, who reportedly lobbied for an extension to DST. This sunny extension will allow trick-or-treaters to scream “trick-or-treat” and collect candy for an additional hour. (Or, as we said in Canada, when I bantered about in the Northern dark, ringing doorbells and crying out “Halloween Apples!”) See also this article in the Provodence Journal for more perspectives on DST.


So what does this have to do with Windows?


Glad you asked.


A change to DST means a change to many Microsoft products, including Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Server 2003: for these there is “a single global time zone update which will include changes for the United States DST change,” including changes that have been released as hotfixes and noted in various KB articles.


For end-users customers, updates for Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 will be available via Windows Update, Automatic Update, and WSUS starting on December 12, 2006.


For our customers and partners, we have a section on our website dedicated to helping you prepare for daylight saving time changes in 2007. Watch the site over the next couple of weeks as it is being updated regularly with information.



“Microsoft will be producing an update for Microsoft products affected by the new United States daylight saving time transition dates. These updates will be released through a combination of channels including Microsoft Customer Support Services (CSS), hotfixes incorporated in Knowledge Base articles, Windows Update, Microsoft Update, Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), and the Microsoft Download Center.”


For Windows Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange 2007, I believe no updates will be needed, as updated time zone definitions are already included in the products.


Here’s the real fun: Congress may decide to move back to the old schedule. They retained the right to fall back (pardon the pun) to the old 1986 law if after the study period they find that this new change is “unpopular or if energy savings are not significant,” according to the Washington Post. If I were a betting man, I might just take that bet.


More information: We’ll be updating the content on the DST 2007 information page, providing links to key documents and articles that provide more information on DST adjustments for other Microsoft products, including…



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New Windows Vista and Office 2007 launch site now online

It’s amazing that a couple of inches of snow can throw the area into a real freeze… but as I mentioned it was great to see that our products helped to keep people connected, productive and on track while most of the office was out of the office this week.


New as of yesterday: the new Microsoft Windows Vista/ Ofice 2007 product launch site is now online, and includes info on Exchange Server 2007.


        


You can view webcasts and read more about the new products (and the people deploying them), try out the new UIs and sign up for a local launch events.

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Ribbon, ribbon… Where did my favorite commands go?

As Richard posted today, no school in the Puget Sound area today. I’m thankful today for Outlook Web Access and Live Meeting today as it allows us to dial in for broad meetings that we’ve had on that schedule for months now.


Now back to our regularly scheduled programme…


The Office Help and How-to site has a section on using the new user interface in Microsoft Office 2007 and how it can help ease the way you work.


As we dogfooded Office 2007 this summer, the only thing I added to the quick action tool bar was “Save as…” given I needed to save docs in the Office 2003 format for those who hadn’t yet made the leap. I don’t bother with it any more: nice to see that I’m now receiving documents in Office 2007 format from some of the last teams to move. 😉


From the Office site:









Find familiar commands in the new Ribbon. Use our interactive guides to find your favorite commands in the 2007 programs and learn how to customize the toolbars and menus.

 

More information on…