Minimize Outlook 2003 to the system tray (er, taskbar notification area)
I've noticed that a bunch of the referrers I get from
google/msn/yahoo search to this blog are interested in terms such as "Email Notification
Icon". So in response to that, today's blog entry is about two tricks related to the
system tray, one of which is about the email notification icon.
Tip #1: How to
minimize Outlook 2003 so that it doesn't appear on the taskbar:
1. Click on the Outlook icon in the system tray
2. Check "Hide when minimized"
3. Minimize Outlook
And voila, Outlook will not show up on the taskbar.
To maximize Outlook, click on the system tray icon again and choose "Open Outlook."
Note: If reminders fire, they will still show up on
the taskbar.
Tip #2: Turn off the envelope icon the system tray
The new mail icon in the system tray tends to be one
of those features that you either hate or love. If you are in the hate camp, just
turn it off (Outlook 2002/2003):
1. Tools | Options | E-mail Options | Advanced E-mail
Options
2. Uncheck "Show an envelope icon in the notification area"
Outlook 2003 contains a new message notification mechanism
that's much spiffier (at least in my humble opinion). This mechanism (known as "desktop
alert") displays a translucent box on your screen with the first few lines of the
message and gives you the option to delete it, flag it or open it while it's being
displayed. This is configured in the same dialog as the above checkbox, just click
"Desktop Alert Settings".
P.S. I love the idea of creating blog entries based
on the searches that already lead to this blog. It's such a warm-fuzzy-customer-feedback-loop.
:-)
Comments
- Anonymous
October 23, 2003
Tip #1 is good, but what if I want to do the opposite? I want to see Outlook minimized in the task bar, but I want to get rid of the stupid icon in the tray. - Anonymous
October 23, 2003
How do you go about finding searches that already lead to this blog ? - Anonymous
October 24, 2003
Craig: You can use the tool at <a href="http://sunflowerhead.com/software/knockout/">http://sunflowerhead.com/software/knockout/</a> to do that.Phil: Sorry, only the owner of the blog has access to that information. - Anonymous
October 24, 2003
KC:How will adding another control to the tray solve my problem. There are FAR too many programs that put themselves in the tray when they don't need to be there. I really wish dev teams would start reading Microsoft's UI guidelines. - Anonymous
November 24, 2003
Consider me a happy customer of your feedback loop! I've been looking for how to get rid of that little system tray icon - many thanks!! - Anonymous
November 25, 2003
Ok, so the desktop notification thingy is really cool but how do you get it to stay on the screen longer than 30 sec? Even the 3 sec is fine if I am sitting at my computer but what if I am constantly getting up and down? There's the envelope sure, but I kinda like the desktop notification. Why such a constrictive time limit? - Anonymous
November 26, 2003
The UI has to choose some reasonable default to please 'most people most of the time'. You can customize this if you want it to be longer- see the blog entry from 11/26:http://blogs.gotdotnet.com/kclemson/PermaLink.aspx/007214ed-5d64-4102-a5ce-c90382c86d95There's also the envelope icon in the system tray that will remain on the tray until you open a new mail or mark something as read. Tools | Options | Email Options | Advanced Email Options | Show an envelope icon... - Anonymous
November 27, 2003
Is there any way of getitng rid of the envelope icon in the system tray if you have Outlook 200 SP3? I hate having that thing sat on my dektop accusing me of not looking at my email when I have work to do...Chris - Anonymous
January 03, 2004
I have an IMAP account as my default account - the new mail goes to the inbox of the IMAP account - Outlook will notify me with the envelope icon, however, becuase it doesn't go to the "default Inbox" - the desktop notification doesn't work. Any ideas? - Anonymous
February 03, 2004
Thanks for the info. I was wondering if you could help me, I'm looking for a way to be alerted to messages I care about. I do not want the system tray icon to appear if the incoming email is a mailing list I belong to; those I stuff in a separate folder.
I saw in the Rules Wizard that there's an option "clear the message flag" but that's the "followup" flag, not the system tray message indicator.
I don't want to just turn it completely off; I want to be interrupted when something work-related comes in, but I do not want to be interrupted when an email from a mailing list comes in, as those I can read at my leisure.
I realize I can change my subscription options to "batched daily digest" mode instead of "one email per message" mode, but I prefer the latter for storage and review.
Does anyone know how to do this? It's okay if it flickers then turns off, but it'd of course be even better if it didn't.
Thanks,
Ken Beal
kbeal@softricity.com - Anonymous
February 04, 2004
Have you looked at the desktop alert feature in tools / options / email options / advanced email options, to see if that meets your needs? - Anonymous
March 05, 2004
Craig asked you how to get rid of the stupid Outlook icon in the tray altogether, and you told him to use the knockout tool. BUT this tool has an icon of it's own and the outlook icon is only disabled when this tool is runing so there is no gain there...
Do you know of any other way to remove the Outlook icon? maybe by editing the registry? - Anonymous
March 05, 2004
Yes, Yoav, that was discussed above. I am not aware of any registry key to change this. The way knockout works is by using win32 APIs, so if you were able to write something separately to do that, that's one possibility.
Another way just occurred to me... if you're using windows XP, right click on the taskbar and go to properties, check "hide inactive icons" and click customize. From there you can choose to always hide the icon. - Anonymous
March 06, 2004
Thanx KC. The "always hide" icon did the trick! - Anonymous
March 07, 2004
I just installed Outlook 2003. I was using Outlook Epress before. In Express, I always got a new mail notification. In Outlook 2003, I don't get any type of notification when new mail arrives. Does anyone know of how to correct this problem? All the notification items are checked. I'm using a hotmail account if that helps. - Anonymous
March 10, 2004
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
March 10, 2004
Amoor, did you read my comment from 3/5 at 9:25 AM? I don't remember if previous versions of Windows had that same capability. - Anonymous
April 15, 2004
Amoor, to get rid of the tray icon:
Tools|Options|Email Options|Advanced Email Options...uncheck the 6th checkbox from the top (Show an envelope icon in the notification area).
Hope this is what you are looking for. - Anonymous
April 15, 2004
Kirk: actually no, this isn't about the envelope icon, it's about the outlook icon that's new in outlook 2003, that sticks around in the system tray. - Anonymous
April 15, 2004
Er...um...ignore that last message. I misread what you wanted to hide. - Anonymous
April 19, 2004
To echo Yoav, thanks KC. "always hide" fixed something that has distracted me for a long time. Now I won't have to turn off Outlook during the day any more and only start it when I'm ready to look at new messages. - Anonymous
April 21, 2004
I would like to be alerted to a new message even when Outlook is not running. Is this possible? Is there perhaps a separate program that could run in the tray to notify me. Ideally with the same features. ie click on the icon to load outlook and funky desktop alerts. - Anonymous
April 26, 2004
I'm using Office XP SP3 and it is my understanding that if I close Outlook and I do receive new mail that it should still display an envolope icon in the system tray... It does not... Is this normal? - Anonymous
April 26, 2004
Peter: your expectation is incorrect, that is not part of the core Outlook product. There are third party products that do this, see www.slipstick.com for links to a few. - Anonymous
April 30, 2004
WOOOOHOOOO, thanks, about time i can leave it open - Anonymous
May 04, 2004
does anyone know why the taskbar icon shows as outlook 2000 (the brown and white one) even though you're running outlook 2003 (with an orange and yellowy icon)?
anyone know how to change this? - Anonymous
May 17, 2004
I have the same problem, I think it has to do some thing with windows 2000. I have done a clean install of windows 2000 sp4 and then install Office 2003 and I get the same results.
Are you having this problem with windows XPSP1? - Anonymous
May 17, 2004
This just reminded me of an issue from a long time ago... but I think this was fixed after NT4. In those days, when the font cache in windows got overloaded, lots of funky display problems could happen. For some reason I remember the cache being around 40mb by default, and if you hit this problem you had to remove fonts from the fonts folder to get to under 40mb & reboot. I couldn't find any more information on this with a quick googling, but just wanted to mention it. - Anonymous
May 19, 2004
Is it possible to have the new mail notification envelope when I receive e-mails in one of the subfolders of my inbox? I have folders setup for all my current projects, completed projects, etc, and rules setup to automatically move them to the correct folders. However, I dont get the envelope icon when new mail arrives. I dont want the desktop alert because many times i'm not at my computer when the new mail arrives, i just want the envelope to work like it did in previous versions! - Anonymous
May 19, 2004
Tad: Not to my knowledge. But in Outlook 2003 you can configure a new mail alert or desktop alert based on a rule, see http://blogs.msdn.com/kclemson/archive/2004/05/06/127296.aspx. - Anonymous
May 19, 2004
Wow, thats seriously depressing. I can't believe they would take that out. - Anonymous
May 19, 2004
Sorry, what? Take it out? I don't remember it ever being customizable like that, from what I recall it's always been a global option. - Anonymous
May 19, 2004
In Outlook 2000/XP if I had rule setup to send incoming emails to a subfolder of my inbox based on words in the subject, I would still receive the mail notification envelope. In 2003, I don't. I know it works on 2000/XP because I just tested it on some other boxes I have. - Anonymous
May 19, 2004
Tad - ahh ok I know what you're talking about. I do not know the details here, but I suspect the change was made on purpose, because I know I've heard many many people complain about the way it used to work - many folks didn't like the envelope showing up unless it was for a new mail message in the inbox. But like I said, I wasn't involved in the decision, so I may not have the full story. - Anonymous
May 19, 2004
By the way, in outlook 2003, have you looked at the desktop alert functionality? It's far more flexible than the icon. See the entry I linked to above, plus in the rule you can also create a desktop alert as well, it's pretty powerful. - Anonymous
May 19, 2004
I liked the unobtrusive little envelope, but I guess I'll have to live with that. Thanks for your help. - Anonymous
May 24, 2004
I'm trying to find information about possible security vulnerabilities by having the Desktop alert turned on. I keep auto-preview and and preview panes turned off for that reason, but the question was brought to me about the Desktop alerts feature as well. Any info? Thanks! - Anonymous
May 28, 2004
I have Outlook 2000 SR-1. It does not have the "Show an envelope icon in the notification area" in the Advanced E-mail Options so I can't turn off the envelope icon the system tray. Any idea ? - Anonymous
May 28, 2004
Guillermo: I believe that option wasn't added until Outlook 2002, sorry. - Anonymous
June 17, 2004
I have outlook 2003 running in cached exchange mode and the new message indicator (both the envelope icon and transapent notice) works fine when msgs come into the inbox...but when they come into one of my sub folders or another folder in my mailbox the indicator doesn't appear...it doesn't matter whether i am in cached exchange mode or not by the way...ive tested both...
what do you think? - Anonymous
June 17, 2004
when outlook is open it places an icon in the system tray. whenever outlook is sync'ing its folders a baloon pops up with a message to that effect.
if i right-click on the icon i can disable the showing of messages. however, this disables it for this session only. when i next reboot my pc it is on again.
how can I turn these off permanently. i know how to do it if i re-install but there must be a way to manually change these settings
thanks in advance
- Anonymous
June 22, 2004
Thanks for tip #2.
I was looking for reenabling envelop icon about 2 weeks. - Anonymous
June 25, 2004
I have outlook 2000 with Windows XP. I'm one of those that like the envelope icon in the desktop tray area. I can't seem to find it tho'. Do I have to d/l an upgrade for it to work? I had it no problem before with Outlook Express. - Anonymous
June 28, 2004
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
July 01, 2004
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
July 08, 2004
Agreed that the Office system tray icon needs to be removed.
You have an option to remove it from the Taskbar, why isn't there an option to remove it from the system tray?
You should have an option to remove it either location. Seems quite logical to me. A little ol program named Winamp has been able to do that for years. - Anonymous
July 09, 2004
So i've read through the blogs
Has anyone found a way to remove the Outlook System Tray icon (not just hidden) without installing and third party software.
It's very annoying and i've got much more important system tray icons (the new mail icon for example is much more useful - at least it is telling you something!) - Anonymous
August 10, 2004
I agree, the permanent Office icon needs to be removed from the tray! :) My desktop space is valuable!