The Best Outlook Feature Ever
Here's an Outlook party trick suitable for cruise ships, family reunions, and kids birthday parties.
Up until now this secret trick has been known only to Outlook insiders--a kind of "secret handshake" passed through the generations of Outlook team members. Every few years ago someone files a bug on it and it is quickly closed by an elder.
Today, I pass it along to you to enjoy. I believe it works in all versions of Outlook. Do all of these steps in a row; don't ever click away from the sticky note once you do the first step or it won't work.
- Create a new sticky note (File | New | Note or Ctrl+Shift+N will do the trick.)
- Type some text in the note (anything will do, it doesn't have to be long.)
- Drag the note around the screen for a while (you can move it via the title bar just like a normal window.)
- Now, for the big trick: Press CTRL+Z.
- Sit back and enjoy the show.
- You can keep pressing CTRL+Z again and again to reverse the process.
For extra bonus points, along with moving the window around, try resizing it and (in Outlook 2003 and earlier) changing its color via the icon in the upper-left hand corner.
(The good news is that all the memory used is reclaimed when you close the sticky note.)
Thanks be to that ancient developer who, in his wisdom, persisted every change of position, size, and color in the undo stack. Many hours of fun have resulted from his work.
Super extra bonus points: Write your name on the screen using the sticky note. Hint: you need to drag it over the Outlook window.
Comments
- Anonymous
November 30, 2005
Doesn't work here (Outlook 2000 Sp-3). Ctrl-Z does nothing.
Outlook 2000 is too old?
Christian - Anonymous
November 30, 2005
Likewise, I'm also on 2K and it did not work... - Anonymous
November 30, 2005
I have Outlook 2003 SP1 and I get nothing but a sticky note. Ctrl + Z does nothing. :-( - Anonymous
November 30, 2005
The same here with Outlook 11.6359.6360 SP1, nothing happens. - Anonymous
November 30, 2005
Works for me - awsome! - Anonymous
November 30, 2005
It might help if you told us what ctrl-z is supposed to do. It may be happening but we don't know what to look for. Ctrl-z just gives me one level of undo/redo. If that is all you are hinting at then I wouldn't really call that a parlor trick. - Anonymous
November 30, 2005
Wait... I get it now. People need to read the instructions very carefully. The point is that the dragging of the note gets "undone". The note flies all over the screen in the reverse of how you dragged it.
Ok... now that is a little bit cooler. - Anonymous
November 30, 2005
At first I THOUGHT that Outlook 2k2 didn't work. (version 10, sp3)
After playing with it I found that
you Need to Type in it
BEFORE
moving it around.
(Or maybe it was something else...
anyway, don't give up after one try) - Anonymous
November 30, 2005
Works for me outlook 2003 and sp2
awesome it animates and restores the position where it was before - Anonymous
November 30, 2005
Very nice.
And it doesn't just remember the FINAL positions you drag it to. It remembers EVERY PLACE ON THE SCREEN it was visible as it moved. - Anonymous
November 30, 2005
looks like it only starts saving teh undo stack when you TYPE into the note. It doesnt save states that occur before typing. - Anonymous
November 30, 2005
So will this remain in Outlook 12? Hope so... - Anonymous
November 30, 2005
It seems like if your video card very good, you won't able to see the trick, because it happens so fast - Anonymous
November 30, 2005
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
November 30, 2005
I got it to work on Office 2003, though it seems like it will stop working if the note ever losses focus. - Anonymous
November 30, 2005
I noticed the same. Got it to work on Office 2003 and Office 12 beta 1. - Anonymous
November 30, 2005
Really impressive :-) Thanks!
I believe it's an Easter egg'ish thing. I mean, the coder knew what he was doing, it was just not that much against the spec to be called Easter egg, so he though, why not to have fun?
Smart! - Anonymous
November 30, 2005
I edited the instructions to note that you must do all the steps without clicking away from the sticky note. If you are doing them one at a time and moving focus to the web browser in-between, it won't work.
So, try to memorize them or print them out for full effect. - Anonymous
November 30, 2005
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
November 30, 2005
Ilya: It's not really an easter egg, it's just a kind of questionable decision in the implementation of undo for sticky notes.
It may have been more straightforward technically to do it this way and, given the relative obscurity of pressing CTRL+Z in a sticky note, it was just left this way. - Anonymous
November 30, 2005
It was to fast to really notice what was going on until I turn on full window drag (right click the desktop, Properties->Appearance->Effects->"Show window contents while dragging") - Anonymous
November 30, 2005
outlook 2k3 sp3 worked a treat.
My boss has almost religious faith in MS so I like to show him proof they mess about same as any one. - Anonymous
November 30, 2005
That's brilliant (Outlook 2002, SP3) - don't fix that 'bug', it's too funny... - Anonymous
November 30, 2005
My favorite "not quite an easter egg but certainly strange behavior" is in Lotus Notes, everybody's favorite software written by people who only had the concept of the GUI vaguely described to them over a noisy telephone and had never seen one:
From your email Inbox, hit F6 then try the left and right arrow keys.
It has the mysterious effect of scrolling the little graphic with your name on it to the left and right. (On the left-hand side, where it says "Mail for James Schend." The word "Mail" doesn't scroll, but the "for James Schend" does.) - Anonymous
November 30, 2005
Any chance that a kind person makes a movie for us, outlook-less guys? Thanks in advance! - Anonymous
December 01, 2005
James: Doesn't work for me (v6.0, 9/26/2002)
Tried it several ways.
When focus is on a mail item the buttons operate the horizontal scrolling - so the fn you describe may be intentional (retarted as that is)
LOVE your description of the Notes UI as "everybody's favorite software written by people who only had the concept of the GUI vaguely described to them over a noisy telephone and had never seen one"
May I quote you on that, or did you get it from somewhere else? - Anonymous
December 01, 2005
This is cool! works gr8 for me! - Anonymous
December 01, 2005
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
December 01, 2005
Whoa! Thanks for sharing! Great laugh! :)) - Anonymous
December 01, 2005
The comment has been removed - Anonymous
December 03, 2005
James and Chris C: The actual version of your client is irrelevant - it's the version of your mail template which determines the appearance of your mail, and hence the behaviour when you hit F6. Ie, you could be running R6 / R6.5 / R7, but still using the R5 release of the mail template.
From the sounds of it, Chris is running R5 mail ("it looks green") and James is running R6 or R7 mail ("it looks blue").
The mail templates that Lotus provides have always had some interesting behaviours, and recently they seem obsessed with splitting everything out into strange combinations of nested framesets. The actual function of F6 is "Move to next pane or frame", so while the visual result is pretty horrible, it's doing exactly what it's supposed to :) - Anonymous
December 09, 2005
This works for me with Outlook 2003 SP2 (11.6568.6568) but afterwards, when I try to terminate Outlook, I get an error message "Could not complete the operation. One or more parameter values are not valid." - Anonymous
September 08, 2006
As software developers we use Visual Studio almost every day.  We are
constantly discussing the... - Anonymous
June 16, 2009
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