Thursday, May 15, 2003

SPEED UP DIGITAL SIGNING AND CERTIFICATE VERIFICATION Certificates enable Outlook users to digitally sign and/or encrypt messages. Adding a digital signature to a message serves two purposes. First, it verifies that the message is really from the sender and not forged. Second, the digital signature enables the sender and recipient to later share encrypted messages. If your users frequently need to send signed messages, you can help them accomplish this task more quickly by customizing Outlook. Here are three methods that can help speed up digital signing and certificate verification. To configure Outlook 2000 or 2002 to digitally sign all outgoing messages, choose Tools | Options, click the Security tab, and select Add Digital Signature To Outgoing Messages. Click Settings and select the certificate to use for signing, or obtain a new certificate if none is currently available. If Outlook 2000 or 2002 is the default mail editor, you can add the Digitally Sign Message command to the Standard toolbar. Start a new message, right-click the toolbar, and choose Customize. Select Standard from the Categories list, and drag Digitally Sign Message to the toolbar. Click Close. If some of your Outlook 2002 users frequently need to validate the certificates associated with messages they receive, you can also add the Verify Digital Signature command to the message form's Standard toolbar. You'll find this command in the Standard category. Adding this command to the toolbar gives users one-click certificate verification. Although simplifying users' ability to send digitally signed or encrypted messages might not seem like a major issue, it's important to simplify infrequently used tasks so that users become more comfortable with them--and, ultimately, make fewer support calls regarding these tasks. -- Outlook Tips at TechRepublic.com May 5, 2003 11:45:38 AM    comment [] Tip: Setting Reminders for Journal Items Q: I use Outlook's Journal to record all my activities each day and produce a monthly status report for my boss. Many times, I would like to flag a journal entry for a follow-up or reminder. Currently, I create a new Task and set a reminder, but this seems like a duplication of work. Can you suggest a better way? A: Because Outlook provides no way to set reminders for journal items, you can't avoid some duplication of effort. To make this chore less cumbersome, try dragging the journal entry to the Tasks folder. This action will create a new task with the same subject as the journal entry. The body of the task will contain detailed information about the journal item. All you need to do is add the reminder and save the task. Contributed by Sue Mosher. See the Exchange & Outlook Administrator Web site for more great tips from Sue Mosher. http://www.exchangeadmin.com 11:44:52 AM    comment [] USE A CUSTOM FORM IN PLACE OF A DISTRIBUTION LIST A distribution list is just that: a list. You can't allocate some addresses in the list to the To field and other addresses to the Cc or Bcc fields. If you need to separate recipients into different address fields, you must enter the addresses individually, rather than as a group. There are, however, a couple of techniques you can use to simplify the process for situations in which you need this ability often. For instance, you could split the distribution list into two or three separate lists. This approach works well if the To, Cc, and Bcc fields generally receive the same addresses each time. A second approach is to create a custom form that has the address fields already filled in with the appropriate individual addresses. Follow these steps to create a custom form: Choose Tools | Forms | Design A Form. Choose Message and click Open. If you need the Bcc field in the form, select All Mail Fields from the drop-down list in the Field Chooser dialog box and drag the Bcc field to the form. Resize and reposition controls as needed. Double-click the text fields for To, Cc, and Bcc, and add the addresses as needed. Choose Tools | Forms | Publish Form, select a location available to the users, and click Publish. Click Yes when prompted to save the form definition. When a user needs to send a message using the form, he or she should choose Tools | Forms | Choose A Form and select the form. Users can add additional addresses, text, or attachments, and send the message as usual. -- Outlook Tips at TechRepublic.com March 27, 2003 11:44:16 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Eric Hartwell. Last update: 6/5/2003; 8:07:50 AM.