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Reduce Toolbar Clutter in Outlook

Date October 9, 2008 : Permalink :

How many of your Outlook toolbar buttons have you ever used? And, of those buttons, how many have you used more than once a month!? I’ve never used any button on the Advanced Toolbar and only use a select few from the Standard Toolbar.

So, here’s how I optimized my Outlook toolbars and pane layout:

Outlook Default Thumbnail      Outlook Optimized Thumbnail
Default                                                  Optimized

Step 1: Reduce Toolbar Clutter

  1. Determine which buttons are most useful to you.
    I tracked my usage over the span on one month. Here are my frequently-used buttons:
    Mail (5): New, Delete, Reply, Reply to All, Forward
    Calendar (3): New, Delete, Today
    Contacts (2): New, Delete
  2. Add your commonly-used buttons to the menu bar.
    1. While in the Mail view (i.e., looking at your inbox), right click on toolbar and select “Customize…”
    2. Remove unused Menu Bar items. For example, I don’t need the “Go” menu or the “Ask a Question” box in the top right. So, I removed both of these.
    3. Drag your commonly-used buttons to the appropriate place on the menu bar. Switch to Calendar and Contacts view and repeat.

    Click on the images below to see optimal icon layout (outlined in red)
    Mail Toolbar:
    Mail Toolbar
    Calendar Toolbar:
    Calendar Toolbar
    Contacts Toolbar:
    Contacts Toolbar

Step 2: Minimize Navigation and To-Do Pane in Outlook 2007.
The trick is to use this in conjunction with “Favorite Folders” to always have your commonly-used folders accessible with one click. To achieve this:

  1. Determine your most useful folders
  2. Right-click on them and select “Add to Favorite Folders.”
  3. Click the minimize arrow (as opposed to the ‘x’ to close) in the corner of the side pane

Note: In my Optimized screenshot, I have menu items for some 3rd party plugins (ClearContext & Xobni) installed. For the purposes of this post, I disabled those plugins/toolbars when taking the screenshot (since most people don’t have them installed).

If you do have 3rd party plugins that add buttons to the Standard Toolbar, you may find that those buttons don’t function correctly if taken out of the Standard Toolbar. So, using the method described in this post will work but you will still have to keep the Standard Toolbar visible for those 3rd party buttons, albeit with fewer icons!

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