Outlook 2007 Email Notifications

[coomarlin]

I'm a longtime outlook express user that's recently switched to Outlook 2007. Similar but kind of foreign at the same time.

I just want the thing to tell me when I have an email without actually having outlook open. Can I do this?

I was looking at the settings and came upon advanced email options:
"When new items arrive in my inbox"
*Play a sound
*Briefly change mouse curser
*Show an envelope in the notification area
*Display a new Mail Desktop alert

These are all fine but when I check them it still doesn't seem to work unless I have outlook open at the time. Can I get this to work while having outlook closed. A fellow employee swears I can do this but he can't remember where to set this up?

I don't want to leave outlook open all day long yet at the same time I don't want to have to randomly open it to see if there are new messages.

 

[armstrda]

When you say it doesn't work without Outlook open, do you mean open as in running, or are you saying you need to have it open on the screen? Just minimize it. No program will work if it's not currently open and running as a process.

 

[coomarlin]

I guess I thought that outlook would run a small footprint checker in my taskbar that would inform me of messages.

Being a new outlook user is it common practice to leave it running all day long just in a minimized state?

 

[MrChad]

It needs to be running. You can set it to run only in the system tray by right-clicking the system tray icon and selecting "Hide when minimized".

 

[armstrda]

Yes, just run it all day with minimized setting (and like MrChad said, minimize it to the system tray if you want as well).

 

[coomarlin]

Thanks. That's what I'll do then. Even with 4GB of ram I'm one of those guys that doesn't like to have a bunch of programs running in the background.

Edit: I just looked in the task manager and it only uses 12MB so I guess in the big scheme of things that's minor.

 

[coolVariable]

Originally posted by: coomarlin
Thanks. That's what I'll do then. Even with 4GB of ram I'm one of those guys that doesn't like to have a bunch of programs running in the background.

Edit: I just looked in the task manager and it only uses 12MB so I guess in the big scheme of things that's minor.

Haha. Wait until you have multiple GBs of emails in outlook and watch your memory usage then.
Also takes minutes (!!) to shut Outlook down.

 

[Athena]

Originally posted by: coolVariable
Haha. Wait until you have multiple GBs of emails in outlook and watch your memory usage then.
Also takes minutes (!!) to shut Outlook down.

The memory entry for Outlook in the Task Manager is misleading: Outlook will appear to take up a huge chunk of memory but it releases it as soon as another program requests space.

 

[drum]

My outlook is currently taking 144MB

 

[CSMR]

Mine takes 49Mb. Mailbox (exchange) is 300Mb. Fast to start up and shut down.