Best Practices for Using Microsoft Outlook from a Sales Perspective

How to View an HTML Document as an Outlook Folder

In Arrow-Tip #21 I discuss using business processes to drive how you use Microsoft Outlook.  This how to will use the example listed in Arrow-Tip #21 for creating an Outlook folder called “Goals” and setting an html document as the home page for that folder so that a user can easily review their goals and reconcile them during task planning activities.  However, this how to could be used to post any reference document the users needs to review on a regular basis.

Open up Microsoft Word and create your goals document.  Once you have the document set up, go to File/Save As and the Save As window will open.  Browse to the folder you would like to save your document in (I recommend a Goals folder where you can save a separate document each year) and then click the Save as type drop down arrow to select “Web Page (*.htm; *.html)’ (see thumbnail below).

Save Document As

Close the Microsoft Word document and then open Microsoft Outlook.  In the navigation pane, select the Folder List view and then right click on Personal Folders (or your Mailbox if you are on Exchange).  Select New Folder from the pop up menu (see screen print below).

New Folder Pop Up Menu Option

The Create New Folder window will now open.  Type the name of the new folder you would like to add in the Name field – in this example we’ll call the new folder “Goals” (see thumbnail below).  Select Mail and Post Items for the Folder contains field and make sure that your mailbox is selected in the Select where to place the folder list view.  Click the OK button.

Create New Folder Window - Goals

You should now see the Goals folder in your Navigation Pane folder list.  Right click on the Goals folder and select Properties.  The Properties window will now open.  Go to the Home Page tab.  Click the Browse button and locate the Goals html file that you created in Microsoft Word then click the OK button on the Browse window.  Check off the Show home page by default for this folder check box and then click the OK button on the Goals Properties window.

Goals Properties Home Page tab

Note: You may see a warning such as the one in the thumbnail below. 

Offline settings warning msg

If you do, just click the cancel button, but you should still see your htm document in the main Outlook pane anyway (see thumbnail below).

Sample Goals Window

This post was written by MistyKhan and published on February 20, 2008 in the following categories: How-To's. You can leave trackbacks on this post at this address. To follow the comments on this post subscribe to the RSS feed.

Comments

No comments yet.


Leave a comment

You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>