Outlook 2010 unread messages – how to set font size and colour

Deutsch | Español | Français | Italiano | Português | 日本語 | 한국어 | 简体中文

I'd previously blogged about how to make Outlook 2010 more readable and accessible by increasing font size ie enlarging and emboldening fonts in the different panes, etc

The problem with making the row font bold is that you can't distinguish between read and unread messages easily (unless you kept in the Read column, which I haven't for space reasons). This is because Outlook makes bold the text in Read rows, so if even unread text is bold, you can't tell the difference.

The secret is to set the font of unread emails to a different colour and maybe type, style and size too. In my case I've made them red, but also bold and the same type, size and style as I've made the other text.

To do this, go to the menu View, and click View Settings:

You'll see this:

Now click the "Conditional Formatting" button and you'll see the box below. Left click once on "Unread messages" to select it, then click the Font button, below.

Now you can choose the font type, style, size and colour that you want, and hit OK, OK and OK again.

You can apply this to other folders and sub-folders in your mailbox via the Change View folder – see my previous post on how to set all Outlook folders and sub-folders' view settings to match the current folder's.

Windows Live Writer ribbon and menu disappearing?

Deutsch | Español | Français | Italiano | Português | 日本語 | 한국어 | 简体中文

When I recently moved to Windows 7, even though WLW came pre-installed on my new computer, I found that the ribbon and menus were not there whenever I opened WLW – see the pic above!

How to solve this problem? What worked for me was just click the restore or full size icon at the top right of the window (between the – and the X icons), and then click it again to get back your previous window size, and voila - the ribbon returns!

The fix is straightforward, but this is an annoyance as I have to do it every time I launch Windows Live Writer after starting up my computer. Windows Live Writer is to me the best free blogging software there is – it works for Blogger/Blogspot as well as Wordpress.com and many other blogging platforms - so I hope there's a permanent solution soon.

(And no, it's WLW, not my computer or monitor - the 'ribbon vanishes' issue doesn't happen with any other application, for me.)

Can't find Microsoft Office programs inside Program Files?

Deutsch | Español | Français | Italiano | Português | 日本語 | 한국어 | 简体中文

If you've installed Microsoft Office in Windows 7 Professional 64 bit, and you can't find Office's Winword.exe for Microsoft Word, or other EXE files in the Program Files folder for Excel etc, here's how to find them. They're not actually missing, so you can stop tearing your hair out.

The solution to the problem is this: you may have installed 32-bit Microsoft Office, but the 64 bit Windows system creates two Program Files folders in your C drive - "Program Files", and "Program Files (x86)".

The weird thing is that the "Program Files" folder still contains a "Microsoft Office" folder with "Office14" subfolder (if you have Office 2010, or "Office11" if you're on Office 2007). Which is what threw me at first.

However, those folders will be rather empty - you won't find many Office files within them!

If you want to find the real Office 2010 programs and other Microsoft office files, you will have to look in "Program Files (x86)". It's the "Microsoft Office" subfolder there that you want, probably Office14 (or Office11 for Office 2007).

Some may think this is obvious, but, being new to 64-bit Windows, I missed it at first, and it seems and others have too, so I hope this saves someone else from going mad trying to find the Microsoft Office Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc applications inside "Program Files"!