Lotus Notes 8.x Tips - How to set a default font in Notes 8.5.2

Here's a fun new feature in Notes 8.5.2
You can set a default font to use for all emails you send.

Just follow these steps:

1. While writing an email, select text and change the font, size, style, and/or color to what you want for your default.
To do this, you can use the text toolbar above the email.

2. With that stylish text selected , click Text > Set Current Font as Mail Default.

The next time you write an email, the default font will be used.
If you want to change your default font, follow the same steps.

Have fun!

Outlook 2007: How To Use Voting Buttons in a Message

You can use the Voting Buttons to get responses from a group of colleagues to see what the majority of them are leaning towards. This comes in handy when getting feedback for a meeting date and location or for figuring out where everyone is going to meet after work.

Outlook tallies the votes for you so that they can easily be assessed.


To Insert Voting Buttons into your Message:

1. Create your New Message.

2. Select the Options tab.

3. Select Use Voting Buttons.

4. Choose the voting buttons you wish to use from the four options provided (Approve; Reject, Yes; No, Yes; No; Maybe, or Custom).











5. Make sure your message is the way you want it, including the question or statement that is to be voted on. Make sure you have included the proper recipients for the email message.

6. Click Send.


The recipients of your message will notice a highlighted line of text (vote by clicking Vote in the Respond group above) showing up above the From line in the email. By clicking Vote, they will be shown the voting options to select from.









After they select the desired voting option, a confirmation prompt will appear showing their selection and giving them the choice of sending the response or editing the response before sending.


Getting a Tally of the Votes:

You will receive the replies to your message with the selected voting option in the subject line. You could tally the votes yourself, however if you sent the message out to a large number of recipients, this could be rather time consuming. A better method is to let Outlook tally the votes for you.

1. Go to your Sent Items.

2. Open the message that had the voting buttons.

3. Go to the Ribbon.

4. In the Show section, select Tracking.

You will see the reply totals followed by a list of the individual votes.








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Avoiding Blank Subject Lines in Outlook 2000 - 2007

Have you ever received an email with a blank subject line?  

Have you ever clicked "Send" only to realize that you forgot to add a subject?  It’s frustrating to receive a message with no subject.

Happily there’s a simple solution to this issue.

Through the use of a few lines of VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) code we can have Outlook check the subject line of every item we send.

 Follow these instructions to use this solution.

Outlook 2000 - 2003.
1.      Start Outlook.
2.      Click Tools > Macro > Visual Basic Editor.
3.      If not already expanded, expand Microsoft Office Outlook Objects and click on ThisOutlookSession.
4.      Copy the code below and paste it into the right-hand pane of Outlook's VB Editor window.
5.      Edit the code as needed.  I included comment lines wherever something needs to or can change.
6.      Click the diskette icon on the toolbar to save the changes.
7.      Close the VB Editor.
8.      Click Tools > Macro > Security.
9.      Set the "Security Level" to Medium.
10.      Close Outlook
11.      Start Outlook
12.      Outlook will display a dialog-box warning that ThisOutlookSession contains macros and asking if you want to allow them to run.  

Click Yes.

Lets do the same for Outlook 2007

 
1.      Start Outlook.
2.      Click Tools > Macro > Visual Basic Editor.
3.      If not already expanded, expand Microsoft Office Outlook Objects and click on ThisOutlookSession.
4.      Copy the code below and paste it into the right-hand pane of Outlook's VB Editor window.
5.      Edit the code as needed.  I included comment lines wherever something needs to or can change.
6.      Click the diskette icon on the toolbar to save the changes.
7.      Close the VB Editor.
8.      Click Tools > Trust Center.
9.      Click Macro Security.
10.      Set "Macro Security" to Warnings for all macros.
11.      Click OK.
12.      Close Outlook
13.      Start Outlook.  Outlook will display a dialog-box warning that This Outlook Session contains macros and asking if you want to allow them to run.  Click Yes..

Private Sub Application_ItemSend(ByVal Item As Object, Cancel As Boolean)
    If Item.Subject = "" Then
        'Edit the message and the popup caption on the next line as desired.'
        msgbox "You are not allowed to send an item with a blank subject.  Please enter a subject and send again.", vbCritical + vbOKOnly, "Prevent Blank Subjects"
        Cancel = True
    End If
End Sub


Let's test this!!
Create a test message and leave the subject blank. 
Click Send. 
Outlook should cancel the send and display a pop-up message that looks something like this.

 

Similarly, if you Forget to Add an Attachment to your Outlook Email here is the code to NOT repeat it!!!

Private Sub Application_ItemSend(ByVal Item As Object, Cancel As Boolean)
    'On the next line edit the list of keywords as desired.  Be sure to separate each word with a | character.'
    Const KEYWORDS = "attached|attachment|attachments|enclosed|enclosure"
    'On the next line edit the message that will be displayed when the message should include an attachment as desired.'
    Const WARNING_MSG = "Wording in the message suggests that something is attached, but there are no items attached.  Do you want to cancel the send and add an attachment?"
    'On the next line edit the dialog-box title as desired.'
    Const MSG_TITLE = "Attachment Checker"
    Dim objRegEx As Object, colMatches As Object, bolAttachment As Boolean, olkAttachment As Outlook.Attachment
    Set objRegEx = CreateObject("VBscript.RegExp")
    With objRegEx
        .IgnoreCase = True
        .Pattern = KEYWORDS
        .Global = True
    End With
    Set colMatches = objRegEx.Execute(Item.Body)
    If colMatches.count > 0 Then
        For Each olkAttachment In Item.Attachments
            If olkAttachment.Type <> olEmbeddeditem Then
                bolAttachment = True
                Exit For
            End If
        Next
        If Not bolAttachment Then
            If msgbox(WARNING_MSG, vbQuestion + vbYesNo, MSG_TITLE) = vbYes Then
                Cancel = True
            End If
        End If
    End If
    Set olkAttachment = Nothing
    Set colMatches = Nothing
    Set objRegEx = Nothing
End Sub

Source