I received a message which had a small flag and a person icon in the flag column already.

What does this icon mean?

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When I have Outlook running but work in another application, sometimes Outlook suddenly pops up taking the forground.

Aside from this being quite annoying, this also means that when I'm typing, the text is sent to Outlook and not to the application I'm working in at that time.

Is there a way that I can keep Outlook in the background while working in another application?

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After reinstalling and updating my computer via Windows Update, I noticed I'm still running Outlook without any updates.

How can I get updates for Office as well?

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In responds to enabling full text search within pdf-attachments, several readers asked how they could also preview these pdf-files directly in Outlook.

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I'm monitoring multiple mailboxes in Outlook and for this I open multiple Outlook windows so that I can easily switch between windows instead of needing to browse between folders. I usually have an additional Outlook window open for my Calendar as well.

I only found an option for a single startup folder. I guess I'm looking for an option similar to Internet Explorer where I can set up multiple Home Page folders or restoring my last browser session.

Is there anything similar in Outlook so that I can open all these folders automatically at startup?

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When I do a search in Outlook via Instant Search, does Outlook then also search for the text within attachments such as pdf-files?

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I usually open two or more Outlook windows/messages to do my work more efficiently. In Windows XP and Vista I could select multiple Outlook windows with the CTRL button on my keyboard and then use the right click menu to organize the windows. Or, in case it was grouped automatically, simply right click on the group.

How can I do this in Windows 7? The only right click option I get regarding this is "Close all windows".

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I have a rule that applies to a lot of contacts and even more are added over time and sometimes I have to remove contacts as well. I've added all these addresses to a single rule but it is hard to manage the rule this way and I often get the message that I've run out of space and that the rule has been deactivated.

I then tried to use a Distribution List to group all the contacts together and use that distribution list for the rule instead. This won't work either since Outlook extracts the distribution list into individual addresses when creating the rule so I'd be back where I started from. Assigning categories to contacts and base the rule on that (kinda like; if sender is in a specific category) seems not to be a possibility either.

Is there another way I can manage this?

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I've got several eml-files which I saved over the years with Outlook Express, Windows Mail and Windows Live Mail.

I've now switched to using Outlook. When I double click these saved messages, they open with Windows 10 Mail instead.

How can I open these messages with Outlook instead?

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For some of your tips I need to start Outlook as an Administrator.

Within Vista this was easy by right clicking the Outlook icon on the Taskbar and choosing “Run as Administrator”. In Windows 7 this right click menu is gone because of the new Taskbar.

How can I easily launch Outlook as an Administrator on Windows 7?

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