Remove Favorite folders (Outlook 2003 SP-2)

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My company just upgraded from win2k to XP Pro and from Outlook 2000 to Outlook 2003. I spend most of my time (it seems) dealing with email, so I got very used to the way Outlook was set up…but with 2003 it’s different enough to be an annoyance and a hindrance to efficiency.

I’d rather have the left pane look the way it used to, but I know I can’t. But I use all sorts of folders, and want as many in view as possible – is there a way to remove the ‘Favorite folders’ section of the pane so I can see more Personal folders?
The only other thing that bothers me is the order in which messages are deleted. I get several hundred emails a day and many I can delete offhand. Here’s what I mean:
(My messages are sorted with the most recent at the top.) With an email message open, pressing the delete button within the message’s toolbar will delete that message and move ‘up’ to the ‘previous’ message, in this case meaning the one directly above it. This is what I am used to. And I know where to find the setting for it (under Email options, message handling). But with no message open and maybe 300 new messages in my inbox, I want to quickly delete the ones I know I don’t need to read, such as automated file system alerts that are basically false alarms. In Outlook 2000, I sort by subject, highlight the newest one, and hit the delete button on my keyboard. After the highlighted message deletes, the next one scrolls up and is highlighted, and I delete that one…and so on. In Outlook 2003, when I delete the newest message, the highlight bar scrolls up to the message above it – I end up deleting messages I didn’t intend to. Yeah, I know it’s minor and I know what the ‘new practice’ is…but 5 years of daily routine is not that easy to suppress. I can’t find any control to change the order in which the messages in the Inbox pane are deleted – which leads me to assume it can’t be changed – unless it is controlled by the same setting that controls how messages are deleted when they are in an opened state.
If anyone has any ideas on how to eliminate either of these petty nuisances that are driving me batty – PLEASE!!!!!

Thanks –

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Drag down the separator between the folder tree and the favorites as far as you can. You should be left with only a narrow bar with icons.

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At the bottom of the Navigator there is a control that let’s you view the old-fashioned Folder list. On mine, it’s the sixth icon, immediately after Notes. The Folder List view does not have a Favorites section.

The other one, I guess I need to experiment to figure out how that works.

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And it is the sixth one in Hans graphic, this thread, and once selected it should ‘stick’.

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Man, you guys rock!
This is why I don’t always look up my own solutions before I come here.
Which is why the answers to my questions often seem obvious.
Once again you’ve come to the rescue.

John – I’m pretty sure that at least through Outlook 2000 the Option in your screen cap only controlled when the messages were open. Apparently now it’s at all times. Oh, well – can’t win them all!
And as far as deleting individual messages one by one instead of selecting a bunch at once – I really don’t know why I do it that way. Go figure. I guess I just like to use the keyboard whenever possible – it took me a while to even consent to using a mouse (until Windows, that is) so maybe that has something to do with it. My kids say I’m old-school (not sure if they mean that in a good way or not) so maybe that’s it.

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I think it’s Jefferson and Hans who did the heavy lifting on this one. I came late to the party and showed you where the fridge was.

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> I just like to use the keyboard whenever possible

You might experiment with Shift and down arrow, Shift and Page Down… there are a lot of keystrokes that can select large numbers of messages at once.

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Hello

For you keyboard commandos.
Move the cursor to the first file/message to be selected and press and hold the key down.
Use the mouse to move the cursor to the next file/message you wish to select.
Pressing the bar and it will be selected as well.
Press the bar on a highlighted file/message will deselect the file/message.

You can also hold the key and select a large section and then use the above to deselect a couple of files/messages.

Hope this helps.

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(Edited by jscher2000 on 28-Jun-06 12:10. )

Regarding issue #2, the behavior of the select bar in the Inbox after pressing delete appears to be related to the setting you mentioned. I had always thought that setting relatd only to what happened when you have a message open in its own window (an Inspector object). My setting is Return to Inbox, and the bar always moves down after a delete, regardless of the sort order.

Added: By the way, you can use Shift+click to select a contiguous range of messages in the Inbox, and Ctrl+Click to create a selection of non-contiguous messages, rather than pressing delete two dozen times.

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