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Using with Outlook

Switching Between NEO and Outlook

You can switch between NEO and Outlook in two ways:

From NEO

1. Click the Outlook button on the View tab of the Ribbon, or

2. Press Ctrl+0.

From Outlook

1. Click the NEO button    on the toolbar, or

2. Click Tools menu | Switch to NEO.

If the program you are switching to is not open, it will be opened.

Interacting with Outlook items

Here are actions you can take on Outlook items from within NEO:

Switch quickly to Outlook

Switch to an area in Outlook such as contacts, calendar in two ways:

a)   Click the Outlook command on View tab of the Ribbon, or (or press Ctrl+0  (zero))

b)   Click the pull down menu from this Outlook command and choose to go to a particular area of Outlook, or press these shortcuts to go to:

               Ctrl+0   Outlook
         Ctrl+1   Inbox   
         Ctrl+2   Calendar
         Ctrl+3   Contacts
         Ctrl+4   Tasks
         Ctrl+5   Notes
         Ctrl+8   Journal

c)   Double-click an Outlook non-mail folder    in Outlook view.

Open a new item in Outlook

For example, a new appointment.

Click the New Item dropdown on the Home tab of the Ribbon. Or use a keyboard shortcut:  (these match those in Outlook):

      Ctrl+Shift+A  New Outlook Appointment
Ctrl+Shift+C   New Outlook Contact
Ctrl+Shift+J   New Outlook Journal Entry
Ctrl+Shift+K   New Outlook Task
Ctrl+Shift+N   New Outlook Note

Open the Outlook contact record

Jump to an existing contact record, or create a new one.

Select any message or any NEO Correspondent or Bulk Mail folder, then right-click and choose Open Contact (or press Shift+Ctrl+O).

NEO also automatically imports contact information when new Correspondent folders are created.

Work with Outlook mail folders 

  In Outlook view, work with these just as you would your folders in Outlook.

Drag and drop to Outlook non-mail folders    

You can drag and drop messages to these folders, but you can’t display their contents within NEO (double-click to open in Outlook).

Interacting with Contacts and Address Books

NEO interacts with Contacts in two ways.

When creating new Correspondent folders

When automatically creating a new Correspondent folder, NEO imports relevant contact information such as name, company, telephone numbers and email addresses.

NEO first checks to see if a Contact exists for the address based on an email address match. If a Contact matches, correspondent information is taken from the Contact. If no contact is matched, then NEO does a lookup in all Address Books for a matching entry. If a match is found, correspondent info is taken from the Address Book. NEO adds all addresses from the Contact/AddressBook to the Correspondent folder, except for addresses that already exist in NEO.

Note that this is a one-time import from Contacts and is not synchronized in an ongoing way. If you make changes to the Correspondent fields they are not then reflected in your Contact.

When jumping to a Contact or Address Book entry

Right-click any message, Correspondent folder or Bulk Mail folder, and choose Open Contact (or press Shift+Ctrl+O). If the Contact exists you will jump to it.

If the Contact doesn't exist you will be asked whether you wish to create one.  If added from a message, relevant message information will be carried forward. If added from a folder, relevant information from the folder (Correspondent or Bulk Mail) will be carried forward.

On the Folder Properties for Correspondent or Bulk Mail, you can also choose between opening the Contact or looking up in the Address Book.

How NEO Works with Exchange Server

NEO works with Microsoft Exchange Server mailboxes. However, NEO is an email organizer. It does not organize other Outlook object types such as calendar items, journal items, and note items although it does provide ways to interact with them.

Here are some notes about using NEO with Exchange Server:

NEO is a client-side product

That means NEO installs and operates completely on your computer. There is nothing about NEO that gets installed on the server or that is related to Exchange Server. In fact, Exchange Server is completely unaware of NEO.

You can organize your Mailbox and your PSTs

You can include your mailbox and as many PSTs as you like in your catalog. NEO Pro will give you a seamless view to all your messages. NEO makes it appear as though it's all in your Mailbox.

Using your offline message store (OST)

When using Offline mode or Cached Exchange Mode it is best to delete messages from within NEO. If messages are deleted outside of NEO (in Outlook or via an Outlook Rule), they may not disappear from NEO until a Full Sync is performed.

Offline mode using Outlooks prior to Outlook 2003

If you have offline access enabled (you use an offline message store), you should select all your email folders for OST/Mailbox synchronization. In addition, you should not set filters for your folders.

You will not lose messages when you do this; however, if you do not include all your folders NEO may spend quite a bit of time removing and adding messages in the catalog each time you switch between your OST and your mailbox.

If you have instructed Outlook to automatically Outlook synchronize your Exchange mailbox with your OST when exiting an online session, you must shut down Outlook without NEO running for the synchronize to be performed.

Cached Exchange Mode in Outlook 2003/2007

NEO works with normally with Cached Exchange Mode.

Reminder – Synchronize each time you re-connect to the LAN

Whenever you re-connect to the LAN, you must synchronize to update NEO with new messages from your mailbox. Note that you can configure NEO to automatically Fast Sync on startup, or get general information about syncing.


Synchronizing with Outlook

NEO normally displays all the messages in your message store(s). However, NEO doesn't know about new, changed or deleted messages that are processed when NEO is not running.

How it works ... in a nutshell

If NEO is running when new messages arrive, are changed or deleted, then you'll always see all your messages in NEO (NEO keeps you synchronized on-the-fly).

If NEO is not running, then NEO will not know about these message events and will need to get synchronized again by you syncing manually (e.g., when you next start NEO).

Always run NEO!

It’s best to always have NEO running when Outlook is running so your email stays synchronized.

It's also better to start Outlook before starting NEO and always keep it running when Outlook is running.

Best to configure NEO to start automatically when you start Outlook. See Startup tab in General Options.

Options Set in Outlook and Used in NEO

Some user options are shared by both NEO and Outlook.

1. Print setup.

2. Message editor fonts. To set these in Outlook, see Tools | Options | Mail Format tab.

    You can set NEO Reading Pane options within NEO via Tools | Options | Reading Pane.

E-mail accounts settings are added in Outlook.

 

How to disable the Outlook New Mail sound and Tray Icon

If using NEO's New Mail Notification, you might want to disable the sound Outlook plays when new mail arrives, and/or cancel Outlook's new mail icon in the system tray.

Note:    You can cancel the sound in any version of Outlook; however, you can only disable the tray icon in Outlook 2002 or higher.

Steps:

1. Go to Options in Microsoft Outlook (Tools menu | Options).

2. Click <Email Options...> on the Preferences tab.

3. Click <Advanced Email Options...>.

4. Uncheck "Play a sound"

5. Uncheck "Show an envelope in the system tray" (Outlook 2002 or higher only).

6. For Outlook 2003 (and above), you can also configure the Desktop Alert Settings in this area.

Things we can't easily fix

Outlook and its infrastructure provide a rich environment for implementing  add-on applications such as NEO. However, some actions are simply not possible, or are possible only with a large amount of "work-around" programming. We forward many operations along to Outlook to perform for us, and in many cases it’s not possible to control how these operations are performed.

We appreciate that this makes some operations awkward, and we’d love to fix them (we often do), but can’t in every case. Here are some of the things we can’t easily fix.

·         Previous & Next buttons don’t work on the message edit window
As an add-in to Outlook, Microsoft does not make these commands available to us.

·         Outlook’s New Mail tray icon not cleared when mail read in NEO
In some cases, you can disable it using options.

·         Print options can’t be set in NEO
NEO uses the settings currently set up in Outlook. You can choose print options for selected message(s) if you open the message then choose Print on the File menu.

·         Subfolders of non-email items (e.g., Tasks) not visible in NEO
The Outlook interface does not provide the ability via automation to drag and drop to subfolders.