MS Outlook is loaded with a ton of great features. One of them is creating notes. Whenever you get some brainstorm ideas or want to collect some ideas, you can create a note in MS Outlook. You don’t need open MS Word to work on it. Outlook notes don’t use dialogue box with Menu and Toolbars. It is indeed an easy feature to use. But some users find it difficult to create and customize on their own. For them, below are step by step guide to follow.

Below are some steps to follow for Ms Outlook 2010 that may help you to create notes.

Visit ‘Navigation’ bar in the MS Outlook and click on “Notes”. The notes icon is required to click.

Users can press the arrow listed in the Navigation bar to select “Show more buttons” or “Show fewer buttons”. As you click on “Show more buttons”, it will display ‘Notes’ folder in main items of Outlook account. If you press “Show fewer button”, it will hide the ‘Notes’ folder from all main folders of Outlook account.

Now press the tab “Notes” which will create a Note to write something that you find important.

As a note is created in Outlook, you don’t need to save it. It will automatically save with other notes in your account. If you want to take a look at your notes, go to “current view.” The Notes list displays all your created notes.

View Notes

If users would like to take a preview of the saved items in Notes, hover the mouse over that specific note. It will help you to take a close look at the topic.

Sort Notes

If you want that a particular Note should be displayed in a particular color, icon or subject, the modification can be possible with Sort feature. To achieve this, right click on a mouse and choose “Sort”. The drop-down menu will display a Sort option.

The Sorting window will display multiple options such as sort by color, contacts created, icon, modified or subject of Notes.

Adding Notes to Quick Access Toolbar

If use Notes feature quite often and you don’t wish to follow a long procedure to access Notes, there is an option Quick Access Toolbar will help you. It saves you time and effort.

To achieve this, press drop-down arrow on Customize Quick Access Toolbar and select “More Commands”.

A new window with the name of the Outlook option will be opened.  In the box of “Choose Commands from” and select “All Commands” from the list.

After that select “New Note” and press  “Add” option displaying at the right-hand side of the dialogue box and finally hit OK.

Now, the New Note tab is added to quick access bar. You can open it easily.

Outlook offers the feature to directly email a note you would like to share. For this, right click on the particular note and from the drop-down menu, choose a forward option. The feature will automatically attach the note with a new email.

Fill To, CC, BCC, Subject and other details to send the message.

Linking Notes with Contacts

If users wish to integrate Notes with Outlook contacts, they can. Click on the upper left corner of Note and select “Contact” from the drop-down menu.

A dialogue box will appear, provide the contact that you want to connect and then press ‘Close’ tab.

Do you know you can move or copy notes to a different location in your MS Outlook? It is easy to do. Choose the desired Note and then in the Action Group, press Move option. A drop-down menu will appear, select ‘Move to Other folders’ or ‘Copy to folder’ options.

A dialogue box will appear, letting you move items to a folder of your choice. Select the desired folder and press OK

Customize Notes In Outlook

Users can customize the appearance of MS Outlook Notes. The font, color, size and time can be modified. You can hide the time and date on Notes.

To achieve this, click on the ‘File’ tab and then check on “Options”.  In the dialogue box of Outlook options select Notes and Journals displaying in the left.

In the setting options, users can make the required changes in the Notes appearance. The font, size, and color can be changed easily.

Overall it is easy to use Notes feature in the MS Outlook. You don’t need to use Notepad or MS Word to save some important information. It is helpful for both commercial and individuals. Use the abovementioned features to create and customize notes of MS Outlook.

Are you looking for the ways to access Appointments, Contacts and Calendar in Outlook Notes? Here are the instructions to activate the feature.

When in MS Outlook, the formatting and attachment are in the disabled state, format text tab and Insert button are not visible. It restricts users to add Images, Rich Text, and other Attachments. Users find the “Attach File” button in workable condition but they are not working actually. The problem is faced usually when users use Hotmail or Outlook.com account by Exchange ActiveSync protocol in MS Outlook 2013. To resolve the problem, it is necessary to active Formatting and Attachments in Notes.

As per the abovementioned problem, the addition of Rich Formatted Text in the Notes section of Calendars, Contacts, and Appointments are not supported. But the problem is not the constraint. The prime reason for it is that Outlook.com doesn’t support Rich Text formatting. It supports plain text format and attachments cannot be synchronized. This is the reason they don’t display in the Notes section. Discover the image where Format TXT is disabled.

Outlook Hotmail Connector is supported by older versions of Outlook including 2007 and 2010.  EAS is supported by new versions of MS Outlook including 2013.

In the older version of Outlook, synchronization is achieved with the help of Outlook Hotmail Connector. In the latest versions of Outlook, EAS protocol is the best way to synchronize with Outlook.com or Hotmail accounts.

With Outlook Hotmail Connector, Rich text formatting is added to the Notes. All attachments are attached successfully and can be displayed in the Notes section.  But there is a problem that Attachments and Formatting in the Notes Section cannot be synced back. Looking at the problem Outlook 2013 has disabled its ‘Format TXT’ feature and many other features of Insert tab.

Rich Text Formatting

Since there is no direct way to make Rich Text Formatting to function in EAS mailboxes, below are some substitutes to follow.

Use Exchange Mailbox

Instead of using Outlook.com, using Exchange Online of Office 365 can be beneficial. It doesn’t restrict formatting and syncs everything saved in the mailbox. The downside of office 365 is that it is not free. It is not costly. It offers the advantage of storage of 50 Giga Bytes per mailbox.

Use PST File

We all know that Outlook uses PST to store its data. The restriction you will face is that the items are saved in an EAS mailbox, not in PST format. The drawback is that these items will not sync with Outlook.com web-based client. So, the practice could be useless.

Use OneNote Linked Notes’ Add-in-

The add-in feature in Outlook 2013 can solve the problem. The drawback of the method is that the created links can break the items while the configuration of the account.