Ah, the Activities tab... where it all began

My very first blog posting here on TechNet was about the very lovely (and much-neglected) Activities tabs that Outlook provides inside each Contact item.

When you first click this tab, Outlook busies itself finding all items in your personal folders related to this contact. It's a simple way of seeing when your next meeting with someone will take place or when you last sent them an email.

But you can also customise the way this search takes place in one well-hidden dialog box. So, here goes:

On the Go menu, click Folder List.
Click the Contacts folder you want.
On the File menu, point to Folder, click Properties for "foldername" , and then click the Activities tab.

Now you've arrived in the weird Contacts Properties dialog you can change lots of things:

• In the Default activities view list, click the folder you want to be searched by default.
• Select a folder group you want to change and click Modify. Then select or clear the check box next to each folder you want to add to, or remove from, the search.
• Click New to add a new Folder Group. This way you can even add Public Folders, archive files and other .pst files (see Tip: below)
• Select a folder group then click Reset if you make a right pig's ear of it!

Tip:  Outlook can only search one set of personal folders at a time. This means you cannot search in your archive folder and in another .pst file during the same search. You'll need to create a separate folder group for each set of folders and search in each group separately.