A heavy Outlook user had the following suggestion for Outlook improvement. She’s currently using Outlook 2003 but will likely upgrade to 2007 very soon, however she’s seen Outlook 2007 and it doesn’t address this yet.

One thing that I would like to see in Outlook is the ability to change folder colors. Because Outlook has been one of my primary tools for organizing and tracking my business contacts and correspondence, I have over 200 folders. Unfortunately, when I need to go to a particular folder (and this happens probably 100 times a day just for filing messages, given my current volume of correspondence), it is not necessarily quick to just scroll through to the one I want. It would be much faster to be able to color code the folders, so that I could quickly see at least what section of folders I am currently in. At the very least, since I have my folders broken down into several separate Outlook Data Files, it would be nice to have a different shade of color to differentiate each of these sections. Since Outlook is being promoted as a great business tool, with add ons like Business Contact Manager to make it even more effective, and since other recent updates have increased the ability to customize labels and other visual cues, this improvement seems to be a natural progression of the product.

Also, another thing that would be very helpful would be if one could print the folder tree from Outlook. Many organizational books and systems recommend having a consistent filing system for emails, electronic documents, and paper files, particularly since so many documents and correspondences are now kept in electronic format only. Unfortunately it is impossible to simply print the file structure from either Outlook or from Windows Explorer. This very simple improvement would greatly enhance the integration of Outlook and Windows with other organizational systems required by users for home and business office use, saving a great deal of time otherwise wasted with multiple systems for organizing storage.

[categories: Outlook, MSOffice]