How to properly sort my categories in outlook 2007?

Hi,

First of all: my question is Outlook 2007 related, not specifically Windows 7 related.
In case that violates these forum rules: can anyone suggest a better forum for my problem?

My problem:
I spent a lot of time in developing a long category list, for use in my calendar, but mainly to group and filter my contacts.
I want those categories to appear in a specific (grouped) order, for easy navigating in the long list. I used symbols to create groups: Ⓒ for countries, Ⓟ for people, Ⓧ for companies, etc.
After assigning a number of categories to a specific contact, I assume these categories will be displayed there in the same sorting order as the master category list.
But that is not the case. Both in full individual contact views as in list/table views the categories seem to be quite randomly displayed.
For instance: if i assigned:
! important, country, people, company, inactive
The result(s) in the various views can be completely different:
country, ! important, company, inactive
! important, company, inactive, country
etc
Unassigning and then re-assigning a category to a contact did not make a difference.

How to FORCE outlook to obey the sort order of the Master Category List?
Thanks for any suggestion.

Wim/Indonesia

Hi Irene,

I know and use the color codes, but that isn't the point.
In fact there are three points:
1. If I open an individual contact card I expect the color coded categories on the top of the page to be displayed in the exact same order as on the Master Category list, for instance (as in my category list): always the country first, then the friendship types (personal, business, close friend, acquaintance, contact), then the contact source (met through: school, job, trip, internet), etc. etc.
But this is not the case. The display order seems to be completely randomized. If I unassign and re-assign certain categories, the display order is sometimes changed, often not.
2. The same happens in list view. This is very annoying and confusing when you quickly want to browse through all contact and see/filter certain groups, for instance quickly see all USA close friends met during my trips. The sort order now is a complete mess.
3. Apart from that it does not really help that in list view the color cubes are separated from their description. So if a contact has 5 categories, you first see 5 randomly sorted color cubes, then 5 descriptions.

Is there any method to change that?

Hi Irene,
Your latest reply to this thread (I got an email notification but don't see the reply here) doesn't help either. I know how to assign, change, sort, edit etc the colored categories. But as I tried to explain before, The table view display in Outlook is messy. Example again:
Master Category list: red=contact type, blue=country, yellow=xmas, green=work
In table view sorted by location the category field can look as follows:
John > blue-red-green-yellow; India, Friend, Dentist, Xmas
Pete > yellow-green-blue-red; Xmas, Reporter, Kenya, Relative
Anna > green-yellow-red-blue; Nurse, Xmas, Colleague, USA
How to make this uniform?

have you tried using a number before the categories both in folder filing and in contact categories? you can use a decimal point too so 1.3 or 8.1 or I think 8.23.
miker

@miker:
No, i didn't try that... Honestly speaking: the trick might work (didn't test it) but it adds useless information to the contact.
What about:
John Johnson
[4 different color blocks, then:] 1.33 India, 2.17 colleague, 4.28 send xmas card, 5.12 reporter
Don't think that looks nice, not in individual contact records, not in table views.
I simply want to try to understand the internal sort order that Outlook uses, if I know it's pattern then maybe I can use that to create a logical sort order.
But Outlook's Irene is not really that active in this thread...

Thanks.