Solved Live Mail: Compact and quick (views)

[Slartybart]

There are a few things that make Windows Essentials Mail a less than appealing mail client. There were a lot of issues with WLM 2011, so first off, everyone should be running the 2012 version.

The first thing that bugged me was the ribbon - you had to leave it open or drag it open to do just about anything. I always had a difficult time finding the tool I needed, say "Mark All" for instance. I found a neat trick to solve that issue (Shawn probably has a tutorial).

The mail client has it's own quick access bar, all you have to do is put the tasks you use most frequently on it - you never have to open the ribbon again!

Find the task on a ribbon and right click it and select "Add to Quick Access Toolbar" to make it more accessible - that's it! I found this once, forgot where I found it, looked all through the options and then I remembered!

I customized the bar so that I know where the tasks is and what the icon looks like. To remove a task, use the right mouse button and select remove.

My bar: New (create a new msg), Reply (to sender), All eMail accounts (send & receive), Mark all read (msgs in the current view), Compact View (change the left pane)

You can also do this for the new message window. Two things I use are insert Single Picture and insert horizontal line..

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The second thing was the left pane which has limited layout control.

The accounts (another story) are fix spaced, the only option is to move Accounts up or down. You can move Outbox and Storage folders too, but it doesn't stick, they're back at the bottom of the list when you open WEM again.

So, you can compact shortcuts and compact the left pane view. I didn't like this at first, but it's growing on me. There are two tricks to make it work.

1) Use the Quick Views to read your mail, not the accounts.
This is a great feature, especially if you have many accounts.

My quick views: Unread Mail, Flagged items, All inbox, All sent items, Unread feeds
The great thing is Quick Views work across all folders
Unread mail presents every eMail that I haven't read wherever it is stored
All inbox shows me every message in every inbox (read or unread)
All sent items shows me all the mail I've sent

The next thing is to get the compact view icons under control. Left click the big green plus sign icon and the "Add to compact view" dialog window pops up.

I simply removed everything except the quick views, and added my storage folder(s). This way I can read my mail and easily move items out of the inbox(es) and into to storage folder(s).I had to configure the compact view twice. One of my accounts looked odd when I did it the first time (boxes not checked, but not clear either - sort of orange tinged not quite gray boxes). When I opened the "Add to compact view" again, everything looked normal and by clearing or checking the items I wanted, everything completed without issue.

It take a while getting used to it, but once you train yourself - it's a fairly decent way of managing your messages. Plus you get all of that real estate back that the accounts were taking up

Bill
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[Slartybart]

There are and always will be "features" that don't work properly in any application. WEM (using the "new" MS reference: Windows Essentials - Mail) is no exception.

One issue with the WEM Quick Access Toolbar that bugs me is that you cannot change the order of the icons. It's a static order at add time. In other words, the first item you add will always be the first.... the fourth item you ad will always be the fourth. If you want to "control" the order, you have to plan and add the items in the order you want them presented. There's probably a way to change the order with a registry hack, but I haven't investigated that as it would be user specific.

Bill
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