How to Customize the Outlook Today Page with Cut-and-Paste Code (and a little HTML)

June 12, 2012   MS Office

The Outlook Today page is used as a summary of your email, appointments, and tasks. While you could make any web page your Outlook Today page (which would defeat the purpose) or customize the existing pages that came with Outlook (which can be rather painful), you could just create your own summary page. A simple page will require some basic HTML to create the layout, while an advanced page will require additional coding experience. Here’s some good starting info to create a basic page.

To begin with, you need to decide which elements of Outlook you wish to include on your new summary page. Do you want your Inbox, Calendar, Tasks, Contacts, and/or Notes all on the same page? Along with this, you need a rough idea of how much available room you have to display the page. This will be decided by what resolution you are running, whether you run the application maximized or not, whether you use the Navigation Bar and To-Do Bar (Outlook 2007/2010) and if you want to utilize scrolling or have everything easily viewable. This works for Outlook 2003, 2007 and 2010.

To include Outlook elements, you will need to use the following code:

Inbox

<OBJECT classid=CLSID:0006F063-0000-0000-C000-000000000046 id=ViewCtlFolder width=”600″ height=”650″>
<param name=”Folder” value=”Inbox”>
<param name=”Namespace” value=”MAPI”>
<param name=”Restriction” value>
<param name=”DeferUpdate” value=”0″></OBJECT>

Calendar

<OBJECT classid=CLSID:0006F063-0000-0000-C000-000000000046 id=ViewCtlFolder width=”550″ height=”162″>
<param name=”Folder” value=”Calendar”>
<param name=”Namespace” value=”MAPI”>
<param name=”Restriction” value>
<param name=”DeferUpdate” value=”0″></OBJECT>

Tasks

<OBJECT classid=CLSID:0006F063-0000-0000-C000-000000000046 id=ViewCtlFolder width=”550″ height=”162″>
<param name=”Folder” value=”Tasks”>
<param name=”Namespace” value=”MAPI”>
<param name=”Restriction” value>
<param name=”DeferUpdate” value=”0″></OBJECT>

Contacts

<OBJECT classid=CLSID:0006F063-0000-0000-C000-000000000046 id=ViewCtlFolder width=”550″ height=”450″>
<param name=”Folder” value=”Contacts”>
<param name=”Namespace” value=”MAPI”>
<param name=”Restriction” value>
<param name=”DeferUpdate” value=”0″></OBJECT>

Notes

<OBJECT classid=CLSID:0006F063-0000-0000-C000-000000000046 id=ViewCtlFolder width=”350″ height=”162″>
<param name=”Folder” value=”Notes”>
<param name=”Namespace” value=”MAPI”>
<param name=”Restriction” value>
<param name=”DeferUpdate” value=”0″></OBJECT>

Sent Items

<OBJECT classid=CLSID:0006F063-0000-0000-C000-000000000046 id=ViewCtlFolder width=”600″ height=”650″>
<param name=”Folder” value=”Sent Items”>
<param name=”Namespace” value=”MAPI”>
<param name=”Restriction” value><param name=”DeferUpdate” value=”0″></OBJECT>

RSS Feeds (change RobTime to the name of the desired feed)

<OBJECT classid=CLSID:0006F063-0000-0000-C000-000000000046 id=ViewCtlFolder width=”600″ height=”650″>
<param name=”Folder” value=”RSS Feeds\RobTime”>
<param name=”Namespace” value=”MAPI”>
<param name=”Restriction” value><param name=”DeferUpdate” value=”0″></OBJECT>

Search Folders (change Newsletters to the name of the Search Folder)

<OBJECT classid=CLSID:0006F063-0000-0000-C000-000000000046 id=ViewCtlFolder width=”600″ height=”650″>
<param name=”Folder” value=”Search Folders\Newsletters”>
<param name=”Namespace” value=”MAPI”>
<param name=”Restriction” value><param name=”DeferUpdate” value=”0″></OBJECT>

Search Folders in a Personal Folder (PST)

<OBJECT classid=CLSID:0006F063-0000-0000-C000-000000000046 id=ViewCtlFolder width=”600″ height=”650″>
<param name=”Folder” value=”\\PersonalFolderName\Search Folders\SearchFolderName”>
<param name=”Namespace” value=”MAPI”>
<param name=”Restriction” value><param name=”DeferUpdate” value=”0″></OBJECT>

Create an empty HTML document. Copy and paste one of the above chunks of code in the BODY of the new document. Placing any of the above code in the BODY of your web page will display the desired Outlook element. Save the page.

Now go to Outlook and do the following:

Step 1 -  Right-click on your main Mailbox in the Navigation Bar.

Step 2 -  Select Properties.

Step 3 -  Select the Home Page tab in the resulting window.

Step 4 -  Make sure the Show home page by default for this folder checkbox is checked.

Step 5 -  Click the Browse button and browse to the location of the newly created HTML document.

Step 6 -  Click OK.

Step 7 -  Go back to the Navigation Bar and click on the main Mailbox so that it displays Outlook Today.

Note: Each element will be displayed the way it does in Outlook, for example, the Reading Pane will show if it is normally on when viewing the Inbox, the Calendar element will display in Day, Week, or Month mode depending on what the normal selection is, etc.

You can use simple tables or CSS positioning to place the elements in their desired location. Modify the width and height in each OBJECT tag to change the size of the elements. You can add additional items from the web, such as the weather or news, to your Outlook Today page by utilizing iframes to display the content. You can also add links to other web pages, however, I recommend that you have these links open up in your web browser (target=”_blank”) instead of using Oulook’s browser. It will take some experimenting to get the positioning the way you want it, but with a little effort, you will have an ideal starting page for your email client. If you want to go back to the original Outlook Today, just click the Restore Defaults button on the Home Page tab of the Outlook Today properties.

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