How can I get a nested category view in Outlook please?

[Alan]

Hello,

We migrated from a third-party mailsystem where users had large, often
nested distribution lists, to Outlook 2003. At the time, we had to
migrate the distribution lists to categories because of Outlook's very
small limit on the number of members of distribution lists.

When users click on View - Current View - By Category in their
Contacts folder, they see a flat view of each category and its
members. That's fine for migrated lists which only contained
individual contacts.

However, where nested distribution lists have been migrated, they
really need to see a top-level category with sub-categories.

For example, if group A had groups X, Y and Z as members, they need to
see category A, with indented categories X, Y and Z under it. The
normal view by category just lists categories A, X, Y and Z one after
the other.

Anyone know how can we do what they need in Outlook please. They use a
shared, functional mailbox, so any solution would need to be
implemented on about 5 PCs.

(In the long-term, I'm thinking of BCM but they need something now.)

Thanks,

- Alan.

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]]

We migrated from a third-party mailsystem where users had large, often
nested distribution lists, to Outlook 2003. At the time, we had to
migrate the distribution lists to categories because of Outlook's very
small limit on the number of members of distribution lists.

When users click on View - Current View - By Category in their
Contacts folder, they see a flat view of each category and its
members. That's fine for migrated lists which only contained
individual contacts.

However, where nested distribution lists have been migrated, they
really need to see a top-level category with sub-categories.

For example, if group A had groups X, Y and Z as members, they need to
see category A, with indented categories X, Y and Z under it. The
normal view by category just lists categories A, X, Y and Z one after
the other.

Anyone know how can we do what they need in Outlook please. They use a
shared, functional mailbox, so any solution would need to be
implemented on about 5 PCs.

Outlook can't do what you want with the categories as you've defined them.
Why would you need to anyway? Suppose you have, say, a group of friends, some
of whom are also family members. if you have the category "Family" assigned
to the latter people and "Friends" assigned to the former collection, clearly,
the people in the Family category will also be in the Friends category, so
they're automatically "nested"; that is, if you send a message to the Friends
category, you'll include the people in the Family category who are also
friends.

 

[Leonid S. Knyshov // SBS Expert]

Hello,

We migrated from a third-party mailsystem where users had large, often
nested distribution lists, to Outlook 2003. At the time, we had to
migrate the distribution lists to categories because of Outlook's very
small limit on the number of members of distribution lists.

When users click on View - Current View - By Category in their
Contacts folder, they see a flat view of each category and its
members. That's fine for migrated lists which only contained
individual contacts.

However, where nested distribution lists have been migrated, they
really need to see a top-level category with sub-categories.

For example, if group A had groups X, Y and Z as members, they need to
see category A, with indented categories X, Y and Z under it. The
normal view by category just lists categories A, X, Y and Z one after
the other.

Anyone know how can we do what they need in Outlook please. They use a
shared, functional mailbox, so any solution would need to be
implemented on about 5 PCs.

(In the long-term, I'm thinking of BCM but they need something now.)

Thanks,

- Alan.

Single mailbox? Time for an Exchange server. SBS 2008 would do the trick.

This just sounds a convoluted attempt to create a pseudo-CRM.

However, Outlook may be able to do this in two ways:

1. Use nested contact folders. You would have to add each of them as
Outlook Address Book for them to show up in the To: dialog box. Extract
distribution list members into Outlook contact items and move them to a
specific contacts folder.
2. Use Outlook "Group By" box.

Method 1

Hit Ctrl-6 to open the all folders view.
Create a new contacts folder under the root mailbox.
Create a subfolder.
Make the new subfolder an Outlook Address Book

It won't be visible in the To: box as a nested folder, but from the All
Folders view it will be viewable as nested.

Method 2

This involves using the user-defined fields in your contact objects.

You have 4 such fields. They can be made visible and editable in contact
view. You could use that. They can each hold a single value, whereas
categories are a multi-value field. You could also group by any other
Outlook field, such as Company and Job Title.

The downside to it is that you'll also see (none) everywhere and I don't
know of a way to turn that off.

What you really want is more than one field like the built-in
categories. Unfortunately, I am not aware of a built-in way to make that
happen.

I can think of one work-around, but it will be so complex that it is
unsupportable.

It is actually possible to write SQL statements inside Outlook, which
might be what you will ultimately need to do. I've done some pretty
interesting things with that feature in the past.

I'd look into potentially using Sharepoint for this application.

What BCM view accomplishes what you want?
--
Leonid S. Knyshov
Crashproof Solutions
510-282-1008
Twitter: @wiseleo
http://crashproofsolutions.com
Microsoft Small Business Specialist
Please vote "helpful" if I helped you