How to Create Microsoft Outlook Shortcuts for Email and Tasks.
Here’s a quick guide on how to create custom Outlook shortcuts (not Outlook keyboard shortcuts) on the desktop or Quick Launch so you can easily compose a new email message, add new notes, add new contacts, or create new appointments without having to open Outlook window at all! I find these keyboard shortcuts are better than Outlook keyboard shortcuts because they still require Outlook to be open and active.
However, sometimes it would be really helpful if I didn’t have to constantly open Outlook every time, say, I want to write a new email. It would be much easier to just click on the desktop or Quick Launch icon to compose a new email. You can do this by changing the way Outlook works with a set of command line parameters.
Here’s how to do it: First, you should already have a shortcut on your desktop or Outlook Quick Launch, as shown below. If not, just go to Start, All Programs and drag the Outlook icon to your desktop.
Go ahead, right-click the icon and select Submit, then select Desktop. You can also just right-click, drag and drop it onto your desktop, and select Copy if you like.
Now you will see the Start Microsoft Outlook icon on your desktop. If you clicked on it, it would just load Outlook. We will now go ahead and change the command line parameters so that it does something else, such as creating a new email or task.
Go ahead, right-click the icon and select Properties. You will notice that in the Target text box, the path for Outlook will be enclosed in quotation marks, followed by several / characters, and then a parameter. In my case it looks like this:
“C: \ Program Files \ Microsoft Office \ OFFICE11 \ OUTLOOK.EXE” / recycling
Now we want to change the parameter. Remove / recycle or whatever after OUTLOOK.EXE â€Âand replace it with any of the following depending on what you want it to do. These are Outlook 2003 command line switches. I have links below for other versions of Outlook as well.
For a new email: / c ipm.note
For a new email address with a provisional address – / c ipm.note / m “address1@domain.com , address2@domain.com “> address2@domain.com ”
For a new note: / c ipm.stickynote
For a new contact – / c ipm.contact
For a new meeting – / c ipm.appointment
For a new task – / c ipm.task
Note. The above path is for Outlook 2003, which is named OFFICE11 in the path name. If you have a different version of Office, just go to C: \ Program Files \ Microsoft Office and check the number. As for Office 2007, I believe it is OFFICE12. Go ahead and change this value to whatever is on your system.
Now click OK, rename the shortcut to something more appropriate. Then you can drag it back to the Quick Launch bar by dragging it there. The next time you want to create a new email, just click on it. You can also customize these commands for your mouse if it has additional buttons that you are not using! This way you can create new emails, etc., just by clicking!
But that’s not all! You can configure many command line switches to do much more than just the above tasks by going to the official help pages from Microsoft. However, most of them are for advanced users and you probably won’t need them.
Outlook 2003 command line switches
Outlook 2007 command line switches
Outlook 2010 command line options
Outlook 2013 command line parameters
If you use Outlook frequently and know a few more useful shortcuts not mentioned here, feel free to share them in the comments. Enjoy!
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