=Outlook Address Book

Outlook 2003 does a lot to help you out. Although sometimes it's too helpful for it's own good.

Let me give you an example.

I'm looking for the phone number for a co-worker, I know his alias. Lucky for me, Outlook provides a quick-lookup box for aliases in one of the tool bars. However, if I just type his alias "FLast" into the box, I get a selection box. Outlook kindly asks me if I'm looking for First Last contact, or First Last Direct Reports or First Last's hotmail address. Dang! All I wanted was the phone number out of the GAL contact object of FLast!

Well, here's a tip. Put the "=" sign in front of an alias, it will force Outlook to look for exactly that contact. In my example you would use =FLast. Now Outlook opens the contact information for that object and I can just dial the phone number without any more clicks of the mouse.

Simple, but effective. At least I think it is.