Deleting multiple RSS feeds in Outlook 2007

Posted on By Mark Wilson

I have two mailboxes at work and one is permanently diverted to the other – every now and again I have to go in and clear it out (as a copy of every inbound message is left in the first mailbox) and it looks like I should do it more often (I was within a few KB of having inbound mail bounced until I logged in this evening…).

I wondered what was filling my Inbox so I checked out the folder sizes and found that the biggest culprits were RSS feeds from Outlook 2007’s integration with the Internet Explorer (IE) 7 RSS reader (even though the computer still runs IE6 in order to access some legacy web applications – so there is no Outlook to IE integration, as described in Microsoft knowledge base article 920234 – the mailbox has been accessed previously on a machine with Outlook 2007 and IE7 installed and, as Tim Anderson noted a couple of years back, Outlook copies feed contents from the local machine to the mailbox and then keeps it synchronised).

As I read my feeds in Google Reader, I decided to remove them from Outlook – but how (other than individually)? Thanks to Jaap Steinvoorte’s post on deleting RSS feeds in Outlook 2007, I found the answer in the Outlook Account Settings, on the RSS Feeds tab, where there is a big remove button. The same approach can be applied to SharePoint Lists, Internet Calendars and Public Calendars.

Unfortunately, the cached content is still retained and RSS Feeds is a special folder it can’t be deleted… unless you use a downlevel client as Daniel Moth suggests – I used OWA on an Exchange Server 2003 server.

Sure, deleting the entire folder is overkill but it seems to be the only way other than inducing carpal tunnel syndrome through repetitive mouse/keyboard clicks and the end result is a considerably less full mailbox.

Windows Quick Launch toolbar tips

Posted on By Mark Wilson

After last night’s post on Live Mesh, which included a screenshot of my desktop, Garry Martin dropped me a line to ask about the large icons in my Quick Launch Toolbar.

I can’t claim credit for discovering this but it’s a tip I heard Paul Thurrott describe on a Windows Weekly podcast a while back and it doesn’t seem to be very well known.

Large icons in the Quick Launch Toolbar

First of all, I changed the height of my Taskbar by clicking and dragging on the top edge. Next, I unlocked the Taskbar and arranged the toolbars so that the Quick Launch toolbar is visible above the row of taskbar buttons. Finally, selecting large icons involves right-clicking on the divider to the left of the Quick Launch Bar and selecting large icons in the view menu option.

Also, as Paul mentions in his more Windows Vista Tips article, the Windows and number keys can be used together to launch the applications that are linked from the Quick Launch bar (the first 10 of them anyway) (e.g. in the screenshot above, windowskey+5 would launch Outlook and windowskey+0 would launch Notepad, etc.

My system is running Windows Server 2008 but this tip also applies to Windows Vista, Server 2003 and XP (I didn’t try any earlier versions of Windows)

Windows Management Tools from Quest

Posted on By Mark Wilson

I spent most of yesterday with Quest Software, as they explained the various tools that they have that can help to expand and extend off the shelf infrastructure products from companies like Microsoft, Oracle and Sun.

If you’ve performed a large infrastructure migration or implementation, the chances are that you’ve come across Quest at some point (and I knew they had grown rapidly in recent years) but I hadn’t realised just how many tools they had available.

We spent 4 hours talking about Windows Management tools (without even touching on Application Management or Database Management) so clearly there is too much there for a blog post but it’s worth taking a look at their website some time.

In case you hadn’t already seen where Microsoft is heading…

Posted on By Mark Wilson

For 33 years, Microsoft’s vision has been “A computer on every desk and in every home” [“running Microsoft software”]. But that was the vision with Bill Gates in charge and he is now quoted as saying:

“We’ve really achieved the ideal of what I wanted Microsoft to become”

[Bill Gates, June 2008]

Now that Microsoft is under new management the vision has changed. Microsoft’s Chief Operating Officer, Kevin Turner, outlined the new vision in his speech at the recent virtualisation strategy day:

“Create experiences that combine the magic of software with the power of Internet services across a world of devices.”

[Kevin Turner, 8 September 2008]

In the same presentation, Turner spoke of the $8bn that the company will invest in research and development this year, across “4 pillars of innovation breadth”:

  • Desktop: Windows Vista; Internet Explorer; Desktop Optimisation Pack; Microsoft Office System.
  • Enterprise: SQL Server 2008 enterprise database; Windows Server 2008 infrastructure; Visual Studio 2008 development lifecycle; BizTalk business process management; System Center management; Dynamics ERP/CRM; Exchange and OCS unified communications; SharePoint portal, workflow and document management; PerformancePoint business intelligence.
  • Entertainment and devices: Xbox 360; Zune; Mediaroom; Windows Mobile; Games; Surface.
  • Software plus Services: Microsoft Online (business productivity suite – Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, Live Meeting, Communications Server – and Dynamics CRM Online); Live Services (Xbox Live, Live Search, Windows Live, Office Live, Live Mesh).

There are two main points to note in this strategy: enterprise is the fastest growing area in terms of revenue and profit; and the deliberate split between enterprise and consumer online services.

As I outlined in a recent post looking at software as a service (SaaS) vs. software plus services (S+S), there is a balance between on premise computing and cloud computing. Microsoft sees three models, with customer choice at the core (and expects most customers to select a hybrid of two or three models, rather than the fully-hosted SaaS model):

  • Customer hosted, supported and managed.
  • Partner-led, using partner expertise.
  • Microsoft-hosted.

One more key point… last year, Microsoft SharePoint Server became the fastest growing server product in the history of the company and Turner thinks that virtualisation could grow even faster. Only time will tell.