It's funny how the little things in life can irritate you. Like someone changing the design of some software that you use everyday. Some of the minor design changes to recent versions of Outlook are annoying for some people, particularly the word based Navigation bar (Mail, Calendar, People, Tasks) and the Email Reply Taskbar.
Turning off the Email Reply Taskbar
Whenever your copy of Microsoft Outlook 2013 or Outlook 2016 is in Touch mode you will see the Email Reply Taskbar displayed on the right hand side of the Outlook window. And mighty handy it is too, if you are right-handed and you have a touch screen. But if you're left-handed and you're using a mouse it's the pits because you keep deleting emails before you can actually read them.
How do you turn it off? You can click away at all the view options until you are blue in the face because you won't find it there, to turn off this task bar you need to get out of Touch mode and into Mouse mode. And for that you need the Quick Access Toolbar.
How do you turn it off? You can click away at all the view options until you are blue in the face because you won't find it there, to turn off this task bar you need to get out of Touch mode and into Mouse mode. And for that you need the Quick Access Toolbar.
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| The Email Reply Taskbar outlined in red |
Quick Access Toolbar
This toolbar is shown at the top left hand corner of the Outlook window and is the place where you can store your favourite commands without having to remember where they are on the ribbon. Have a look and see if there's an option called Touch/Mouse Mode available. If not, click the More button (small down pointing arrow at the end of the toolbar) and choose the option from the list. If you want to see the Email Reply Taskbar click Touch mode. Click Mouse mode to turn it off.
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| Touch/Mouse Mode on the Quick Access Toolbar |
Navigation Bar
Microsoft Outlook 2013 has a huge grey bar at the bottom which lists (in a very big font) Mail, Calendar, People, Tasks so that you can switch to the corresponding workspace. Previous versions of Outlook had these listed as icons in the Folder Pane. Many people preferred this as it was a lot smaller and allowed more space to display the message list and gave a larger Reading Pane area. To go back to icons and recover the wasted space you need to change your settings in Navigation Options.
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| Outlook Navigation Bar |
Navigation Options
Click the 3 dots (…) to the right of the Navigation bar and choose Navigation Options. Or you can click View, Folder Pane, Options on the ribbon. In Navigation Options, click the checkbox Compact Navigation to turn off the word-based navigation and replace it with icons. The Navigation Bar now collapses into the Folder Pane and only shows the icons.
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| Navigation Options, Compact Navigation |
The coloured icon indicates which workspace is currently active. The number of icons displayed and their order depends on the settings Maximum number of visible items and Display in this order in Navigation Options. If you only want to see the famous four; Mail, Calendar, People (aka Contacts) and Tasks take the standard order and set the maximum to the value of 4.
Compact Navigation is now the default setting for Microsoft Outlook 2016 so, if you prefer the word-based navigation, clear the checkbox. That's the one for me, those icons are far too small. You can't please everyone all of the time.
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Compact Outlook Navigation
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Compact Navigation is now the default setting for Microsoft Outlook 2016 so, if you prefer the word-based navigation, clear the checkbox. That's the one for me, those icons are far too small. You can't please everyone all of the time.
Download Access 2013 Advanced Essentials Quick Reference Guide as pdf
