10 Minute Guide to Microsoft Exchange 5.0
- Lesson 16 -
Working with the Favorites Folder
In this lesson, you learn how to use a special folder called a Favorites folder.
Understanding the Favorites Folder
As the various divisions, departments, and individuals in your organization create
public folders for different uses, the list of public folders grows quite long. After
a while, it takes time and effort to scroll through all the public folders to find
the one you need. And often, many of the public folders are of little interest to
you either because you don't have a reason to use their contents or you don't have
permission to access them. But unfortunately, you still have to scroll through them.
Instead of crawling through all those public folders, you can use a special folder
that stores shortcuts to the public folders you need to access regularly. This special
folder is called the Favorites folder. The Favorites folder is one of the
folders placed under the Public Folders container during the installation of Microsoft
Exchange Client. (The other is a container named All Public Folders, below which
all the public folders for your company are displayed.)
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Shortcut A shortcut is a reference to (or a pointer to) another object in
Microsoft Exchange Server. If you place a shortcut to a folder into your Favorites
folder, the shortcut provides a link to its connected folder. The folder itself is
not placed in the Favorites folder (that would make it a subfolder). But double-clicking
the shortcut actually opens the folder.
Adding Folders to the Favorites Folder
After
you know which public folders you need to access on a regular basis, you can add
them to your Favorites folder. Just select the public folder, and then choose File,
Add to Favorites or click the Add to Favorites button.
Either way, the Add to Favorites dialog box appears (see Figure 16.1). This dialog
box displays the public folder's name and then provides a place where you can enter
a new name for this folder that will identify it in the Favorites folder. By default,
the original public folder name is used. Click the Add button to accept the default
name, or enter a new name in the Favorite Folder Name text box and then click Add.

Figure 16.1 Each shortcut to a public folder should have a name that
you will recognize.
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Favorites by Another Name The original name of a folder is used by default
when you add a shortcut for it to your Favorites folder. However, you can use any
name that you would like for the shortcut, and it will still point to the chosen
folder (even though they will have different names).
Adding Subfolders to Your Favorites Folder
Although a public folder may have subfolders, these subfolders are not automatically
added to the Favorites folder when their parent folder is added. To display the choices
for adding a folder's subfolders to the Favorites folder, open the Add to Favorites
dialog box and click the Options button. The dialog box expands to show the Subfolders
section, shown in Figure 16.2.

Figure 16.2 You must specify if and how subfolders should be added to
the Favorites folder.
If you choose to add subfolders, you must also specify to add all subfolders or
immediate subfolders only. Click the appropriate option button to indicate your preference.
In addition, you can choose to automatically add any new subfolders that are created.
This option is a little more complicated, and it depends on the choice you made for
the first option:
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Immediate Subfolder A folder that is one level below (subordinate to) any
chosen folder. In other words, it is one immediate level below a folder in the folder
hierarchy.
If you chose to add immediate subfolders only and you turn on the option to automatically
add subfolders as they're created, Exchange automatically uses the same setting for
this option (Add immediate subfolders only).
If you choose to add all subfolders and you turn on the option to automatically add
subfolders as they're created, this choice is independent of the method used to originally
add a folder's subfolders to the Favorites folder. Therefore, you can choose whether
to automatically add only immediate subfolders as they're created or to add all subfolders
as they're created.
Using the Favorites Folder
When you want to check the public folders that are important to you, open your
Favorites folder, which displays the list of all the public folders you have added
to your Favorites list (see Figure 16.3).
Notice that one of the folders, Project X in Figure 16.3, is listed in bold type.
This means that the link between the shortcut in the Favorites folder and the original
public folder has sent a message indicating there are new items in the public folder.
To see the items in the public folder, highlight the item in the Folder pane. The
contents appear in the Contents pane, and unread items are listed in bold type.
When you look at the listing in the Contents pane, you are looking at the items
in the original public folder, just as if you had scrolled through the public folders
to find the real one. The folder listing in the Favorites folder is merely a pointer.
It is not really a folder, so it has no contents.

Figure 16.3 The Favorites folder lists your selected public folders.
Removing Folders from the Favorites Folder
There are going to be occasions when your access to a public folder is taken away
(perhaps your participation in a project is finished) or when you find that you really
have no interest in a public folder that's in your Favorites folder. You can delete
a public folder from your Favorites folder by selecting it and pressing Delete. A
dialog box appears, asking you to confirm the deletion. Click Yes to proceed, or
click No to cancel the command to delete the folder. When you delete a public folder
from your Favorites folder, you are only deleting the link (or pointer). The real
public folder is not deleted.
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Deleting Favorites You cannot delete the Favorites folder itself; it is a
system folder.
In this lesson, you learned about the Favorites folder. In the next lesson, you'll
learn about scheduling your time with Microsoft Exchange Client and Schedule+.
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