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July 16, 1999

In Microsoft Outlook®, the Outlook Bar is the column on the left side of the Outlook window that contains groups of shortcuts. Users click a shortcut to open a frequently used item, such as their Inbox or a network folder.

You can customize the Outlook Bar for all the users in your organization and standardize on a set of frequently used locations. In Outlook 2000, you can add shortcuts to the Outlook Bar for any of the following items:

• Outlook special folders
• Folders on the network
• Folders on the user’s hard disk
• Web sites

You customize the Outlook Bar by editing the Outlbar.inf file. Outlbar.inf is a text file made up of several sections that create groups and shortcuts when the Outlook Bar is refreshed, during Setup or by means of a command line.

Toolbox   The Office Resource Kit includes sample Outlbar.inf text, along with tables of the MAPI namespace <rootid> codes, file system namespace <rootid> codes, and predefined substitution strings. These are available in the Outlook Bar reference information download, OutlookBar.doc. You can find this downloadable file on the Office 2000 Resource Kit Downloads page.

Users can also customize the Outlook Bar for themselves. Individual users’ Outlook Bar groups are stored in an FAV file, which is located in the Application Data folder. However, when the Outlook Bar is refreshed, Outlook recreates the Outlook Bar by reading the Outlbar.inf file. In this case, administrator customizations are preserved, but users' personal settings are lost.

How to create a custom shortcut group

To customize the Outlook Bar, you open the Outlbar.inf file in Notepad and edit the contents.By default, the Outlbar.inf file is stored in C\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\1033 for U.S. English versions of Office 2000.

To create a shortcut group on the Outlook Bar, follow these steps:

1. Add a new group to the [DefaultOutlookBar] section in Outlbar.inf.
2. Define the new group.
3. Create a list of shortcuts for the group.
4. Define the shortcuts.

Add a new group

The first step in creating a new shortcut group is to add the group to the [DefaultOutlookBar] section of the Outlbar.inf file. For example, to create a group that contains shortcuts to sites on your company intranet, you can create a group called IntranetGroup and add it to the [DefaultOutlookBar] section as shown here:

[DefaultOutlookBar]
AddGroup=OutlookGroup,MailGroup,OtherGroup,IntranetGroup

Define the group

After you add the group, you create the group definition in the group sections area. For example, for the new IntranetGroup, you might add the following definition:

[IntranetGroup]
Name=Intranet Shortcuts
Shortcuts=IntranetGroupShortcuts

Tip   You can also use a string value to contain the group name. That way, all of the long names for your groups are stored in one place. In the [Strings] section, type NAME = "Full Name" and in the [IntranetGroup] section, type Name = %NAME%.

Create the list of shortcuts

After you create and define the group, you add the group shortcut list to the shortcuts area of the Outlbar.inf file. For example, to add shortcuts for the Human Resources and Marketing Web sites to your Intranet group, you might add the following lines:

[IntranetGroupShortcuts]
HRSite
MarketSite

Define the shortcuts

Finally, you create the shortcut definitions. For example, the definition for the HRSite shortcut might look like this:

[HRSite]
Target=3,,"http://humanres"
Name="Human Resources Site"

Using string values in the Outlbar.inf file

In the Outlbar.inf file, you can use string values to contain the URL and name for Web sites. That way, all of the long names are stored in one place. For example, you can use string values instead of the full names for the HRSite shortcut.

In the Target= line of the shortcut definition, use a placeholder, such as %HRURL%; then in the [Strings] area, type HRURL="http://humanres".

In the Name= line of the shortcut definition, use another placeholder, such as %HRNAME%, and in the [Strings] area, type HRNAME="Human Resources Site".

How to add a Web shortcut to an existing group

If you want to add a shortcut to an existing group, locate the group shortcut section in Outlbar.inf and add the shortcut to the list. For example, to add an accounting site to the IntranetGroup, you can update the shortcut list as follows:

[IntranetGroupShortcuts]
HRSite
MarketSite
AccountSite

After you add the shortcut to the group list, you must create the shortcut definition. For example, the definition for the accounting site shortcut might look like this:

[HRSite]
Target=3,,"http://accounting"
Name="Accounting Department Site"

The target namespace codes change depending on the type of shortcut you are creating. A MAPI shortcut uses 1, a file system shortcut uses 2, and a Web shortcut uses 3. In addition, there are predefined <rootid> codes for different objects or folders in the MAPI and file system namespaces.

For example, to create a shortcut to the Calendar, use the MAPI namespace (1) to point to the Calendar, whose <rootid> code is 1. A shortcut definition for the Calendar might look like this:

[Calendar]
Target=1,1

The first 1 identifies this shortcut as a MAPI shortcut, and the second 1 specifies the Calendar object.

Related links

You can distribute your customized Outlook Bar by adding the customized Outlbar.inf file to your Office 2000 installation. For more information, see Custom Installation Wizard in the Office 2000 Resource Kit.