Make Office Better

Make email notification unmissable

Whenever you receive an email in Outlook, you’ll see a small, semi-transparent notification at the bottom right of your screen. By default, this lasts for a few seconds before fading away. You can click this notification to read your email, then reply to it or forward it to someone else. There’s an easy way to extend the duration of the notification and make it more (or less) prominent.

To do that, click File at the top left, Options at the bottom, then click Mail at the top left. Now click the Desktop Alert Settings button in the ‘Message arrival’ section. You’ll see two sliders that let you change the duration of the desktop alert (from 3 to 30 seconds) and its transparency levels (0 to 80 per cent). Move the sliders, then click Preview (see screenshot) to see what your tweaked notification looks like. When you’re happy with it, click OK twice to apply these settings.

Last Issue (485) we explained how to capture the location of the cursor when taking a screenshot (click File, Program Options, Capture and tick ‘Include cursor image’). But if you have a screenshot that you took before you knew Picpick existed, or you just can’t capture the position of the cursor where you want it, there is another way. Open an image (or take a screenshot using Picpick), then click the Home tab, Stamps and select one of the three cursor types under the Cursor Stamps section (see screenshot left). Next, click your screenshot where you want to place the cursor to add it to the image. The cursor will be placed within a box. To reposition it click within the box and drag it to exactly where you want with the mouse. Once you’re happy with its position, click Flatten in the top-left, then save the screenshot as usual.