OUTLOOK Assign individual notification sounds to your email contacts

In the past we’ve showed you how to use Outlook’s powerful Rules feature to automatically send emails from specific people straight to certain folders. Another useful Rules feature lets you assign a particular notification sound to emails arriving from a specific contact. As long as your speakers are switched on, you’ll be able to identify the source of your latest email without even having to look at your notification.

First, open Outlook and navigate to an email from someone you’d like to assign a sound to. Next, click the Rules option (in the Move section of the Home tab), then click Create Rule. Tick the contact’s name at the top. You can also tick the two fields below (‘Subject contains’ and ‘Send to’) if you want to set those as further criteria.

You’ll notice that ‘Play a selected sound’ is ticked, with Windows Notify.wav selected as the default sound for incoming Outlook emails (see screenshot). Click the play icon to hear it. Now click the Browse button to open a folder containing dozens of sounds (including your PC’S boot, error message and shut down tones). Right-click any sound, then click Play to listen to it in your default media player. When you’re happy with your selection, click Open, then click OK (twice) to set it as your default sound for all emails from that sender.

Enable God mode

If your PC runs Windows Vista or later there’s a tool called God Mode that puts every single element of Control Panel into a folder for instant access.

It’s simple to activate but you must be careful because making a mistake could cause problems for your PC. All you have to do is create a folder called GODMODE.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E825C-99712043E01C}. You can create this folder anywhere but it’s important to get the code exactly right. So, either type very carefully or – better still – cut and paste it from the Wikipedia page at www.snipca.com/17439. Then just open the folder to see all the features (see screenshot).

We’ll let you into a secret here – you don’t need to call your folder ‘Godmode’! You can actually use any name before the full stop, so Computeractive.{ed7ba470-8e54465E-825C-99712043E01C} works just as well.