Make Office Better

Make Outlook more usable

Outlook’s default layout has three panes – the folder pane on the left, emails listed in the middle and a preview pane on the right. It’s easy to customise this layout to suit your needs. First, click the View tab. By default, Outlook displays only one line of your message in the middle pane. To change this, click the Message Preview dropdown menu at the top left and change this to 2 Lines or 3 Lines.

Click the Folder Pane dropdown menu in the Layout section. Here, you’ll see options to reduce the size of this pane or turn it off. Click the Reading Pane dropdown menu to see options to move the preview pane to the bottom of the window or turn it off. Next, click the To-do Bar dropdown menu (see screenshot). This menu adds a fourth pane on the far right. There are four options here – Calendar, People, Tasks and Off.

The order in which you click each option determines where they appear in the pane. For example, if you click them in the order they are displayed, you’ll see a calendar at the top, a contacts section below that and any upcoming tasks listed at the bottom.

If you’re using Avast Free for the first time it’s important to get it off to the best possible start – and that begins with its installation. Download Avast Free ( www.avast. com), then double-click the downloaded file. You’ll see a window with a green Install button. Ignore this and click Customise (below the button). This opens the ‘Customise installation’ screen where you can choose which components of Avast Free you want to install.

Here, you can restrict Avast’s attempts to tempt you to upgrade to the paid-for version. Click the dropdown menu in the centre of the screen and choose ‘Custom protection’, then untick all the boxes except for File Shield, Behaviour Shield, Web Shield and Wi-fi Inspector (see screenshot). The other components are unnecessary at best and upgrade nags at worst. With the boxes ticked, click Install to complete the installation.