Like all Microsoft Office programs, Outlook gives you lots of room to create your own playground when it comes to organizing your toolbars and file menus.  Everyone works differently and you may need to frequently access commands that Microsoft has buried deep beneath a submenu.  But you can bring it up to the top of the sandbox where you can play with it without digging.

Before you start, you’ll want to make sure your default is to always show full menus.  Even if you weren’t customizing your toolbars, this is a good idea anyway.  Basically selecting this means that when you click a menu, all options will be shown right away.  If you don’t have this on, the menu will at first only show the most frequently used commands.  Other commands will be hidden until you either click on the double down arrow at the bottom of the menu, or wait for a very long time for them to automatically show themselves

Right click anywhere in the tool bar region at the top of the Outlook window and select Customize from the drop down menu.  In the Customize window that opens up, go to the Options tab, and click the “Always show full menus” checkbox.  Next, click on the Toolbar tab in this same Customize window. Themost helpful menus to show as default are Standard, Advanced and Menu, so you probably want to check the boxes by those at least.  However, even if you choose not to display a toolbar, you can still have access to any of its tools in the next step.

Now go the Commands tab, which is where the action really is.  All commands available to you can be found here and can be added to your customized tool bar.  First step is to select a category in the field to the left.  When you do that, you can then score through all shortcuts available under that category in the field to the right.

One example can be helpful if you frequently change your View settings, since that command is buried rather deep in the standard menu layers. Select View under Categories, and then either Define View to the right if you want to create reusable views, or Customize Current View if you want to just make changes on the fly without worrying about saving it for use with other folders.

Now drag that item up to your toolbar area.  Not only can you add the icon to a toolbar, you can also add choose to it to a menu.  If you drag your cursor over File for instance, the File menu will open up and you can drag your cursor through the menu items and insert your item there if you wish.

When your cursor falls between two existing options in the toolbar area, you will notice it turns into an I with a + under it like the picture circled in red below.  This tells you it is okay to paste the item there.  All you have to do is let go of it when you get to where you want it, then it will shove the other items aside to make room for itself like the example circled in green below.

After you add all the commands you want, you can further customize by moving or even removing items from the toolbars and menus.  As long as you keep your Customize window open you can drag items off toolbars and menus, or drag them to new locations.  To remove, just drag the icon off the toolbar area until the cursor has a little x in place of the +.  To move an item, just drag it until the cursor shows you the right niche is available and let go just like when you added a new item.

So go ahead, play with your tools and move things around so you’ll know just where to find them.  If you ever regret the changes you’ve made and just want things to go back to normal, you can always reset the toolbars and menus back to the factory settings.  Just open the Customize window again, click Rearrange Commands, then select the Menu or toolbar you want to reset and click the Reset button.  Outlook will ask you if you’re sure, and if you are, just say OK, then OK again to get back to enjoying your personalized toolbar selections.

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