You’ll see that the last item in the menu pictured above is Properties for Personal Folders. This gives you the chance to change some of the settings for your Personal folder file. Let’s take a look at these options.

The first screen that we’ll see is pictured above. The first field we have in this window is a text box. This allows us to change the name displayed in the navigation pane. The next field, Type, tells you what type of folder this is. (Oddly enough, personal folder files fall under the category of mail folders.) The location field tells you where you’re viewing this folder from. Normally this will say Microsoft Office Outlook, unless you’re viewing another user’s folder (which we’ll get into a bit later on).

 

Next, we can type a description for this personal folder. (This is another feature that is mainly used when other users are viewing your folder.) Then, we can use the radio buttons to tell Outlook which number to display next to the folder: the number of unread items, or the total items in that folder.

 

The next set of options is accessible via a drop-down menu; this tells Outlook what form we use when posting to the folder. (This will become important when we learn about custom forms later on.) The last checkbox will tell Outlook to make your custom views available on the Exchange Server; it doesn’t have any effect if you’re not using an Exchange Server.

 

You can also click on the Folder Size button to see how big your individual folders are; this can be useful when you’re trying to make space in your personal folder file.

 

Clicking the Advanced button will bring up a whole new set of options. (You can see the window pictured below.)

 

 

The first box allows us to change how our personal folder file is named in the navigation pane. The next box tells us where that file is located. The third and fourth fields tell us what file type and what encryption we’re using.

 

We can also click on the Change Password button to perform that task. The Compact Now button defragments and compacts your personal folder file, making it smaller.

 

Last but not least, we can add comments in this window to help us identify this file.

 

Once we’re done modifying these options, we can click OK to apply them, or cancel to get rid of our changes. Either choice will take us back to the main options window where we will have to click OK to save our changes or Cancel to discard them.