How to minimize Outlook Email

One of the features in the Outlook 2003 beta was the ability to organize Outlook to minimize to the tray rather than to the taskbar. Minimizing Outlook to the tray conserves space for other applications in the taskbar. This can be an important issue for users who work with multiple applications and frequently have Outlook open at the same time. Although Microsoft removed this capability from the Outlook 2002 interface for the released version, you can still minimize Outlook 2002 to the tray.

If you only want the minimize feature, you don't need an add-in. Instead, you just need to make a simple change to the registry.

Open the Registry Editor and add a DWORD value named MinToTray to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Outlook\Preferences. Set the value of MinToTray to 1 if you want Outlook to minimize to the tray, or set it to 0 to have Outlook minimize to the taskbar.

When you click the minimize button in Outlook, the program minimizes to the tray, displaying a small Outlook icon there. Simply double-click this icon to restore Outlook to the desktop.