Create a Permanent New Mail Desktop Alert

I thought it was one of the most excessive* options in previous versions
of Outlook and I was happy to see it got a huge functional and cosmetic overhaul
in Outlook 2003. Strangely enough it is now one of the most criticized options
as well; the New Mail Desktop Alert.

Old New Mail Alert Outlook 2002 and previous	New Mail Desktop Alert Outlook 2003

Fortunately the criticism is mainly based on only 2 things;

• "It only works on the Inbox folder"
• "It cannot be configured to stay longer than 30 seconds; I WANT IT TO
  STAY PERMANENT!"

Yes, I said "fortunately" as both issues can be solved.
On top of that; there is another way to notify yourself of newly received
e-mails while you were not attending Outlook;

• View a list of newly received
  e-mails

"It only works on the Inbox folder"

By default the new New Mail Desktop Alert will only show when the mail is
delivered to the Inbox (as the option says as well in Tools-> Options-> button
E-mail Options-> button Advanced E-mail Options). This means that when you have
a rule configured to move your mail to a different folder the Notification won’t
show.

To workaround this you can add the action "display a Desktop Alert" to each and
every rule. Besides the fact that it is very tiresome the real downside of this
is that when you are in an Exchange organization the rule will become a local
rule so that it will only execute when Outlook is running. This means that when
you have added extra actions to the rule like forwarding it to another address
this action won’t be executed either.

A better solution it to create a generic rule with no conditions and just the
action to display the Desktop Alert.

1. Tools-> Wizards and Alerts… (press OK if you get an HTTP warning)
2. Button New Rule…
3. Select "Start from a blank rule" and verify that "Check
   messages when they arrive" is selected
4. Press Next to go to the Conditions screen
5. Verify that no condition is selected and press Next
6. A warning will pop-up stating that this rule will apply to
   all messages. Press "Yes" to indicate that that is correct
7. Select the action "display a Desktop Alert"
8. Press Finish to complete the rule
9. If needed move the "display a Desktop Alert" rule all the
   way to the top

"It cannot be configured to stay longer than 30 seconds; I WANT IT TO
STAY PERMANENT!"

Well permanent isn’t possible but how does 50 days sound? Through the registry
you can set the New Mail Desktop Alert as long as
4,294,967,295 milliseconds ≈ 50 days.
Just a little math first to clarify the working of the registry key;

• the value is defined in milliseconds
• when the registry key is set to 0 the New Mail Alert still
  shows for 3 seconds so this is hard coded in the program thus 3,000
  milliseconds
• 4,294,967,295 is the maximum value you can give to a DWORD
  value in the registry which is 32 bit
• as the object that controls the time of the New Mail Desktop
  Alert is also defined as a DWORD and is 3000 already we cannot give the
  TimeOn registry key a higher value than
  4,294,967,295 – 3000 = 4,294,964,295
• To convert from milliseconds to days we must divide the
  milliseconds through; 1000 to convert to seconds, then 60 to convert to minutes,
  then 60 to convert to hours, then 24 to convert to days
  (4,294,967,295 – 3,000) / (1000 * 60 * 60 *24) ≈ 50

After all this math it’s time to tell the registry key (to open
the registry go to Start-> Run and type "regedit");
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\DesktopAlerts\TimeOn

If this key isn’t available choose Edit-> New-> DWORD Value and name it TimeOn(case sensitive!).

Double click the key to give it a decimal value between 0 and 4294964295 (in
Hexadecimal value this will be fffff448).

Setting the maximum decimal value in the registry

Tip! To easily set the New Mail Alert without going into the registry you can use OutlookTools (free!)

Enjoy your permanent New Mail Desktop Alert that shows for
each mail that you receive!
 

View a list of newly received e-mails

The New Mail Desktop Alert only shows for the last e-mail received so when
you’ve received multiple new e-mails accross folders it still might be a bit
hard to immidiatey locate them. This has actually always been the case with any
version of Outlook. Outlook 2003 has a new action rule for this; display a
specific message in the New Item Alert window.

As an example we are again going to create a generic rule with no conditions and just the
action to display the New Item Alert window. You can of course set conditions
and exceptions as desired and note that since Outlook 2003 SP1 rules get
executed after Junk E-mail filtering so the New Item Alert window won’t get
poluted with Junk E-mail.

1. Tools-> Wizards and Alerts… (press OK if you get an HTTP warning)
2. Button New Rule…
3. Select "Start from a blank rule" and verify that "Check
   messages when they arrive" is selected
4. Press Next to go to the Conditions screen
5. Verify that no condition is selected and press Next
6. A warning will pop-up stating that this rule will apply to
   all messages. Press "Yes" to indicate that that is correct
7. Select the action "display a specific message in the
   New Item Alert window"
8. Type your specific message (this is handy if you create more
   than one rule that displays the New Item Alert window so that you can easily
   distinguish between them)
9. Press Finish to complete the rule
10. If needed move the "display a Desktop Alert" rule all the
    way to the top

Get your newly received e-mails in a handy overview

*In case you were wondering why I found it an
excessive option in previous versions of Outlook; it didn’t add anything to the
other permanent notification; the envelope in the Notification Area