Outlook Taskbar Icon Go Bye Bye?

February 22, 2007 7:09 AM

Where has my Outlook New Mail notification on the taskbar gone?

Ok - I'm using Outlook 2003 SP2 on my XP machine here at work. It *used* to be the case that whenever a new mail message arrived, a little envelope icon would show up in my taskbar. This was great, because if I left my desk for 20 minutes and a new mail arrived, I wouldn't have to switch to Outlook to see if I had any new mail. However, at some point in the last 6 months or so, this icon just stopped appearing! I still get the "New Mail Desktop Notification" that pops up a little message summary, but that fades and disappears after a couple seconds (and sometimes just doesn't show up at all). I've scoured the settings, and can't seem to find what causes the little icon to show up in the taskbar! Anybody have any ideas?

posted by antifuse to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Just check something for us please:

Right click on Start -> Properties -> Taskbar Tab -> Customize

In the Customize Notifcations box, do you have a "new mail" option in the list and what's it set to under the 'Behaviour' column?

If it's set to 'Always Hide' or 'Hide when inactive', change it to 'Always Show'.

(apologies if you've already done this, but it's the first thing I'd check)
posted by Nugget at 7:32 AM on February 22, 2007

Umm, there's no "new mail" option in the Customize window... but I have it set to show all icons any way (I hate the "Hide Inactive" feature...), so that button is disabled any way :)
posted by antifuse at 7:51 AM on February 22, 2007

Have you tried

Tools>Options>Email Options>Advanced Email Options

Check "show envelope icon in notification area"
posted by Touchstone at 8:04 AM on February 22, 2007

Tools > Options > Email Options > Advanced Options and check all the boxes in the 'When new email arrives' section (man, Outlook's options dialogue is a mess). You can also customise how long the 'fading alert' stays up.
posted by Happy Dave at 8:05 AM on February 22, 2007

Sweet mother of moses is that options area a mess. I could've sworn I checked out every possible options page, but somehow I missed that one. Now I feel dumb for having missed it. And I still have no idea how it got turned off, since I certainly never went to that dialogue before.
posted by antifuse at 1:37 AM on February 23, 2007