74

When clicking the X button or Alt+F4, how can I get Microsoft Outlook to minimize to the notification area (systray) instead of closing?

Several programs have this behavior, and it's annoying that Outlook behaves differently...

Philippe Cloutier
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Tamara Wijsman
  • 57,881

8 Answers8

77

I wrote a free plugin to minimize outlook instead of closing it. I only have outlook 2007 (works on 2010/2013 version as well) so that is all it has been tested with.

Anyone who wants to contribute to the project is free to do so

https://sourceforge.net/projects/keepoutlook/

Installation

  1. Install Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 SP1 Redistributable Package 32-bit and 64-bit (both required for x64 Windows)
  2. Download KeepOutlookRunning.dll
  3. Start Outlook as Administrator (right click on it in Start Menu)
  4. Go to File -> Options -> Add-Ins
  5. At the bottom: Manage [COM-Addins] press [Go...]
  6. [Add...] the KeepOutlookRunning.dll file downloaded in step 2
  7. Restart Outlook as a normal user
Community
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Tim Eck
  • 779
11

With "Hide when minimized" active (not hard to find, just right click on the "O" icon in the tray)

  1. Open outlook

  2. Minimize outlook

  3. Open outlook again (not from the tray, just do it the way you did it in step 1)

You can close that window with alt+f4 or the X or whatever and outlook will still be in the tray.

svick
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user102347
  • 183
  • 1
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5

Hit ALT+Spacebar+N. I do that every day, and it is an easy combination.

This can work with, or without, the "Hide When Minimized" option selected.

KCotreau
  • 25,622
2

I didn't have administrator access on my work computer, so I needed to create a way to install Tim Eck's add-in without administrator privileges.

I took Tim Eck's answer here and created an installer for it that:

  1. Does not require administrator privileges
  2. Bypasses Outlook's installer

You can download it here: https://github.com/theduffster/KeepOutlookRunning/releases/tag/zip-release

Instructions to Install are:

  1. Extract contents of "KeepOutlookRunning.zip" anywhere
  2. CD to folder containing the contents you just extracted
  3. Run InstallKeepOutlookRunning.bat if you are running a 32 bit version of Outlook. Run InstallKeepOutlookRunning-64bit.bat if you are running a 64 bit version of Outlook
  4. Restart Outlook

Note: You may have to change some of the paths in the .reg file depending on your version of outlook

Hopefully this will also help those who are having trouble installing Eck's add-in even with administrator privileges

Full Credits and more Details here: https://github.com/theduffster/KeepOutlookRunning

I'm_With_Stupid
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  • 1
  • 3
  • 9
2

You'll have to use a third party tool like OLKeeper

alt text

Sathyajith Bhat
  • 62,374
1

Another two week trial add-in that does that (and more) is Quick Tweaks for Outlook. Just set the Minimize Outlook on close option. It is small and doesn't require any additional software/runtimes.

Please note that I recommend this add-in because I'm one of its developers.

Overmind
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thims
  • 9,361
0

I totally free and reliable option is the Autohotkey.

Here there script that also restores outlook when #o is pressed. First, you have to set the option in outlook setting to minimize on tray.

#IfWinActive, ahk_exe olk.exe
^F4::
WinMinimize, A
return
!F4::
WinMinimize, A
return
#IfWinActive
#If WinExist("ahk_exe olk.exe")
#o::
WinActivate, ahk_exe olk.exe
WinMaximize, ahk_exe olk.exe
return
#If
Apostolis Bekiaris
  • 217
-1

If the Alt + spacebar + N doesn't work for your keyboard layout (turned out not to work with mine - Polish Programmer), try:

Alt + spacebar + M

Kamil Kuczaj
  • 129