Outlook allows you to assign categories to individual objects (such as emails, appointments or contacts). At first only the names of these categories are stored and synchronized by the Groupware Client to the server and other Outlook instances. In addition, there is a central (=across folders and data files) so-called Master Category List in each Outlook profile. This list can be used to assign colors to the categories.
Because each Outlook profile may have different folders and accounts linked, conflicts between the assigned colors can easily arise. Therefore, the assignment of colors to category names is primarily a local configuration of each Outlook profile.
In order to achieve a mostly uniform color assignment across multiple devices, the Intra2net Groupware Client since version 5.0.2 writes the color assignment to the server for newly created or modified groupware objects. When synchronizing in groupware objects (not emails) with categories and category color assignment from the server, the procedure depends on whether the respective category name already exists in the Master Category List or not. If yes, the already existing category remains unchanged. If no, the category is created in the Master Category List and the color assignment is taken from the server.
This procedure means that the local Master Category List with its color assignment always has priority over changed color assignments on the server. This way, the user can always easily resolve any color conflicts himself in the local Master Category List.
This also means that if there are conflicts between different color assignment data on the server, the final color assignment will depend on the order in which new groupware objects with colored categories are synchronized in.
In order to achieve a mostly uniform category color assignment for several workstations or Outlook profiles, the following procedure is recommended:
Use a shared account, see for example 27. Chapter, „Concept for public folders“.
Create a new task folder in it, name e.g.
Color Categories, and share the folder with all users for reading (see 22. Chapter, „Sharing Folders“).Create a task in this task folder, title e.g.
Standard Categories.Double-click the task to open it in a separate window. Open the menu of the Master Category List.
Create all the desired categories with their respective color assignment in the Master Category List.
Assign all shared categories to this one task and save it.
All users who are to use the common color assignment now connect the task folder with the standard categories in their Outlook profile, see 21. Chapter, „Linking Folders“.
If some Outlook profiles already have the category names stored in the Standard Categories present in their Master Category List, but have assigned different colors, proceed as described in the next section to reset the color assignment for these Outlook profiles.
With the following steps you can reset the complete Master Category List and color assignment of an Outlook profile and import it fresh from a shared folder (see previous section):
Close Outlook and wait until the Outlook process is completely ended.
Open the Windows Start menu.
Type
outlook.exe /cleancategoriesas command and start it with Enter.Outlook starts in a special mode that deletes all entries and color assignments from the Master Category List. The individual groupware objects keep their category assignments (i.e. the category names).
Go to "".
If the shared categories folder (see Section 24.4.1, „Recommendation for shared color assignment“) is already connected, remove the connection. Wait a short time until the action is fully processed by Outlook.
Reconnect the folder with the shared categories. This will resynchronize the contained data from the server and add the contained categories to the Master Category List.
The following describes the process by which an existing category color assignment can be changed uniformly for multiple users network-wide.
Because different color assignments for the same category depend on the order in which new objects are synchronized in (as described above), and the user has little influence on this order, e.g. when setting up a new Outlook profile, all objects to which the respective category is assigned must be modified for a stable color assignment. Changing the color assignment of a category is not considered a change of the respective objects by Outlook and therefore does not trigger a write of the objects with a new color assignment to the server. Therefore the following steps are necessary to change an existing color assignment permanently and for newly created Outlook profiles:
Close Outlook on all workstations connected to the Intra2net system and ensure that it remains closed. Also consider home office workstations, mobile devices and similar.
Start Outlook on one workstation with an Outlook profile that has write access to the central color categories folder (see Section 24.4.1, „Recommendation for shared color assignment“).
Go to the central color categories folder and open the task for the standard categories in a separate window by double-clicking.
Open the menu of the Master Category List.
Assign the new color to the existing category.
Rename the category, for example, by appending a number to the name.
Repeat the last two steps for all other categories to which you also want to assign a new color.
Exit the category list dialog with "". Wait until Outlook has executed the renaming of the category. The duration for this depends on the number of affected objects and the size of the data files.
Open the Master Category List again and rename the category back to its original name. Exit the category list dialog with "" and wait until Outlook is done with rename processing.
Wait until the changes of the local objects have been written to the server by the Groupware Client. Use the menu "" for this.
Close Outlook on this workstation and make sure it stays closed.
Then go through one workstation in the network after another and perform the following steps there. Also consider home office workstations, mobile devices and similar.
![[Caution]](../images/admon/caution.png) | Caution |
|---|---|
Make sure that only one workstation has Outlook open at any time. Otherwise, the renamed categories may be mistakenly included in the Master Category Lists there. |
Perform the steps described in Section 24.4.2, „Reset local color assignment“.
Open the menu of the Master Category List.
Rename all categories to which a new color is to be assigned, for example by appending a number to the name.
Exit the category list dialog with "". Wait until Outlook has executed the renaming of the category. The duration for this depends on the number of affected objects and the size of the data files.
Open the Master Category List again and rename the category back to its original name. Exit the category list dialog with "" and wait until Outlook is done with rename processing.
Wait until the changes of the local objects have been written to the server by the Groupware Client. Use the menu "" for this.
Close Outlook on this workstation and make sure it stays closed.
If the process was completed on the last workstation, the color assignments in all Outlook profiles and in all objects on the server are adjusted uniformly. Now Outlook can be used normally again on all workstations.