Understanding Desktop Alerts

Desktop alerts are the Outlook messages that sometimes appear on your screen. They pop up when certain things happen in Outlook. You probably see them most often when a new e-mail message arrives.

Here are the events that cause alerts to appear:

E-mail messages - An e-mail message alert shows the name of the sender, the subject of the message, and a bit of the message body.

Meeting requests - Meeting request alerts show the name of the meeting organizer, the subject, and the date, time, and location of the meeting.

Task requests - A task request alert shows who sent the request, the subject, and the date the task is supposed to start.

If Outlook is running and one of these types of item appears in the Inbox, Outlook displays an alert.

Note: This happens unless you customize the behavior of your alerts.

Outlook doesn't display these alerts for items that get stored in some other folder than the Inbox, which can happen when you use rules to move items to folders.

Desktop alerts look something like this:

Desktop alerts look a lot like this.

Alerts appear over whatever else is visible on the screen. They are usually translucent (partially transparent), and their appearance is usually heralded by some sort of tone or other sound to signify their arrival in case you aren't looking at the screen when the alert pops up. Alerts remain visible for a few seconds then disappear. All of these characteristics are customizable, and I'll show you how to do so later.

Note: If you want an alert to remain on the screen, hover the mouse cursor over any part of it. The alert will remain on the screen as long as the cursor remains over it.

And that covers the basics of desktop alerts. From here you can:

Return to the top of this Desktop Alerts page.

Go to the Using and Customizing Alerts page.

Go to the Outlook Mail Tips page.

Go to the General Outlook Tips page.

Go to the Living With Outlook home page.