How to make Outlook 2010 minimize when I try to close it?

When clicking the X button or ALT+F4, how can I get Outlook to minimze to the tray instead of close?

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

3

7 Answers

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

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

18

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.

8

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.

2

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

4

You may use Minime at . It's free & open source.

2

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.

2

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