Restoring colored flags to Outlook 2007?

Question

I have an Exchange account set up as an additional account for four different users. All four users have a similar job function and this makes it easy to respond to incoming email from customers. It's working very well, but there's one small thing that's annoying me. One of the users is running Outlook 2007, while the rest of us are using Outlook 2003. As a result, colored flags besides red don't properly translate between versions due to the intentional feature change. I am wondering if there is a way to bring the colored flags back in 2007, either with a registry hack or some sort of addin, so that we can use colored flags as a triage system. I have a backup plan if not, but I would prefer this.

Solution

I first found "How flags from earlier versions are updated for Outlook 2007", and then I've found this question that duplicates yours on techtalkz.com "View Color catergories in Outlook 2003":

Outlook 2003 Colored Flags were migrated to Color Categories in Outlook 2007. There is no link in how Color Categories in Outlook 2007 are downgraded to Color Flags in Outlook 2003. This would be impossible as well considering the fact that there are many more colors to choose from in Outlook 2007 than in Outlook 2003.

However, the Categories assigned in Outlook 2007 are still assigned in Outlook 2003; they are just missing a color. You can define an Automatic Formatting rule in your view in Outlook 2003 to color the header text based in the message list based on which category is assigned.
1) View-> Arrange By-> Custom...-> Automatic Formatting...
2) Press Add
3) Name the rule
4) Press Font... to select a font and other font properties
5) Press Condition...
6) Select the More Choices tab
7) Press the Categories... button to select one or more categories that you want to show up in that font setting
8) Press OK
9) Move the rule if needed (the last rule that applies wins when there are conflicting settings)
10) Create additional rules if needed

Comments

[Jan Tojnar]

much better indeed :) +1