I found something else to hate about office 2007 recently as I attempted to add a contact to Outlook, this time on a newly configured laptop.

Like I usually would, I right clicked on the e-mail address of the person who sent me the message, and chose “Add to Contacts”. I added the necessary information, and immediately upon attempting to save, I was greeted with this dialog box asking me to insert the area code of my location, which I had no use for.

When I attempted to cancel, the dialog box simply opened again, forcing me to enter the zip code. When I read the secondary dialog box more closely, it actually says “some applications will respond to canceling this box by immediately reposting it”.

Apparently, “some applications” would include Microsoft Outlook 2007, so anyone running a computer without an active dialup modem, (umm – like most people these days) will see this message.

It’s pretty funny to me that they would create a custom error message warning us of the potential problem I may have by canceling the action, as opposed to just fixing it.

As I feared, I’m now in my hotel trying to download 26 megs of mail on my (far too slow) Verizon Wireless Broadband service. Before I left, I forgot to limit my file attachment size for download.

Once it’s finally done, I’ll do the following in Outlook 2007 to make sure I don’t get hung up like this again:

Choose Tools – Options – select the Mail Setup tab

click the Send/Receive rectangular button – select the group on the left, then select the Edit button.

By default, “Download complete item including attachments” is selected, but you can change the settings to Download only headers for items larger than X“

Pick the size you’re willing to tolerate for X, and save.

For now, I guess I’ll go down to the casino, because it’s going to be a long long time… (thanks Verizon)