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Notes Design Blog

    How to add Mail (or Contacts or To dos) as a sidebar panel

    Mary Beth Raven  October 16 2008 11:08:17 AM
    In Notes 8.0.1 we introduced widgets.  Using the widget toolbar, you can make any Notes application into a sidebar panel with one click.  One problem, however, was that this does not work for any Notes view that is written in Java (that would be mail, calendar, contacts, to dos, note book and the blog). However, if you are willing to live with the old look as a sidebar panel, you CAN add any of these as a sidebar panel, Here is how.

    First,, turn on the Widgets toolbar, as shown below: (If you do not see a choice for Widgets on your toolbar,  open your Preferences, go to Widgets, and check ON the checkbox for "Show widget toolbar and the My Widgets sidebar panel."
    Image:How to add Mail (or Contacts or To dos) as a sidebar panel

    Once you have the widgets toolbar visible,  open the basic version of your mail by holding down both the CTRL and the ALT key while you open mail.   You'll get the old look with the  red stars and the red color for unread messages.  Then just click the "Add to Sidebar"  toolbar button.

    Image:How to add Mail (or Contacts or To dos) as a sidebar panel

    You'll automatically get a new sidebar panel with your mail view in it. It will look something like the following picture:
    Image:How to add Mail (or Contacts or To dos) as a sidebar panel

    Now, you probably only want to see the Inbox, not the Views, so just use your mouse to drag the  outline view closed. Then close that old ugly mail view that you have in a main tab, and open up whatever other application you want to spend your time in while keeping an eye on your inbox. In the screenshot below, I show my inbox as a sidebar panel while I focus on  writing my blog posts.
    Image:How to add Mail (or Contacts or To dos) as a sidebar panel