Somewhere on the vast Internet, Chuck saw a tip for disabling the Ctrl+Enter key (so you can't accidentally send a message before you are finished composing it). At the time he didn't think he needed it and now that he does, he can't find it again.

If you have a habit of accidentally hitting the wrong keys and sending messages before you are finished composing them, you have two options:

Enter garbage in the CC line (i.e., type a few random letters so the "address" won't resolve). I prefer this method because it keeps me from accidentally sending using Alt+S and gives me a change to change my mind before I send it while leaving the option to use either Alt+S or Ctrl+Enter to send.

If your only problem is accidentally hitting Ctrl+Enter, you can disable the Ctrl+Enter keystroke combination by editing the registry.

You'll need to create the following registry keys. (If the Office key doesn't exist, you'll need to create it and the subkeys.)

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Disabl
edShortcutKeysCheckBoxes
String Value: CtrlEnter
Value Data: 13,8

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Word\DisabledS
hortcutKeysCheckBoxes
String Value: CtrlEnter
Value Data: 13,8

These are the keys for Outlook 2003, change the 11.0 to 10.0 for Outlook 2002, or to 9.0 for 2000.

Don't forget to restart Outlook for the changes to take effect.

What other keys can you disable? Quite a few actually. If you get the group policy .adm file from the Office Resource Kit. More on that in another tip.