Outlook 2007’s category picker leaves a lot to be desired for people who make heavy use of categories and prefer typing categories in the category field text box.
For Contacts, click the All Fields button. Categories is under the Frequently Used fields and you can type in the value column. (Most fields are editable in this view.)
See Outlook Categories and Color Categories for utilities that may make it easier to apply categories to other item types.
The Categories field on a new message form’s Options dialog to type contacts in. Not all is lost however. You can implement a form region to add categories using a text box – see //outlookcode.com/article.aspx?id=73 for instructions.
Published October 1, 2008. Last updated on June 7, 2021.