"It cannot be configured to stay longer than 30 seconds; I WANT IT TO STAY PERMANENT!"
Well permanent isn't possible but how does 50 days sound? Through the registry you can set the New Mail Desktop Alert as long as 4,294,967,295 milliseconds ≈ 50 days.
Just a little math first to clarify the working of the registry key;
The value is defined in milliseconds.
When the registry key is set to 0 the New Mail Alert still shows for 3 seconds so this is hard coded in the program thus 3,000 milliseconds.
4,294,967,295 is the maximum value you can give to a DWORD value in the registry, which is 32 bit.
As the object that controls the time of the New Mail Desktop Alert is also defined as a DWORD and is 3000 already we cannot give the TimeOn registry key a higher value than;
4,294,967,295 – 3000 = 4,294,964,295
To convert from milliseconds to days, we must divide the milliseconds through; 1000 to convert to seconds, then 60 to convert to minutes, then 60 to convert to hours, then 24 to convert to days
(4,294,967,295 – 3,000) / (1000 * 60 * 60 *24) ≈ 50
After all this math it's time to tell the registry key (to open the registry go to Start-> Run and type "regedit");
Outlook 2003
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Common\DesktopAlerts\TimeOn
Outlook 2007
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\DesktopAlerts\TimeOn
Outlook 2010
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\DesktopAlerts\TimeOn
If this key isn't available choose Edit-> New-> DWORD Value and name it TimeOn(case sensitive!).
Double click the key to give it a decimal value between 0 and 4294964295 (in Hexadecimal value this will be fffff448).
Enjoy your permanent New Mail Desktop Alert that shows for each mail that you receive!
