Oh that nifty Outlook Stuff!

by Kera McHugh

You know, if it weren't for the annoying little box that continually pops up on my screen while I'm in the middle of 6 other things, I probably would never get these articles written.

Before I go any further I will stop to congratulate Rhoberta on a full year of putting out this excellent ezine - my part aside, it's always packed with great articles, tips and tidbits - and it's a big job! So hat's off to her! Thanks for reading, and sharing with your friends.

Back to Outlook… Do you have any idea how easy it is to set Microsoft Outlook to remind you to do EVERYTHING??? Ok, your personal feelings about Bill and his cronies aside… there ARE some great things about their products. Their Office Suite is truly "productivity" software, if - and that's a fairly large IF - you know how to use it productively.

So that's what we're going to look at today - briefly.

I'm going to pose some "did you know" questions to you… and if you answer "no", then the onus is on you to either email me for more details, or click the help menu in Outlook for the answer.

DID YOU KNOW:

You can drag an email message to your calendar and instantly turn it into an appointment and/or reminder without having to retype everything?

You can email your appointments to yourself - or other people who need to know about them?

You can right click on an email with important information and "flag" it for future reference, and then, if you are so inclined, set a completion date, all with one or two clicks?

You can customize the "view" of every email folder you have so that the information you need IMMEDIATELY is what you see?

That by dragging a contact from your contact list to your inbox it will automatically open a new email to that contact? No more typing email addresses!

You can keep track of time spent on projects using both the timer and auto-tracking functions of the journal? Did you even know there WAS a journal??

You can also drag an email to your task list and set it's priority and due date.

here's one I learned just for you…) There's a thing called "Group by…"? You have to have the "advanced" toolbar visible… then you click the icon that looks like a grey sheet of paper… in the current mail folder, you'll see "drag column header here to group by column" at the top… simply drag, say "FROM", into that spot and zing! You can instantly see who sent how many emails, without having to see all the emails… then just click the "+" to expand the group… wow! That's time saving.

When you need to find something specific, you can use the "find" button, OR you can sort your email folder by any of the headings simply by clicking on the heading… ie. If you're looking for an attachment, just click the little paperclip at the top and voila! All your emails with attachments will be at the top… (presumably, you don't keep too many of those in your mailbox, as they take up valuable space… hint, hint download the attachment to your HD and delete the email)

Ok.. is that enough to keep you going for a while?

Feel free to email me for more details if you really want to learn… AND, if you have a productivity hint PLEASE send it to me… it's not possible to know everything about this stuff.

Happy Outlooking…