1. Search Folders

As described in previous posts, Search Folders are a powerful, underutilized part of Outlook. A Search Folder is a saved search, which means that you can retrieve results from your Inbox like ‘All emails from James Joyce’ or ‘All emails about Project X’ simply by clicking the Search Folder.

2. Rules

Anytime you find yourself repeating the same organizational steps over and over again in your Inbox, look into programming a Rule. Rules can do things like reply to particular emails with a templated response, or redirect all emails from an important client into a folder for that client.

3. Categories

Categories are a powerful tool in Outlook – right-click any email or meeting, and your categories will appear. Later, you can use categories in one of two potent ways:

– Search Folders: by categorizing your emails as they come in and creating a Search Folder for that category, you remove the necessity to drag-and-drop between different folders in your Inbox. This may not seem important now, but come see me when you’ve got 150 folders you have to maintain.

– Advanced Search: the most important benefit of categories is your ability to apply them to EVERYTHING. Create a category, and soon you’re able to find the meetings, contacts, tasks, AND emails related to that category, with one search.

4. AutoReplace

In Word, AutoReplace is the tool that takes (c) and turns it into the copyright symbol. If harnessed correctly, you can replace any misspelling that you habitually make, or create an autoreplace that takes a code from you and create a long string of text.

5. Fields

If you want to enter today’s date, or create a Table of Contents, or have a page numbering system that can be switched between Roman numerals, Arabic numbering, and lettering, you need Fields. A field is a programmed portion of your page in Word that is responsible for outputting not a set result, but a dynamic value. That means tomorrow, the ‘Today’s Date’ field will pick up the new day. Or that the Table of Contents will pick up the new section you decide to add.

6. MailMerge

One use of fields is the ability to bulk email or create envelopes for everyone in your contact list – MailMerge. Using MailMerge, you’ll be able to simply type a letter and specify “First Name”, and Word will replace it with the first names of everyone you want.

7. AutoFilter

With a large quantity of data, it’s often important to isolate records that meet a certain criteria. In Excel, all you have to do is select the data that you want filtered, apply an AutoFilter, and get to work. You’ll find that there are drop-down arrows for every column, and if you want to show only the employees in IT, you should be able to do exactly that with two clicks.

8. Pivot Tables and Pivot Charts

When it’s time to go above and beyond filtering, Pivot Tables will allow you to take that large quantity of data, filter it, then run subtotals, averages, maximums, minimums… the possibilities are endless. And understanding Pivot Tables only takes about 15 minutes!

9. IF Functions

Most people can grasp SUM, AVERAGE, MAX, COUNT, etc. When the time comes for your functions to make decisions, however, like ‘Only add these numbers together if they are both sales from 2008′, then you need the power of an IF. There are many varieties – SUMIF, COUNTIF, and you can nest functions with an IF to make them more powerful.

10. Presentation Shortcuts

When in mid-presentation, sometimes you just need to darken the projected screen for a couple of minutes while a side conversation plays out. Turning the projector on and off is sloppy – try the ‘B’ key on the keyboard. There are a ton of those shortcuts that make your presentation that much more potent.

Over the next several months, these and many other tips will be thoroughly examined in this blog. In the meantime, look over an Excel manual, or take an Outlook class from us, or just start clicking around. You’ll be amazed at what you can pick up just by clicking random options.

You probably use folders to organize your e-mail, right? You’ve got a folder for all the messages relating to that big project, and maybe a folder for all the messages from your boss, and maybe another 30 folders you used for once, for something, but now it just sits there mocking you. Folders are great, don’t get me wrong. They are a critical tool to let you get information out of your inbox and free up space for the onslaught of new and unread messages. Ideally folders give you a place to look for all the messages of a given category, like all the messages relating to Project XYZ, which in turn helps save scrolling and searching time. The problem is a typical folder structure has 2 inherent weaknesses, both of which can be solved with the use of a great Outlook tool: Search Folders.

First of all – with a typical folder, I need to move messages manually, often with a click and drag. With dozens of folders and subfolders, this action is a chronic loss of precious seconds, adding up to minutes and hours. A search folder is in essence a saved, constantly running search. It is a place I can go to see all the current results for a set of search criteria without having to manually run the search. This means if I have a regular folder for all the messages from my boss, to which I am manually dragging messages, a search folder would already have all those messages (with “boss” in the From line). No manual move required.

The second big obstacle to regular folders is the Organizer’s Paradox. I have to choose which folder should house a message (and remember it later!). Imagine you have one folder called “Project XYZ”, and another folder called “Invoices.” What do you do when you get an Invoice for Project XYZ? Whichever folder I put the message in, it will lose its association with the messages of the other folder. Now Invoices isn’t all invoices, nor is Project XYZ all of project XYZ. And what about the sent messages on Project invoices?! If you’re thinking “it’s ok, I’ll just make a copy or forward the message to myself” forget it. IT will come after you for your mailbox size, and if you were to reply or forward one of the messages, you wouldn’t see the indication of that action on the copy. The Organizer’s Paradox is a doozie.

Search Folders solve the paradox. They are not actual locations like a typical folder. Instead, they are like a magic window, showing all the messages that meet the specific criteria, but the messages still live in their respective location or folders. This means that if you have one search folder for messages that say “Project XYZ” in the subject or body (or for ’07 users has the Project XYZ category assigned) and another search folder for messages with the word “Invoice”, then that one message is visible in both locations! In fact, when a new message arrives in your inbox meeting the criteria of multiple search folders the single e-mail will be in the inbox AND all relevant search folders. It is not making a copy, just like the search results are not copies. If you delete it from the inbox or any of the search folders, it is deleted everywhere. If you reply, it shows the reply everywhere. The search folder is your answer to the Organizer’s paradox.

Next Monday, we’ll have a step-by-step instruction on creating your first Search Folder. For more information on this and other Outlook topics, try our Outlook, Outlook 2007, and Managing Your Everyday courses. Also, both Categories and Search Folders were referenced in an earlier blog post Five Outlook Tools You Should Be Using. I wasn’t kidding!

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First, a quick point: when I say rules, I actually mean that we’ll be using a section of Outlook labeled Rules and Alerts:

To get this in action, click Tools at the top of the screen, and roll down that menu until you find Rules & Alerts. Then, click the button for New Rule in the top-left corner of the dialog box. Finally, select the option Check messages when they arrive and click Next. Now, you’re ready to try the following:

Rule #1: Cut Through the Limitless Carbon Copies

If there’s one thing I’ve found to be consistent among Power Users of Outlook, it’s that we receive far too many CC’s on things that aren’t any of our concern. You spend most of your time wading through CC’s looking for emails that pertain to your life. So, why not filter out all those emails that have you in the CC line? By definition, someone simply decided that you ’should be copied’, not that you had to perform any action related to the email.

To eliminate everything but the emails you’re concerned with, first create a folder inside your Inbox called ‘Copied On’, or something of that nature. Then, on Step 1 of the Rule process (Select Condition(s)), click the checkbox ‘where my name is not in the To box’. This will identify everything that is only tangentially your concern. Continue by clicking Next at the bottom of the dialog box, and then select ‘move it to the specified folder’ on Step 2. Finally choose the specified folder you created (mine was called ‘Copied On’, if you remember), and finish the rule. Every email that is not directly addressed to you will be moved out of your inbox, and into a subfolder that you can check twice a day. You’ve eliminated 25-75% of your email checking per day!

Rule #2: Work With Categories

In an earlier post, I told you I was a big fan of Categories. To help you categorize more efficiently, identify something specific, like a client or group of team members, that needs to be categorized. For example, last month I was put onto a team with several other instructors to complete a 6-month project. It’s already obvious to me that this will entail almost unlimited emails back-and-forth, which I’ll have to go back and reference constantly. The problem is, I don’t want to run searches every week.

Here’s what I did: on Step One of the rules procedure, I identified two things. First, all the emails would be coming from one of 4 different email addresses. Secondly, we agreed that all our emails would contain a specific ‘project phrase’. So, I clicked the checkboxes for ‘From people or distribution list’ and ‘With specific words in the subject or body.’

I set the email addresses that the emails would come from, as well as the phrase, then I moved on to Step Two, where I clicked the checkbox ‘Assign it to the category category.’ I picked the category I wanted all my emails to have, and I was done. Now all I have to do is filter, search, or sort based off the category I picked, and all the emails between my coworkers come to the surface. I’ve saved myself time in searching and in categorizing all at the same time.

Rule #3: Handle Your Business While You’re on the Beach

Here’s a common problem among support staff, whether it be customer support or technical support. You’ve planned a wonderful week in Tahiti, but you’re still in the middle of two or three problem-solving situations. You talk it over with a coworker, and they agree to handle the cases while you’re getting a tan. However, the client is still emailing you directly for help. Here’s how you get them in touch with your coworker:

Step One: identify their email addresses, and add them to the rule. Step Two: Click the checkbox for ‘forward to email address.’ This has the wonderful ability to redirect those problem emails to someone who’s around to handle the situation. Select your coworker’s email in the Step Two part of the process, finish off your rule, and go enjoy some much-needed rest and relaxation.

Each of these rules stands a good chance at making your life easier – and isn’t that what it’s all about? These tools should be making our jobs the central focus, but more and more, the tools are becoming the central focus. Do you have tools that work especially well for you? I’d be interested to hear what others are particularly popular.

To see more about how Rules can benefit your work, as well as unveiling every other tool in Microsoft Outlook, check out our Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007, and Managing Your Everyday courses. I think they’ll really work wonders!

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To help you through those moments, you may want to use Microsoft’s Command Reference Guides:

• Microsoft Word
• Microsoft Excel
• Microsoft PowerPoint
• Microsoft Outlook

Each of these is a direct translation of your old tools to your new tools. If you’d like an in-person walkthrough of how these work, try out our Office 2007 Tips and Tricks class. If you find that you want more detail, we have three-day courses in Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel, and two-day courses in Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft PowerPoint. Also, there is a one-day course on Microsoft Visio

(1) Advanced Find:

Outlook is pretty decent at finding things most of the time, but sometimes you need something a bit more detailed. If you find yourself only with the knowledge ‘the person who sent it to me had a GMail account,’ you can find that. Click Tools – Find – Advanced Find in Outlook 2003; click Tools – Instant Search – Advanced Find in Outlook 2007. Once there, you can search by the normal criteria: ‘Who sent it to me? When?’ but also, you can go to the Advanced tab and search based off any field in the email (or contact, or meeting). Then, you can search not only by the actual value in that field (date is 12/31/07), but by a part of that field (email address contained ‘@gmail.com’).

In my example picture, not only did I search based off the ‘From’ email containing ‘@gmail.com’, but I also remembered that some guy named Bob was CC’d on the email. That can go into the search as well.

Finally, as you can see at the top of the box, you can also search all the subfolders of your Inbox. A very powerful tool!

(2) Search Folders:

Most people who see Advanced Find in action immediately hope for something quicker. In fact, one of the most-repeated requests I get is – ‘can I see all the emails from my boss quickly?’ Absolutely – the secret tool is the Search Folder.

Search Folders can also be called ‘Saved Searches’, because that’s all they are. If you create a Search Folder, you’re creating a search based off particular criteria that can be repeated in an instant. Here’s the steps:

Go to the left-hand panel in your Outlook and find the section labeled Search Folders. If you look in that section, you’ll see Flagged For Follow-up, Large Emails, and possibly a couple others. These are searches Microsoft thinks you need. To make a search that looks for your boss’s emails, right-click the Search Folders section, and choose New Search Folder. Then, find the option to search for Mail From Specific People. Simply click the Choose button and put in your boss’s email address!

(3) Categories:

Categories are powerful for one, specific reason – they are the only way of organizing your emails, meetings, contacts, and tasks based off the same criteria. They’re a little different between Outlook 2003 and 2007, but here’s the general gist of the tool:

When you right-click an email, meeting, contact, or task, you’ll see an option that says Categorize. Use this to set a Category (with or without color-coding) on your item. Then, repeat the process for anything else that falls into the same category. Finally, when it’s time to search out the items related to the same category, open your Advanced Find feature (discussed earlier).

First, click the drop-down at the top of the screen that says Mail (or Contacts…) and choose Any Type of Outlook Item. This will search your whole Outlook system. Then, choose the More Choices tab, and select the Category that you applied earlier. Just like that, you’re bringing together a whole history of emails, meetings, and contacts that are related to the important project you’re working on.

(4) Automatic Formatting:

Automatic Formatting is the option to apply color or fonts to an incoming email based on things like who the sender is. This can be a real joy for anyone who sits at their computer waiting for that ONE email to come in. To set up Automatic Formatting, first go to your Inbox.

Once in your Inbox, click Tools – Organize. Select the option to organize yourself By Color, and you should be given the chance to choose the color that you associate with a particular type of email.

(5) Rules:

The final tool is a real doozy – Rules. The way I always explain rules to my students is: think of anything you do that could be repeated by a robot. Now, get the robot to do it.

Click Tools -> Rules and Alerts. Then, choose to create a new rule. You’ll see that you have the opportunity to choose a preset template, or to start from scratch. Let’s say that you wanted to move all emails from a special client to your Special Client folder.

Simply choose the template that says ‘Move messages from someone to a folder.’ Move down the screen to your Step Two section.

Click the link for ‘people or distribution list’, and choose the appropriate address(es). Then select the ’specified folder’ link, and choose the folder you want to move it to.

This post was intended to open your eyes to a few tools you should be using – to get real experience with them, and to be able to ask an expert how they work, check out our classes. Our Outlook and Outlook 2007 courses are very popular, and the Manage Your Everyday with Outlook class really helps a lot of people.

When you start looking at your Inbox in Outlook, I think most people can agree that there is a lot of ‘noise’ in there – low-grade content that gets in the way of you doing your job effectively. In an earlier post, I put up a video about Inbox Zero. The basic premise of Inbox Zero is to clear the way in your Inbox so that important information and requests don’t get lost. Everyone, for the sake of their sanity, should be looking for their strategy to cut through that noise and get to the important signal. One idea that’s been thrown around is the ‘Do-Delegate-Defer-Delete’ strategy.

Basically, every email that comes in can have something done to it. Action #1 – DO it. Simply read the email, execute whatever action the email requests, and then delete it from your Inbox (or at least find somewhere else for it to be archived). It’s not always possible, but when it is, it’s very effective.

Action #2 – it’s not your job. Forwarding your emails to someone else is such a freeing experience! Send the necessary information to the person who will execute the action, then stow the email for a week for a checkup.

Action #3 – Defer this is what most of us do, but not in an organized way. You’ll need to come up with a strategy for setting time aside. It’s up to you, but try this one out and see if it works: Click the ‘Folders’ button in the bottom-left corner of your Outlook. Then, when you can see Tasks in the panel on your left, drag the email in question to your Tasks. This will immediately create a new task for you, which you can schedule (and put a reminder on). It’s much more efficient than just hoping you’ll remember to get back to it!

Action #4 – It’s not everyday that you get to delete the stuff in your Inbox, but when it happens, take advantage.

Are you a packrat like I am? Try out this tip from home organization that’s been revamped for the digital world: at home, you can put all the things you’re debating throwing out into a box. Tape up the box and put it in your garage. If after 6 months you’ve survived without any of it, you can throw the whole box in the garbage. In your Inbox, create a folder called ‘The Box’. Throw your old emails (the ones you can’t stand to throw out) into The Box. Then, after six months, delete The Box and start all over again.

Do you find that your Inbox is ruling your life? Try out our Manage Your Everyday With Outlook course. I think a few housekeeping strategies, reworked for the office, can really do a lot of good for people.

To help you manage your day-to-day work, Learn iT! has a course entitled Manage Your Everyday With Outlook. If you feel like you need a more thorough explanation of Microsoft Outlook, try out our Outlook courses.