2/25/2015

FivelittleknownwaystoendrepetitionandbusyworkinOutlook

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Five little-known ways to end repetition and

busywork in Outlook

Tagged As: Digital Edge,

Microsoft Outlook, Productivity,
email

Type less, find email faster, and more-easily keep track of appointments
Alan Naditz
Digital Edge staff
February 17, 2015 WW08
With all the things Outlook can do, wouldnt it be nice if there were ways to make it even easier to use? Some of the
applications most-helpful functions are not very obvious, but they can make your job a lot less redundant. Heres a look at
a handful of them:

1: Instead of repeat typing, think Quick

If you regularly need to pound out a standard block of text, you can save it as a
Quick Part for easy insertion into your emails:
With your Outlook email open, highlight the text you want to copy. Note
that this must be an email that you are currently trying to write, reply to or
forward.

Figure 1: Instead of retyping a

frequently repeated section in an
email, use Outlooks Quick Parts
feature to place it where and when
needed.

Go to theInserttab, and move to theTextsection of the Outlook Ribbon.

Click theQuick Partsdrop-down and select Save selection to Quick Part Gallery" (see Figure 1).
Now, whenever you start typing the phrase, it will pop up as a suggestion. Hit Returnto insert it in full.
You can also select your text from the Quick Parts drop-down. Right-click on it for placement options, or to edit and
manage other Quick Parts.

2: Instantly create new emails and appointments

If you find yourself frequently switching back and forth between email and calendar modes, you can speed up the process:
Create new emails, appointments, contacts and more by using theNew Items drop-down on theHometab while on
the Outlook home screen.
Or, if you dont want to open the Outlook interface, right-click on Outlooks icon on the Windows taskbar. Youll open
a jumplist with direct shortcuts to create various new items.

3: Get in Step with recurrent tasks

Figure 2: Regular tasks such as forwarding

mail or sending meeting invites can be sped
If you regularly perform a particular tasksuch as forwarding an
up by using shortcuts and Quick Steps.
incoming email to a colleague, or inviting a group of recipients to a
meetingthen Quick Steps can save you time. Theres a predefined
set of Quick Steps on the Home tab, but you can also create ones for your own needs:
In the Quick Steps section of the Home tab, click the drop-down arrow.
In the Manage Quick Steps window, select the New button on the lower left.
Select from the various options to categorize, move, flag and delete messages with a single tap of your mouse. You can
duplicate and edit shortcuts to further customize your Steps (see Figure 2).

4: Change with the times

Figure 3: Need to keep your hours straight?

Use Outlooks dual time zone feature.
Or in this case, time zones. Anyone who travels frequently, or who
talks to people in far locations, knows the frustration of discovering
meetings and appointments in Outlook that show up at the wrong local time. To keep your time zones straight:
On the Outlook home screen, go to the File tab, then scroll down to Options.

Learn more
Learn more
For more ways to get the most out of
Microsoft Outlook, check these
Digital Edge stories:
Find free meeting times on your
calendar
Quick fixes to annoying Outlook
problems
Let Outlook self-clean your messy
inbox
Change the mail and calendar text
to icons
Get your badge photo to appear in
Outlook
Disable address auto-complete
Three ways to work better in
Calendar view
Automatically flag incoming
messages
Change the text format of your
email messages
Enable touch features in Outlook

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Select Calendar, and scroll down to Time zones to set your local time zone.

Get a jump on ITs push of One

Time Passcode wizard

If you need a second time zone visible so you can track what time it is back home, or perhaps see what time it is for
coworkers elsewhere, click Show a second time zone and set appropriately.

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becomes automatic WW09

You can switch from one location to the other by clicking the Swap Time Zones button (see Figure 3).

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2/25/2015

FivelittleknownwaystoendrepetitionandbusyworkinOutlook
When done, click OK.

out of your way

Benefits of using the Let's Meet web
portal

5: Stick em up
Those colorful Post-it notes that once appeared all over your computer monitor and desktop can now appear inside
Outlook, thanks to a built-in sticky notes feature.
Press Ctrl+Shift+N from anywhere in the Outlook interface to create a new note, which can be dragged and
positioned where desired on screen.
By default, notes appear in pale yellow, but you can assign them to categories, which causes them to switch to the
associated color.
To manage your notes, click on the Note icon at the bottom of the View pane. From here you can copy, organize and
print notes. You can also use the field at the top-right of the window to search for notes containing specific text.

Coming soon: An upgraded Inside

Blue
Five little-known ways to end
repetition and busywork in
Outlook
Excel 2013 tip: Three must-know
tips for power users

There is no automatic deletion of notes, so they will remain as long as you leave them there. (There used to be a sixmonth retention on notes, but that was removed a couple of years ago.)

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Gibson, Sharon L 2/23/2015 9:42:47 PM

Thank-you Quick Parts! That's definitely a day of my life saved - whoop!Reply |Like (0)
Bernat, Yehezkel 2/19/2015 7:51:39 PM
Great article. I learnt some new things. Thanks!Reply |Like (0)
Sindhu, Chaitrananda R 2/18/2015 12:21:11 PM
very useful article. thank you.Reply |Like (0)
Shmilovich, Dov 2/18/2015 11:24:52 AM
Learning something new every day :) Thanks!Reply |Like (0)
V, Aishwarya 2/18/2015 9:23:25 AM
Useful article. Thank youReply |Like (0)
Preciado, Jose 2/18/2015 1:41:14 AM
Outlook should be the most common tool across Intel we should expend 3 to 4 hour avg. the tips and tricks
to use it will really impact, I want to be part of this comments Reply |Like (0)
Andersen, James 2/18/2015 1:23:52 AM
Now I have a new outlook on Outlook. Reply |Like (1)

Trevor, Scott 2/18/2015 1:20:52 AM

My favorite feature is the "Ignore" option. It allows you to ignore all replies to a specific email thread. It lands
all future replies to that thread in your deleted items folder. It's great for an email thread that get's out of
control with replies you no longer care about. Reply |Like (2)

Mueller Espinosa, Vikki A 2/17/2015 9:59:45 PM

I would love to know how to have Outlook prompt me to delete the original mail from my inbox as I am
hitting the send button on a reply or forward. One of our old email systems did this. It helped keep the
inbox much cleaner. Anybody know how to do this?Reply |Like (2)

Godin, Leo G 2/17/2015 9:17:49 PM

Learn keyboard shortcuts! ctrl + (1, 2, 4) to switch between mail, calendar and tasks. ctrl + shift + m to
create a new mail message ctrl + r to reply ctrl + shift + r to reply all And my favorite: ctrl + shift + v to move
an email to a folder. Create a folder in your inbox named "current". When you process your emails in the
morning, go through each email, if it needs attention, reply (see above), if it needs attention later, make it a
task (drag to tasks in the right sidebar), if it needs delete (del), and if it is something you want to save for
later reference, move it to "current" (ctrl + shift + v). I used to process 100+ messages in a few minutes this
way, and I'd end up with a task list for the day. For ribbons, use alt, then select the letter corresponding to
the menu you want. Great for excel too (Alt + a, then T to filter/unfilter). I never liked the ribbons until I
realized you can access them with the keyboard and they show which keys to use once you press alt. Reply
|Like (14)
Godin, Leo G 2/17/2015 9:37:56 PM

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FivelittleknownwaystoendrepetitionandbusyworkinOutlook

Let's try this again with line breaks. Learn keyboard shortcuts! ctrl + (1, 2, 4) to switch between
mail, calendar and tasks. ctrl + shift + m to create a new mail message ctrl + r to reply ctrl + shift
+ r to reply all And my favorite: ctrl + shift + v to move an email to a folder. Create a folder in your
inbox named "current". When you process your emails in the morning, go through each email, if it
needs attention, reply (see above), if it needs attention later, make it a task (drag to tasks in the right
sidebar), if it needs delete (del), and if it is something you want to save for later reference, move it
to "current" (ctrl + shift + v). I used to process 100+ messages in a few minutes this way, and I'd end
up with a task list for the day. For ribbons, use alt, then select the letter corresponding to the
menu you want. Great for excel too (Alt + a, then T to filter/unfilter). I never liked the ribbons until I
realized you can access them with the keyboard and they show which keys to use once you press
altReply |Like (2)

Qian, Linda L 2/17/2015 9:15:13 PM

Great tips! :)Reply |Like (0)

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