All posts tagged Outlook 2010

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May

Share calendars using a Microsoft Exchange Server account

Categories: Information Technology, Microsoft Technologies

Tags: Calendar, How To, Outlook 2010

Microsoft Exchange Server enables calendar sharing with others who have Exchange accounts. Your calendars can be viewed only by others to whom you have granted permissions. If the other person whose Calendar you want to open has not granted you permission to view it, Outlook prompts you to ask the person for the permission that you need.

After you access a shared Calendar for the first time, the Calendar is added to the Shared Calendars list in the Navigation Pane, where you can access it the next time that you want to view it.

1. Make a new calendar in Outlook:

Right Click on the existing Calendar and Choose “New Calendar”
Give it a name.
The new calendar will show up in your calendar list.
This new calendar will also sync to your iOS / Droid devices

2. To share your calendar with another Exchange user:

Right click on the calendar and choose “Share” and then “Share Calendar”
In the Sharing Invitation that appears, enter the person(s) who you want to share with in the To box.
Enter or select any other options that you want, just as if you were sending an email message.
The recipient sees an email notification that you have shared your calendar. You can also request that the recipient share his or her Exchange Calendar with you.

Jul

The 4-D’s of E-Mail Management

Categories: Cloud, Email, Information Technology

Tags: Email, Outlook 2010

Comments: No

The “Four Ds for Decision-Making” model (4 Ds) is a valuable tool for processing email, helping you to quickly decide what action to take with each item and how to remove it from your Inbox.

Decide what to do with each and every message

How many times have you opened, reviewed, and closed the same email message or conversation? Those messages are getting lots of attention but very little action. It is better to handle each email message only once before taking action—which means you have to decide what to do with it and where to put it. With the 4 Ds model, you have four choices:

Delete it
Do it
Delegate it
Defer it

Delete it

Generally, you can delete about half of all the email you get. But some of you shudder when you hear the phrase “delete email.” You’re hesitant to delete messages for fear that you might need them at some point. That’s understandable, but ask yourself honestly: What percentage of information that you keep do you actually use?

If you do use a large percentage of what you keep, your method is working. But many of us keep a lot more than we use. Here are some questions to ask yourself to help you decide what to delete:

Does the message relate to a meaningful objective you’re currently working on? If not, you can probably delete it. Why keep information that doesn’t relate to your main focus?
Does the message contain information you can find elsewhere? If so, delete it.
Does the message contain information that you will refer to within the next six months? If not, delete it.
Does the message contain information that you’re required to keep? If not, delete it.

Do it

(in less than two minutes)

If you can’t delete the email messages, ask yourself, “What specific action do I need to take?” and “Can I do it in less than two minutes?” If you can, just do it.

There is no point in filing an email or closing an email if you can complete the associated task in less than two minutes. Try it out—see how much mail you can process in less than two minutes. I think you will be extremely surprised and happy with the results. You could file the message, you could respond to the message, or you could make a phone call. You can probably handle about one-third of your email messages in less than two minutes.

Delegate it

If you can’t delete it or do it in two minutes or less, can you forward the email to an appropriate team member who can take care of the task?

If you can delegate it (forward it to another team member to handle), do so right away. You should be able to compose and send the delegating message in about two minutes. After you have forwarded the message, delete the original message or move it into your email reference system.

Defer it

If you cannot delete it, do it in less than two minutes, or delegate it, the action required is something that only you can accomplish and that will take more than two minutes. Because this is your dedicated email processing time, you need to defer it and deal with it after you are done processing your email. You’ll probably find that about 20 percent of your email messages have to be deferred.

There are two things you can do to defer a message: Turn it into an actionable task, or turn it into an appointment. When you’re using Outlook, you can defer emails that require action by dragging the messages to your Task List to turn them into tasks. Name the task to clearly state the required action so that you don’t have to reopen the email message. The result is a clearly defined list of actions on your Task List that you can prioritize and schedule to complete on your Calendar. Or you can turn the message into a meeting request by dragging it to your Calendar.

Use the 4 Ds model every day

Using the 4 Ds model on a daily basis makes it easier to handle a large quantity of email. Our experience shows that, on average, people can process about 100 email messages an hour. If you receive 40 to 100 messages per day, all you need is one hour of uninterrupted email processing time to get through your Inbox. Our statistics show that of the email you receive:

Fifty percent can be deleted or filed.
Thirty percent can be delegated or completed in less than two minutes.
Twenty percent can be deferred to your Task List or Calendar to complete later.

Of course, if you have a backlog of hundreds of messages, it will take time to get to the point where your daily routine keeps you up to date. It’s important to get that backlog down, so I would suggest setting blocks of time aside to work through it. Then, you can really enjoy processing your messages every day using the 4 Ds.

Jul

Outlook Tip: Quickly Add Screenshots to an Email

Categories: Information Technology, Microsoft Technologies

Tags: Office 2010, Outlook 2010

Comments: No

One of Outlook 2010’s most underrated and overlooked features is Insert Screenshot, which makes it incredibly quick and easy to paste a screen grab into the body of an e-mail.

That’s mighty handy if you want to, say, get team feedback on your new redesign of the company landing page, or share a snippet of spreadsheet data without actually sharing the spreadsheet. (”Just look at these numbers!”) Here’s how it works:

Create a new email message.
With your cursor in the body of the message, click the Insert tab, and then click Screenshot.
Outlook shows you thumbnails of all currently open windows. (If you can’t quite make out what’s what, mouse over any thumbnail for a description.) Click the one you want and presto: A full-size screenshot lands right in the body of the email.

If the image is too large (or even not large enough), you can click and drag any of the corner handles to resize it.

Now, if you want to insert just a clipped portion of a window rather than the entire thing, you can — but it’s a little more involved:

Bring that window to the foreground, then put the new-message window on top of that.
Repeat Step 2 above.
Instead of clicking one of the thumbnails, click the Screen Clipping button at the bottom of the selection tool.
Now you’ll see that window from Step 1, but sort of whited out. Click and drag your cursor to select the area you want pasted into the email. As soon as you release the mouse button, presto: The snippet gets pasted.

Once you do this a couple times, you’ll find it becomes second nature. And you’ll wonder why you wasted so much time capturing screenshots manually, saving them to disk, then attaching them to emails.

This trick also works in all the other MS Office programs as well.

We also recommend PicPick

Jun

Outlook 2010: How to Create a Rule to Delay Sending Email

Categories: Information Technology, Microsoft Technologies

Tags: Email, Outlook 2010

Comments: No

The Rules feature in Outlook enables you to automate certain tasks that you perform repeatedly such as moving files with a specific subject to a specified folder, deleting email with a specific subject and so on. In this Outlook 2010 tutorial, you will learn how to use the Rules feature to delay sending email messages.

How to Create a Rule to Delay Sending Email Messages in Outlook2010

1. Select the File tab and in the Account Information section, click ManageRules and Alerts

2. In the Rules and Alerts dialog box, click New Rule.

3. In the Rules Wizard, in the Step 1: Select a template section, in the Start from a blank rule section, select Apply rule on messages I send and clickNext.

4. In the Step 1: Select condition(s) section, do not select an option and clickNext.
5. The Microsoft Outlook confirmation dialog box appears. Click Yes to applythe rule to all messages that you send.

6. In the Step 1: Select action(s) section, select defer delivery by a number of minutes.
7. In the Step 2: Edit the rule description section click the link a number of.

8. In the Deferred Delivery dialog box, enter the number of minutes for which you want the messages to be delayed before sending and click OK.

Note: The maximum number of minutes allowed for deferred schedule is 120 minutes.

9. In the Rules Wizard, click Next.
10. If necessary, in the Step 1: Select exception(s) section, select an option(s) and click Next.
11. In the Step 1: Specify a name for this rule text box, type a name for the rule.
12. Select the Turn on this rule check box and click Finish.
13. Close the Rules and Alerts dialog box.

After you send the email message it will remain in the Outbox folder until the scheduled delivery time. Now that you learned how to create a rule to schedule all email messages that you send out, you can use it whenever the need arises. If you have used this rule in your daily work, share your experience with us.