Office Pioneer : Outlook

Save changes? What changes??

GillLeFevre — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 16:12:28 GMT

Under Beta 2 (or at least B2TR), Outlook has apparently developed a severe case of saving paranoia.

Almost everything I open - and contacts in particular - seems to think it's been changed. So when I go to close the item in question, I get prompted to save.

Now I like the save prompt, and it's certainly saved my skin several times in the past, but this is starting to get ridiculous. This morning I opened up a contact, looked at the phone number (I swear, I didn't even click into a different field with my mouse) and when I hit Escape to close the contact, up popped the save prompt.

I suspect that this is probably more annoying on a Friday than it might be on a Tuesday...

What does RSS (Really Simple Syndication) mean in Outlook 2007?

Jo Carpenter — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 18:06:00 GMT

RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’ and it enables users to have easy access to track and monitor information feeds such as news reports, web logs, forecasts and a whole variety of different services. RSS delivers this information is an XML (Extensible Mark-up Language) format. XML in its basic form is is a way of describing data. A user can then subscribe to an RSS feed using as application with RSS aggregation capabilities.

The benefit of RSS is that content from multiple Web sources can all be pulled to one place. You no longer have to visit different Web sites to obtain the latest information on your topics of interest. With RSS, summaries of content are delivered to you, and then you decide which articles you want to read or delete. It is exactly these capabilities that I’d like to outline in Outlook 2007. The RSS feature in Outlook is designed to provide the user with a consistent look and feel.

Step 1: Go to a blog that you would like to sign up to, then click on the link shown here as "RSS2.0". In some cases it is represented as an image.

Step 2: Copy the link

Step 3: Go to your Outlook folder structure and scroll down to RSS Subscriptions.

Step 4: Right click on RSS Subscription and select Add a New RSS Feed.

Step 5: Paste the URL into the text box, remember to use the RSS URL not the web site URL

Step 6: Choose to agree or disagree to the source trust notice.

Step 7: The new blog feed appears in your list

Step 8: Interacting with RSS feeds is now incredibly similar to managing your email.

Step 9: Sit back, relax and enjoy the read.

How to keep to your 200MB Mailbox size limit

Charlene — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 11:15:00 GMT

Anyone who knows me will know that my constant annoyance about Outlook is the 200MB limit set by IT on my mailbox. Now, I know that this is supposed to help us stay compliant to data storage laws and only keep the documents that we really need.... But, when you are working on 5-10 Marketing Communications projects at a time and are constantly receiving all the "huge" and "enormous" (Outlook classifications) files that come with that, it is really difficult to manage.

Another known fact about me is that I am a meticulous filer - this means that instead of having a massive Inbox, I have a detailed folder structure in my inbox and that's how I manage and find all my emails and documents. So, I find it very hard when trying to empty my mailbox because in total I have about 40 sub folders and it takes a long time to go through all of these and get rid of or move the emails that I don't need for my day to day work.

When I returned from holiday in the beginning of July it took me almost a whole day to sort out my Inbox before I really started to be productive. So when I returned to the office last week after being at a conference for 5 days, I thought there has to be a better way to do this. This is when I noticed the "Large Mail" folder that is found in the Search folders in Outlook.

Just going through this and either removing large attachments, deleting the emails or moving them to another location took my mailfile size all the way back down to 100MB!!

That should keep me going for another couple of weeks ;-)

Getting back time

GillLeFevre — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 16:26:00 GMT

This isn't an Office 2007 post, but as I'm sitting at my desk on a Friday afternoon, with a to-do list a mile long, it feels very appropriate.

Some great advice on dealing with email

Outlook (and Alfred) changed my life

GillLeFevre — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 19:57:00 GMT

Currently I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself. My inbox has only 5 items in it and while work is very busy, I feel on top of my tasks and I know what I have to do.

This might not sound like much of an achievement but for me it's a transformation. I used to live and die by my inbox. If you wanted me to do something, you had to send me an email and hope that I didn't receive too many others. From time to time, I'd file everything into folders, marking the things that I hadn't done as unread, but then I got distracted by my inbox and forgot about them. Every time I sat down to do some work, I ended up reading through my whole inbox and "re-deciding" what I was going to do with each and every email. Getting started on something took me at least 15 minutes.

Not exactly ideal!

Then two things happened: I installed the 2007 beta and I received an email from Alfred. As Charlene mentioned yesterday, the 2007 release has a pretty nifty to-do bar as part of the main Outlook window. And as well as showing a snippet of your calendar, it also has a task list.

Alfred's email explained his task management system. His approach was simple: if an email arrives that requires action, mark it as a task, give it a due date and then file it. If you get asked to do something: create a task and set the due date.

In the past I've always struggled with the task function in Outlook, but the to-do bar (and the integration with email and OneNote - more about that another day) has made a huge difference. So I crunched through all my emails and set them up as tasks (finding a few too many overdue items along the way). Items that I know will need a while to work on get reminders set as well.

Now when I come in to work, I read through my email and process it all: quick replies for things I can deal with immediately; creating tasks for longer actions. Pretty much everything gets filed or deleted. It doesn't take me more than 15 minutes.

I use categories to distinguish between different types of actions: yellow is for quick actions; red for urgent items; blue for things that other people need to do, which I need to chase; and green for personal tasks.

I'm spending a lot less time reading (and re-reading) email and I'm getting a lot more done. When I sit down at my desk, I know immediately what I should be working on, and when I finish that the to-do bar reminds me what to tackle next. It sounds far too simplistic, but having it integrated into the main Outlook window really has made a huge difference.

Better results, faster? For sure!

Ps. If you want more information and some background on this feature, check out Melissa Macbeth's blog

My life in a box…

Charlene — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 22:39:00 GMT

Topic of the day for me, my new personal organiser, the To Do bar in Outlook. Previous to the 2007 Beta, my Windows Mobile Smartphone seemed to run my life quite nicely for me. It knew where and when I had to be and who I was supposed to be meeting, it had all my important emails that still required action, and if I had mastered tasks at the time, they would have been there for me to access as well.

But now, the To Do bar is always there, where I’m working, showing me how my next few hours look, where I should be and who with. And now that 2007 has helped me master tasks, they are all there right next to my inbox, so I will never again absent-mindedly forget anything on my To Do list.

This might not seem like a very revolutionary capability, and technically it’s probably not, but I think you really have to try this out to see how much you come to rely on having this information right in front of you whenever you need it (especially with tasks!). If the To Do Bar is not expanded in your Outlook, just click on the expand arrows next to your inbox to discover the wonders of this little box.

I am now very much looking forward to next year when hardware becomes available to make the most of Windows SideShow, and how this can really maximise the effect of things like the To Do bar….

Now you see it; now you don't...

GillLeFevre — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 16:30:00 GMT

I was giving a demo of the 2007 release to some colleagues on Monday and I was asked about the "forward" feature in the calendar. One of the attendees, an exec PA who spends her life sorting out meeting requests, said she couldn't always find this feature and wondered why it was only available some of the time.

I promised to look into it and so I sat down this morning to track down the errant "forward" button.

The answer was easier than I thought. It turns out that "Forward" is there all the time, but it changes appearance.

This is what it looks like in it's full size:

But it only appears like this if you have enough space on the toolbar - in my case, when I start a new appointment. I keep my Outlook windows at about 25cm (on my laptop) and when I open an appointment with more buttons on the toolbar (for example, a meeting that I've invited other people to attend, which has all the scheduling options visible), there isn't enough room for the whole Forward button and so it looks like this:

Now if you were to show me the second version and ask me what it did, I'd say "Forward". But having seen the first version (and filed it away in my head as the "Forward" button), when I see the second version, my eyes somehow pass over it and I don't register that it is in fact what I am looking for.

Turns out the bug isn't with Office, but with the way my mind works…!

Let's book a meeting to discuss the meeting!

Charlene — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 22:32:00 GMT

Apparently in 2005 the average working person spent 5.6 hours in meetings. And in 2006, it seems that this average has gone up to 16 hours per week!!

This week, admittedly a fairly busy one, I have 22 hours of meetings to fill my working days. It does seem that sometimes we have meetings about the meetings we are going to have, and then meetings to let everyone know about the meeting. And then of course we need status meetings to check everyone is doing their actions :)

Unfortunately the 2007 Beta does not provide the solution to meeting etiquette and productivity. But.... it can help when you have to schedule those 10s of meetings every week with multiple attendees each week.

This takes me back to my university days. When I was studying, I temped every holiday and did a lot of secretarial and administration work, and I remember the pain and long hours trying to arrange meetings with multiple attendees. This gets even worse when you have to book other meetings with different attendees which are dependent on the first meeting taking place. Looking at all these calendars and trying to view them side by side, and the text becoming too small to read when you open more than 3 at a time... It is a huge headache!

Well, this is where the 2007 Beta can help. A really cool feature of Outlook calendaring is Overlay Mode. Just click on the little arrow next to the name of the calendar you are viewing, and this places that calendar over your own and you can view all the appointments on top of each other. This becomes very useful when you are looking for free space in more than a few people's calendars.

So, at least when I’ve got the task of booking all those meetings that seem to flood the working week, it is a much quicker and far less stressful process.