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How I Used Outlook 2010 Quick Steps to Eliminate Custom Macros

In 2008 I wrote a blog post entitled “Outlook Macro: Flag and Move Message to Follow-up Folder” which has become one of my more popular posts. Nearly two years later this method has, fortunately, become obsolete because of the additions in Quick Step features in Outlook 2010.

As part of my Getting Things Gone process I use the Flag for follow-up function in Outlook to identify messages I need to respond to at a future date. In the past my macro would simply place them unscheduled in a folder called “Follow-up” and I would need to schedule them and categorize them later. I have replaced this process with a new Quick Step that I call “Flag, categorize, and move” which does exactly the name describes. When I select a message and click on the Quick Step I am prompted to categorize the message and then it is moved to the “Follow-up Issues”. I use categories to identify the follow-up context, like @Phone or @person name to trigger my follow-up when it is relevant.

Using this technique I could have just as easily prompted for a follow-up date but I choose not to add the additional step for every item I move.

You will also notice that I have two Quick Steps entitled “@Paul” and “@Julio” which are based on the “Flag, categorize, and move” except the automatically set the category to the proper context. These are two of the most common follow-up categories so I chose to make click options to speed up the process. I have purposefully chosen not limit the number of Quick Steps to minimize clutter and decision making when I am filing and managing my inbox.

Reader question: How would you use Quick Steps to make managing your in-box more efficient?

Technorati Tags: Blog, Business, Clients, Getting Things Done, Google, GTD, life hacks, Lifehack, Mail, Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Outlook, Outlook 2010, Quick Step, Servers, Windows

Microsoft Office 2010 Initial Impressions

Last week I finally decided to try Office 2010 and while this isn’t a complete review I thought I would provide my initial impressions. I installed the software on my primary computer with an expectation of seeing how difficult it would be to transition from Microsoft Office 2007 to Microsoft Office 2010—this is a working test and as such I consider it a day in the life of the average manager rather than pushing the limits of the new software since I think this is the most valuable way to test usability and transition.

My first and most prominent observation is Office 2010 hasn’t changed that much from Office 2007. There is nothing earthshattering and nothing shocking, like the transition to the ribbon in 2007, and this is great news for those looking to upgrade! The biggest change is the ribbon is now ubiquitous, including Outlook, and it is used rationally and sensibly in Outlook to make the software easier to use.

Equally important to the lack of major changes in the software is the fact that the file formats have not changed from Office 2007 to Office 2010 so in my testing it is fully backward compatible with my coworkers running the prior version. This point has made it much easier to make the transition individually without worrying that I won’t be able to interact efficiently with my coworkers.

Among the biggest changes to Office 2010 was an overhaul of Outlook which makes it much more intuitive:

• Microsoft transitioned the menu from the traditional menu that was still in use in Outlook 2007 to the ribbon that became the standard in most other Microsoft Office applications on the same. For those who are running Office 2007 this is an easy transition and it simplified the menu layout so more functions are displayed in the menu context.
• Another great function that has been added to Outlook is the “Quick Steps”. This is a wizard driven macro builder that is similar to the mail rules but is intended to run “on-click”. One of the most popular blog posts on my site is Outlook Macro: Flag and Move Message to Follow-up Folder and Quick Steps allowed me to eliminate the need for code and quickly enhance the functionality of what I was using the macro to accomplish. Without a doubt I would say this is the single most powerful feature added to Outlook.
• The second most helpful function I have found in Outlook is the implementation of “Conversations” within the folder view. This is similar to grouping a view by subject in earlier version but the feature now allows you to consolidate a conversation regardless of which folder it appears within. By using conversation you can easily consolidate the never ending e-mail strings that frequently fill out inboxes into a single view only showing the most recent—this allows the user skip the messages leading up the most recent without looking at the interim messages.
• As a fan of using “Getting Things Done” and making my storage process simple I have become a fan of using full text indexing and search features in Outlook and Windows I have found with Outlook 2010 the way that the search functions are organized they are more intuitive to use and find information.

After my first week of use one of the questions that come to mind is, “Is the upgrade worth the money?” My response would need to be, “It depends.”

I would say that if you are a power use of Office, or more specifically Outlook, it is probably worth the upgrade to take advantage of the new Outlook functions. This is especially true you are a GTD’er who uses flags and categories extensively. As radical as the suggestion sounds I find the new functions in Outlook would likely pay for the upgrade alone.

The next question that comes to mind, as an IT executive, is, “Is a corporate wide upgrade worthwhile?” My response would need to be, “It depends.”

In my experience the average corporate user is not a power user and doesn’t use their tools effectively to begin with—in fact the average user probably doesn’t extend their use of Outlook beyond e-mail into the contacts or calendar functions. If you have already made your corporate standard Office 2007 most uses will not find the upgrade compelling enough to bother but Office 2007 and Office 2010 are very close in functionality, look, and feel so they can probably live happily in the same environment. If you have not yet upgraded to Office 2007 the upgrade may be worthwhile since Microsoft has proven the ribbon (one of the single most disruptive changes in Office 2007) is here to stay for at least one more version.

The bottom line for me is the verdict is still out if Office 2010 is worth the upgrade for the average user or average company currently running Office 2007 since very little changed on the surface.

Technorati Tags: GTD, Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Outlook, Office 2007, Office 2010, Outlook 2010, review

Customizing the Outlook Toolbar

Many people don’t realize they can change the standard toolbars in Microsoft Outlook, or other Microsoft Office products for that matter. After accidentally printing a sensitive e-mail by clicking on the “Print” button in Outlook I decided to reduce the risk by removing it from the toolbar since it is already in a convenient place under the file menu. The video shows how to remove a button or from the standard Outlook tool bar and the place to go to add many of the standard functions to the tool bars.

Technorati Tags: FAQs Help and Tutorials, how-to, howto, Mail, Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook, Windows

Review: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

In Donald Miller‘s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life the author takes the topic of how to live a meaningful life. Miller wrote a popular autobiographical book called Blue Like Jazz a number of years ago and was approached by a producer to turn the book into a fictionalized movie based on the book. In the process of editing and writing the screenplay Miller is challenged to understand what makes a good story that people will enjoy and understands the leap that, which he wrote a good book, he wasn’t telling or living a good story.

Miller, takes on the effort to understand the components of storytelling and explains how they apply to living a life that is a good story rather than just telling a good story. He recognizes his life is his story, and although a successfully author and speaker, his life isn’t compelling; he is wasting his time on trivial things like making up stories rather than living an extraordinary story.

Upon the realization that he needs to make his life extraordinary he leads us into how he changed his own story to make it better. From a grueling trip to Machu Picho to impress a girl, to a cross country bicycle trip, and finally the eclectic cast of real world characters that he begins to surround himself with the story changes for the better and becomes an inspiration to live a different story.

At the heart of Miller’s wisdom is living takes action not desire. Our happiness takes action not desire. He spent his life drifting, like many do, wishing for a better story and inventing a better story in his head and writing them for others to ready but he didn’t really understand what it is was to live. If we want to have of life of meaning we need to live and take responsibility for our life—we can’t expect others to fill a void.

This is a book about Christian spirituality but it isn’t preachy. Miller takes on the topics with Christian views of God but recognizes the flaws of man and our free will within God’s plan. I wouldn’t consider this a traditional self-help book but rather an autobiographical story that explains how the author found meaning and improved his life. For me it was an inspiration to try to live a more meaningful life.

Technorati Tags: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life, Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality, book, Christianity, donaldmiller, donmiller, God, Million Miles

Kids Riding Sheep

I was at the Rio Grande Valley Stock Show in Mercedes, TX and saw what was one of the funniest things I can recall…kids riding sheep!  Since this was my first rodeo experience I certainly had a memory I won’t soon forget and look forward to going back next year.

Technorati Tags: funny, kids, RGV, Rio Grande Valley, rodeo, sheep

Home Office In a Box For $6000

One of the things that is important for any person looking to work more effectively the occasional quiet space to concentrate.  Of coures not everybody has room in their home for a home office but I found this great video that explains how to turn a shed into a home office in lieu of taking the spaced out of your living area.  All you really need is 80 square feet of property and $6000.

Video Link

Technorati Tags: Business, Home, Home and Garden, Office Products, Personal Organization

Review: Super Freakonomics

I recently completed Super Freakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by Stephen Levitt and Stephen Dubner. This is the follow-up to their best-selling Freakonomics. Super Freakonomics is a little out of the normal productivity and business genera that I normally review on this site but it was a funny and interesting book.

The authors, Levitt and Dubner, take a different slant on microeconomic analysis by looking at analyzing such topics as:

• Why do prostitutes earn less on an inflation adjusted basis now than at the turn of the century and are prostitutes better off with pimps or on their own?
• Is television ruining a society by causing crime or improving the lives of women in rural Indian society?
• Which is more dangerous: drinking and driving or walking home drunks? (…at least for the drunk)
• Do car seats really save lives?
• Can more pollution actual eliminate global warming?
• Is it possible to cause moral decline in monkeys by introducing money?

While most would find a book about microeconomics boring and tedious but the authors’ humor and interesting topic choices did a great job keeping me engages and wanting to keep reading more. While there were points I would gladly argue with their conclusions I was never bored and enjoyed reading this book.

I would defiantly recommend this book.

Technorati Tags: Environment, Freakonomics, Global Cooling, Global warming, Stephen Dubner, stephen j dubner, Steven Levitt, Television

E-Mail Managment Best Practices

Regular blog readers will notice that e-mail and task managment are a common theme this blog.  As I catch up on my blog feeds this weekend I found a great post on the Microsoft Office Outlook Team Blog entitled “Best Practices for Outlook 2007″ that reenforces many of the Getting Things Done concepts with tactical approches to managing basic tasks in Outlook 2007.

Among the concepts they cover are:

1. Reduce the number of places you read e-mail
2. Let some e-mail pass by
3. Reduce the number of places you manually file messages
4. Process your e-mail using the 4Ds
5. Reduce you to-do list to once list
6. Work in batches
7. Use good judgment when sending e-mail

While these topice aren’t uncommon GTD sources the Melissa MacBeth does a great job refering each topic to a how-to.

Technorati Tags: David Allen, Getting Things Done, GTD, Mail, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook, Time Management

Make Information Storage as Simple as Possible But No Simpler

In the past I have written about GTD techniques and my ubiquitous capture system and from the beginning I have noticed a shift in my methods and techniques.  This week I had a bit of an “ah ha moment” when reading a blog post entitled “File Under: Miscellaneous“.

The problem with the Old World

In the tangible world of wooden desktops, filing cabinets, and hanging file folders (I hate those things!) data capture and retrieval takes a lot of forethought.  In my own hard copy files I have a section for Project (major heading) and then a folder for each project (minor heading) I also have a section for hard copy Purchase Requestions that have been returned from my purchasing department.  This all appears organized and easy to file and retrieve documents but after a couple months of use (maybe less) you will find a dilemma–where to I store a purchase requestion related to Project X?  Now I need to consider a set of rules to handle this consistently.

These indexing and referencing problems become more challenging with much larger collections.  Have you ever considered asking why most libraries divide them fiction collections by authors name and their non-fiction by subject?  What happens when I want to find a vampire romance novel?

These are problems in the tangible world because I can’t have the same hardcopy in more than one place at a time.

Breaking the Paradigm in the Digital World

When I first started building my electronic capture system it was based on my hardcopy process.  Identify information, move it to relevant folder, and retrieve it based on my working knowledge of the system (where do I put my project related purchase requsitions?).  This worked well, at least as well has the hardcopy systems that I was already working with.

A couple years into using my capture system I discovered indexing tools I could use to index and search the contents of my desktop like Copernic, Google Desktop, and Windows Search.  Each of these tools provides an efficient desktop index that will allow full text search of the documents stored in your computer and when utilized in conjunction with the extended properties if a document (i.e. keywords filed in a Microsoft Office document) can all you to quickly find relevant data in any indexed folder.

This shift from a directory based system and process is no different than the world experienced when they moved from the early version of Yahoo! (remember when it was a directory not a search engine?) to Google.  The world recognized directory based systems scaled very poorly the outbreak of the Internet, on a micro level this is what many of us managing electronic capture systems learned.  The more data you have, the more referential relevance you have, the more you need to run an index based retrieval process.

The paradigm shift has a little bit of overhead (quite literally some processor overhead to maintain the indexes) but once you embrace the concept most people will recognize there is much less effort involved with an index based system.  While I personally choose to maintain some documents in hierarchal folders, like dividing reference documents from projects, to allow me to archive them once they are no longer active other document types, like e-mail, just get moved from the in box to an archive folder.  I no longer need to put much mental effort into sorting because it is easier to just search for the information I need when I need it.

Consider the impact of this shift in much larger reference systems, like a library.  Google Books epitomizes the strength of full text indexes, consider the search for “ubiquitous capture system getting things done”, I can quickly pull up some relevant passages from the text I want to review and reference.  This method would allow me to concurrently store my non-fiction novels both my author and subject making it much easier to find the Twilight series when I want to read vampire romance novels.

By embracing index based systems I made my storage system as simple as possible and never sacrifice the ability to retrieve information much more quickly than my former directory bases system.

Technorati Tags: David Allen, Getting Things Done, Google, Google Books, GTD, Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Search, Search Engines, Web search engine, Yahoo

Unbuntu 9.10 Upgrade User Experience

A couple weeks ago I upgraded my laptop from Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10. This was my third time using the automated upgrade available through the built in upgrade manager.

As usual my experience was that Ubuntu made the upgrade simple and I only had one minor issue related to my sound device not working following the upgrade. After Google Search and search of the community forums I was able to find an easy resolution.

Now if only it were this easy and inexpensive (free) to upgrade to Windows 7….

Technorati Tags: Google, Laptop, Searching, Ubuntu, Windows 7

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