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3 Good Outlook Tips - Resend Emails, Recurring Events and Creating Rules

Outlook is one of my favorite applications and definitely one of my favorite things to train. As a matter of fact, I'm doing a webinar on Tuesday April 16th with Ernie the Attorney at the Paperless Chase,  so if you like these tips and want to learn more you can sign up here. I'm using Outlook 2010 and 2013 between my laptops and desktops and just run my entire professional and business life from it. Here are three tips that always get a standing ovation when I speak (well, not really, but it would be cool if that did happen).

(The screenshots below are from 2013 but all these tips apply to 2003, 2007 and 2010. Just look around, the prompts or icons might be a little different)

Resend / Reuse / Recycle Sent Emails

Don’t waste precious time cutting, pasting or recreating emails. There is a handy "Resend" feature in Outlook.

1. From your Sent Items folder, Open the item you would like to resend.
2. On the Actions menu, click Resend This Message. 
3. Edit at will, click Send. 

Create a Recurring Meeting or Appointment

From the appointment or meeting that you want to make recurring:

1. On the Actions menu, click Recurrence (or click the Recurrence button).
2. Select the frequency (Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly) with which you want the appointment to recur, and then select options for the frequency.
3. Click OK > Save and Close.

Learn to Work with Rules

Rules are great for moving emails out of your Inbox and into subfolders (plus a whole slew of other things). Start with an easy rule like moving emails from a specific sender (like LinkedIn or Facebook) to a special folder that gets your attention when you have the time. Right click on an email and look for "Rules" or "Create Rule" and let Outlooks help you create the rule.

The look and feel of Rules has changed over the versions of Microsoft Office so if you want to learn more about rules in Outlook 2003 click here, for 2007 click here, 2010 click here and for 2013 take a look here.

Check out Legal Office Guru's blog post WITH A VIDEO! on setting up rules here. 

Don't forget about my webinar on Tuesday April 16! Hope to see you there. Get details and register here.

Critical Computer Skills Every Attorney Should Know - Pasting (Yep, I'm Serious)

This one is short and sweet and pretty easy but I'm still astounded at the number of times I teach this to someone for the first time. We all know there's a lot of cutting and pasting that goes on in a law firm, that's not the problem. The problem can often be in the results of the paste. Let's discuss.....

There are equally many way to paste as there are to copy. So to copy, you cannnnnn right-click copy, edit > copy, CTRL+C, Command+C, click the copy button...and on and on and on...pick your favorite.

To paste you cannnnnn right-click paste, edit > paste, Command+V...and on and on.....BUT  BUT BUT, often, there's more. In most programs that allow formatted text, you will have an option/s for HOW you paste. Do you want to paste the text "as-is" - or do you want to paste it "text only" or do you want the program to try and "match" the formatting of the text you are pasting into? Well, believe it or not, these are very important questions. Why? Because often you don't know what kind of "information" is hidden behind your copied text. And in today's world we are copying from our own documents, old documents, new documents, someone else's documents, an email, a PDF file, the internet, from Westlaw, from Lexis, from Rainmaker, from....O-M-G...need I go on? You get it right? You are copying text from ALL OVER THE PLACE! And that text can be carrying code that makes it green, italicized or font Helvetica, it can have metadata attached to it, it can have a hyperlink to the source or it can have an automatic numbering code from WordPerfect 5 in it...it's crazy. And it's crazy because you it doesn't always reveal itself. These characteristics (hidden or visible) can cause your document to do weird things like causing your numbering to go wack or even cause major document corruption.

To easily prevent any unwanted surprises from arising, you should almost always paste text into a new document as plain text (aka "Paste Special") and then format that new text as you need it to look. Generally, you will have an option offered up by the program you are using. Which program do you use?

• Word 2003 paste options
• How to Use Paste Options and Paste Special in Word 2007
• Formatting options to Paste copied text in Word 2010
• Word 2011 for Mac paste options
• WordPerfect paste special

Couple of extra tips:

• For existing text in Word 2003-2010, look for the "Clear Formatting" button or option. It's magic!
• If you're using a program that doesn't have fancy paste options (like a cloud-based word processor), simply open up a plain text editor (like Textpad in Windows or TextEdit on the Mac), paste into it, then copy that plain text again.
• DO NOT disable the Paste Options function - it's one of the best things they've ever done to word processing!

Outlook's Delay Send is a Godsend

How does it happen? Two voices in your head simultaneously cry out, "Go ahead and click send, you're all set" while the other one is screaming "You forgot the attachment!" or "Hey Dumbass, you clicked Reply to All" or even worse, "Don't send it while you are still fuming! Wait!" We all know how that movie ends and we all know how we wish it could unS-END.

Can you recall, retrieve or unsend an email message that has gone out? No, the answer is the NO. In the old days of AOL and even Groupwise, you sure could (if the recipient had not opened it). But today, short of getting onto the recipients actual PC and/or smartphone and/or webmail and/or laptop and/or the other tens of places your ONE email can land, you can fuhgedaboudit.

GMail has a new feature in its Google Labs that allows you to "unsend" a message within 5 seconds and that's kinda cool - I say meh.

Now, what you CAN do if you are an Outlook user is set up your outbound messages to sit in your outbox for a few minutes before they deploy. By default, Outlook is set to send an email out of your OUTBOX and in to another's INBOX as soon as you hit the SEND button - immediately. You can turn that off and then tell Outlook how often it should send - like every 3, 4, 5 or ten minutes. Here's how you set that up:

From Outlook, begin by going to Tools > Options > Mail Set Up tab. There, you will see a check box to "Send immediately when connected". When this is checked - it does exactly what it says it will do - Send an email out  for immediate delivery as long as you are connected [to the internet]. If you are not on the internet, then Outlook will send as soon as it detects that connection.

You can uncheck it and then click on the Send/Receive button just to the right of that option. That leads you into the following window:

 

Look for the option to "Schedule an automtic send/receive every X minutes". By default, this is set to 30 minutes. So for those of you who think your Outlook is slow or not sending and receiving in a timely manner, you can change it here. I have mine set to checking (and sending) every 5 minutes. When I need something to go out immediately, I simply push the Send/Receive button on my Outlook toolbar and off it goes. Also, when someone says "I just send it to you, you should have it by now" - I also click that Send/Receive to force a check.

So my outbound emails, will wait for a few minutes before flyingout which then gives me the chance to open the email (if needed) and edit it before I look like an idiot.

Now, these tips are really good for those of use without an Exchange server and an IT department controlling our mail options. If you find that you can't change these settings or they don't seem to comply, talk to your local IT person and see if they can help.

By the way - want to learn more about using Outlook? I'm doing some webinars on Outlook (first one in a series of three is this Friday) and a few other topics in my monthly webinar schedule. Check it out here.

Outlook - Finding An Email in a Haystack

Seems to be that we all spend too much time looking for information - especially  when it comes to our inboxes. While the searching features in 2007 are much improved, here is a tip that you can use in any version of Outlook to quickly filter and search for emails that are related to a specific person or a specific subject.

Right-click on an email, go to Find All, then select either:

• "Related Messages" to see all the emails in your inbox, subfolders, sent items and even deleted items that are threaded to the email you selected. You'll see a new window pop up which will display the results of your search. It will show you the dates of the messages and even the folder where the message is located. 

or select

• "Messages from Sender" to find all messages from that particular sender. It displays the search results as described above. You can also sort the messages by clicking on the column headers (Received, From, etc). Additionally, you can rearrange the columns in this view as easily as you can your inbox columns. (See previous post about Maximizing your Screen Real Estate).

Outlook - Maximizing Your Screen Real Estate

I consider myself one of Outlook's Cupids. Every chance I get, I try to shoot an arrow through any attorneys heart (finding it can be tricky with some of them but I'm a reallllll good shot) with Outlooks name all over it. I love Outlook and most of my technology-meets-time-and-information-goals are to use it as my one-stop shop and resource for all I have and need in that way. So when I'm training it, the very first thing I talk about is making the most of your morning kiss (as I so call it) with  Outlook.  You know what I'm talking about, you click to launch Outlook and watch as it coughs and puckers its way onto your screen...then it loads all those messages that filed in over night and when done ARRRRGGGGHHHH - the visual equivalent to bad morning breath after a long night of poker with the boys. Your screen loves seeing you make that face.

So what can you do to minimize the impact? Begin by maximizing your screen real estate by organizing the Inbox main view to suit your needs.

Let's start by working with the columns. See, your Inbox is made up of rows and columns really. Each email message, a row. Each heading ("From" "Subject") a column. You need to streeeeetch those columns out to see as much as possible and you need to be picky about which columns display. For example, if you're in a big firm and often get emails that go TO "All Attorneys" or "Everyone" - you may want to add the TO column to your view. That way you can see immediately those emails that came directly TO you (likely more important) than the ones that went TO "OfficeSoftballTeam".

So here are the first four things you are going to do:

• Rearrange the order of columns by dragging and drop them around
• Delete columns you don't REALLY need on initial view by dragging the column heading down until you see a black X then releasing
• Add new columns by right-clicking directly on a column heading, go to Field Chooser, drag fields onto your column row
• Resize columns by placing your cursor between two columns, look for double-arrow, then drag to desired width

Here it all is in a handy video for you:

Outlook Calendar: Viewing Non-Sequential Days Sequentially

 There's a little known yet immensely useful feature in Outlook that allows you to click, pick and view non-sequential dates in Calendar and it's so easy your eyes will roll back into your head and you'll say to yourself, "You gotta be kidding me." Soooo let's say you receive a call from a client who available to meet on any of the following days: July 31, August 8 or August 21...

1. Start by going to the Calendar view in Outlook, you'll see (hopefully) a thumbnail view of the current month on the left hand side of Outlook .
2. Press and hold the Control (Ctrl) key down as you click on the dates you want to view.
3. The big Calendar pane to the right will change to show you only those dates.
4. You can even select dates in other months by going to those months (see red arrow on graphic) and still Ctrl + Clicking.

Outlook is Acting Funny.

Well of all the Microsoft applications it does have the best sense of humor - so what do you expect? I received an email from a sweet gent I met at the ABA Spring meeting a few weeks back about Outlook's "goofy" behavior. He wrote:

The one Office program that remains an enigma to me is OUTLOOK.  I hesitate to use the "contact" and calendar features, because of its vulnerability to trojans, worms, and viruses.  And I just recently bought a new XP computer with Outlook 2003, because Outlook 2000 on my W98 computer would crash every other time I replied to a message.  (Outlook 2003 has done that once or twice, so something is still goofy.)

This is my biggest question, however.  Do you have any strategies for "saving" email messages in a format other than an archived Outlook .pst file, that can be text searched and identifies who it came from in the file name?  If you just save it as a txt file, you need to rename it because it names it as the subject.  That won't work for a string of replies. My inbox and sent folders are huge.

My response:

First, you're crazy...with up-to-date and proper virus protection, you shouldn't be afraid to use Outlook. It's an amazing tool for organizing your time and data, so get on it. (Sometimes I have to use Tough Love with these attorneys.)

Sounds to me like your issues with OL could be because your PST file (your entire Outlook file) is too big. If I remember correctly, you're either a solo or with a small firm and likely not running Exchange Server (which allows very large Outlook files). Outlook PST files take a BIG HUGE dump at 2 gigs. So you definitely need to keep an eye on it and archive regularly. Here is a link explaining the PST file size issue (and a bunch of other things) and then  another link to a handy utility you can use regularly to run some maintenance on that PST.

http://www.brienposey.com/kb/pst_maintenance.asp
http://www.slipstick.com/problems/scanpst.asp

Now, as for archiving. If you havent bought it yet, then this will be the BEST reason ever to dole out the dollars for a very important tool:  Acrobat 8 Professional. It will allow you to point and click at a folder in Outlook and convert that entire folder into an organized and searchable PDF file from which you can manipulate emails individually (that is still pull out only certain pages to forward on if you have to). It does convert all the emails to PDF (does not leave them in native Outlook format) as if you had printed them to paper and filed them in a cabinet. You can search for text, sort by sender or sort by date.

Making it Work..Step 3 - Talk About It

This could be the hardest part of our little project. Some of you  are going to do just fine - but many of you will struggle, perhaps even die. Survival of the fittest, my friends, survival of the fittest. You're going to have to communicate to all the right people what's expected of them. Yes, it's true. At some point technology just can't do it all, and we, the humans, must take action.

It is now time to gather the troops and talk about this new system.  Who's in? Who's out? What will be the magic word to be placed into the Subject line of the email? Will there be a syntax convention?  What other information will/can/should the call attendant gather? Can he or she include certain info that is useful to the recipient (is it a current client, a potential client)...etc. I think you get the picture. Although it's an incredibly minor adjustment to an already existing system - think about what you are doing.

It used to be that a caller's information was stuck in two places, on the pink note and on the carbon copy. Now, you have live data that can be searched and manipulated and at best, added to a permanent and shared contact database.

Outlook Phone Messages Rule...Step 2

We're going to use the Rules Wizard in Outlook to create a really simple rule - one that moves any messages with the text "CLLR" into a folder for phone messages. Hopefully, this will inspire you to take a closer look at Rules and see how powerful they can be in helping you organize your emails and info. Let's do this.

1. Go to Tools > Rules and Alerts
2. Click on New Rule
3. You should get a dialog box that looks something like the one pictured here. I'm using Outlook 2007 for these screen shots, they look quite similar to 2003. If you have an older version, you should still be able to follow along.
4. Click once on the predefined definition that says "Move messages with specific words in the subject to a folder".
5. Then, on the lower portion of the dialog box, click on the blue "specific words" link that will lead to another dialog box. Here you want to enter a key word that will trigger the rule. You can use "Caller" but careful with that one since it's a real word that might not just have to do with a phone caller, how about something that's not a real word like "CLLR" - whatever you want - I'll let you decide on that one. (Click ADD, then OK to close.)
6. Now click on the blue hyperlink text that says "Specific  folder". That will open another dialog that will allow you to choose the folder we created yesterday. (Click OK to close.)
7. You're almost done - you can follow the wizard as it  guides you through the remaining dialog boxes - which are quite self explanatory and shouldn't require too much input from you other than an exception to the rule if you want one (isn't there a saying about that?).
8. At the end, be sure to name your rule and turn it on. Your screen might look something like the one pictured right.

That's it for today. Tomorrow, we tackle the receptionist - let's hope she's not bigger than you are.

Making it Stop…Step 1 - Create a New Folder in Outlook

Ok, ok, you twisted my arm. Let's do this in baby steps, together. The first thing we want to do is create a new folder in Outlook for your Phone Messages to get filed into.

• Open Outlook
• RIGHT-click on your Inbox to select New Folder.
• Name it Phone Messages or whatever you want. If you want it at the top of your subfolders call it "aPhone Messages"(you can also drag it out of the Inbox folder and make it a main folder under Mailbox).

That's it for today. Next time we tackle the rule – the one that tells Outlook to move Phone Messages into your new folder.