I Heart Tech

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.

Please make it stop...

Nothing hurts my hard-wired heart more than walking into an office to the site of these pink relics. Sometimes they're like Dead People, I see them - EVERYWHERE. They're on desks, under desks, in briefcases, on spikes, on my lap...it totally kills me. The one place I never see them is in the garbage. Once, I threw one into a garbage can and It spit it back at me. I'm not kidding. It's just soooo OLD - there's really no excuse for this system of communication.

Wouldn't it be great if your receptionist sent you an email that filtered into a folder called "Phone Messages"? And from there you could open the message, see who called and maybe, if she was kind enough, she would have attached their full Contact Card from your firm Address Book with the latest phone numbers and maybe even their picture? Wouldn't that be great? What if you were out of the office, and getting your email on your smartphone and you got the message there too? And what if you lost Riley Brown's phone number but you know that you once had a phone message from him and you could search for his name and find it? And what if you could easily take a new callers name and phone number and easily create an Outlook contact for them? *looOOOOoong sigh* oh to dream.

Outlook: Color Code Your Life

I had the pleasure of meeting with one of the coolest attorneys I know today. He recently relocated right here to Orlando and is in the process of opening a small office. He has a shiny new laptop - and not to mention a really hot assistant named Bella! - so I was throwing some tips around when one of them sparked this reaction "What!? You gotta tell people about this! It'll change lives!" Hehehe...I got a kick out of that and certainly do hope that it does   SOMETHING for you even if it doesn't change your life dramatically. We were poking around in Glen's Outlook calendar when I noticed that it looked a bit dull, it had no color. I'm a visualist so I've set up my calendar to take advantage of Outlooks color coding system. Glen's calendar, on the other hand, totally bored me. I commented on it and he said that the categories Outlook offers aren't useful for him; so I showed him how he can rename the category colors to suit his life and practice. First, in case you don't know, when you create an  appointment, you can assign it a color (called a Label in Outlook). It's very easy to customize the Label list. You can either go to Edit > Label > Edit Labels (not kidding) or you can look for the icon on your toolbar that looks like a little Rubik's Cube and click on it. Edit and save. Let me know if your QOL has improved.

Save Yourself: Outlook and DST

Sometimes I feel like there are things that I just don't have to tell you, but then I just think, eh, why the hell not? What if this is the only place you come to for information? What if that were the case and I failed to talk about what everyone else is talking about and you missed it? What if anyone were that pathetic?? Well, anyway, if I can help just one person with a post on a topic that's already been written about, reported on, blogged to death blah blah blah..then it's ok. So pay BIG BIG attention if:

1. You DO NOT have an inhouse I.T. person or department that helps you
2. You DO use Outlook to manage your appointments
3. You have NOT heard about the Daylight Savings Time kiss-of-death from Microsoft

Here's what happened. The government went and made a big decision about DST without running it by Microsoft. When will they learn who really runs this great country of ours? They decided that this year we are going to start DST 3 weeks earlier than usual (on March 11 this year) and end it one week later than usual (November 4). Well, many of our beloved Microsoft products just do not know what to do with themselves because of this "unexpected" development (Energy Policy Act of 2005). As a result, you, me, we, your IT staff and anyone else who lives in an area that observes DST is scrambling to make sure we have prepared our computers for "the change". If you don't take some action it's possible (read: likely) that your computer will suffer from hot-flashes and mood swings and in retaliation will screw with your appointments and any other applications that rely on dates and times, therefore, blowing up and ruining your life during the 3 weeks after March 11 (even Mac lovers who use Entourage can be impacted).  So here's what you need to do:

1. Go here and read all about it (Microsoft's info page about this mess)
2. Make sure your computer is up-to-date with downloads from Microsoft. If you aren't sure about what/when/how for updates, visit this page from Microsoft, it's an FAQ and very informative.
   I have sat down at MANY computers - to find this little yellow shield    in the corner of a monitor. That is Microsoft's whistle-blower. If you see it, your computer is not up-to-date and you better get on it (don't confuse it with Symantec's virus protection shield, that one is turned sideways a little and does not have an !).
3. Print out, yes, you heard me and it pains me to say it - print out your calendar so you have a good copy.

Well I hope that helps, I'm going to try and post more, I have so much I want to write about but time, time, time...why can't Microsoft give me more of it?

Lovin' LinkedIn - Contacts and Connections

I got a call today from my favorite CFP®, Kirk Tassell. He uses Outlook  to manage his contact database and wanted some help "wasting less time". He thinks he spends too much time copying and pasting data from a signature block  to an Outlook contact. He says that sometimes, and later to his chagrin, he doesn't bother adding someone's information because "it's such a hassle". Well he's right!

There are several tools out there to help. A while ago I wrote this post about 3rd party tools such as AddressGrabber and Anagram. I had PAID for AddressGrabber - $70! Isn't that insane? At the time it was worth it and I did use it a lot.

Since then, I have fallen for another tool, one that is - guess what - FREE. It's an add-on from LinkedIn called Contact Builder. Click here to see it in action - I made a movie for you.  I should mention that those other tools are worth looking into as they have some additional features that you might like.

LinkedIn is a seemingly popular and self proclaimed "professional" networking site - I can say that I've never landed a date from there that's for sure! I've had my profile on there for quite some time and can report that I have never received spam or other junk from them. That's been my experience, others may say different. Anyway, the point here is about the technology - which is pretty cool. Once you sign up, you can download it's Outlook Toolbar. Aside from Contact Builder, it also installs a "Dash- board" that does something I've always wanted: it reminds me when I haven't heard from or contacted "Kirk Tassell" in x number of days. It's not very intrusive, butting in occasionally to ask me if I want to scan my Outlook emails for any potential new "connections." It's worth a look. Check it out. Here are what some other blogs have had to say about it:

• Connectedness: LinkedIn Dashboard--personal networking manager
• LinkedIn Widget for MacOS X Dashboard !!!
• LinkedIn Outlook Toolbar rocks

Outlook: Resend/Recycle/Reuse

Here we go again! Don’t waste precious time cutting, pasting or recreating that which you have already done.

Resend/Recycle/Reuse emails you have sent:

1. From your Sent Items folder, open the message (or appointment or task) you want to resend.
2. On the Actions menu, click Resend This Message.
   
3. Edit at will, click Send. (Don't forget to change who the message is going To if the new recipient is different.)

This tip translated to spanish...

Overcoming Email Overload - An ABA Webcast

July 20, 2006Join some of your favorite legal tech personalities (including me!) for an educational and enlightening CLE session that we can all use. Overcoming E-Mail Overload: Techniques and Tips for Avoiding Malpractice, Streamlining, and Improving Effectiveness on Thursday, July 20, 2006. Details and registration here.