Web Worker Daily

Zoli Erdos says: August 1st, 2007 5:14pm

Ouch, this would be a good post on Desktop Worker Daily … This one may be a better choice for Web Worker Daily:-)

DEC says: August 1st, 2007 6:16pm

Outlook’s search function is horribly slow and cumbersome. I’ve been using Yahoo! Desktop Search (http://desktop.yahoo.com) since it was X1 (before the Yahoo! buyout). It indexes your entire PC and e-mail, it’s lightning fast and has a built-in viewer for most of the files you might encounter. I can’t imagine working without it.

Judi Sohn says: August 1st, 2007 6:34pm

Zoli, we’ve long established that “web working” doesn’t always mean using browser-based tools exclusively.

Anuj Seth says: August 2nd, 2007 12:12am

Two tools that compliments Outlook well are Google Desktop and Copernic Desktop.

Both of them are free and if you have a large number of emails, either of them can help you dig it out at a blink of any eye.

Outlook’s Advanced Find is way too slow when you have a large PST file.

I’ve personally used Copernic, and its very good.

Judi Sohn says: August 2nd, 2007 1:49am

I used Copernic too. I appreciate the desktop search tools because you don’t have to “pre-think” your query. You just type in a few words of what you think you remember of the text along with maybe the person’s first name and the email you’re looking for shows itself. Saved my you-know-what quite often.

8 Ways To Microsoft Outlook Happiness - lifehack.org says: August 2nd, 2007 1:57am

[...] 8 Tips To Make the Most of Microsoft Outlook - [WebWorkerDaily] [...]

I hate spam says: August 2nd, 2007 2:21am

step 9: install Disruptor OL
step 10: enable power user mode in Disruptor OL

save HOURS daily

I hate spam says: August 2nd, 2007 2:21am

Disruptor OL filter feature alone makes it worth using!

Tatham Oddie says: August 2nd, 2007 4:04am

How about actually discussing a recent version of Outlook. The screenshots look like 2002, or perhaps 2003 at best! Office 2007 has been out for almost a year now …

Michel says: August 2nd, 2007 4:21am

The best tip for outlook is: don’t use it.

Zia says: August 2nd, 2007 4:46am

Thanks for this…

Anybody can tell me on how to completely delete ALL records (calendar/contacts)?

Chris In Cincinnati says: August 2nd, 2007 5:41am

I really like gmail’s spam filter so I filter my day job address through my gmail account before forwarding it on to another account.

So my work address is fLast@corporateBS.com, I have gmail check the account, use a filter to forward it to my fName@corporateBS.com address and delete it from gmail.

DeAnn says: August 2nd, 2007 6:06am

To what Tatham Oddie said about Outlook 2007, I work in an area that creates software for Attorneys, of the thousands of people we have using it, I can tell you less that 1% are on 2007, and less than half have made the switch to Outlook 2003. As cool as new stuff is most people don’t get new software until they have to. Heck even my printers ask for things in Adobe Version 11 still not the CD packages.

Zoli Erdos says: August 2nd, 2007 6:34am

Yes, Copernic is probably still the best desktop search software, really helped working in Outlook as well as other documents. But it got slower and slower. Now that I’m out of Outlook and basically off the desktop, Copernic can sleep happily, has barely anything to do.

Kevin says: August 2nd, 2007 6:53am

Some of us are forced to use Outlook on machines that are locked down tighter than Fort Knox. Therefore no 3rd party helper software. These tips help. Thanks.

Samuel Dean says: August 2nd, 2007 8:39am

Kevin, I know what you mean. Many, many people have no choice but to use Outlook all day–and often versions earlier than Outlook 2007, because of the two-fisted grip of corporate IT departments, who are often hesitant to migrate to new versions because of security and “newness” concerns. Those of us who have to use Outlook need to optimize it as much as possible.

Samuel Dean

MrMobile says: August 2nd, 2007 9:02am

Search Folders! Skip the searching altogether for common searches. If you are working with a specific person or on a specific topic, you can create a Search Folder in Outlook that acts as a virtual folder containing all messages that meet the criteria - automatically (the messages remain in whatever folder you put them in, but also appear in the search folder). It’s even better if you pin it to your favorite folders list.

For example, I have a search folder for all messages to/from my boss.

Just look down the list of folders for “Search Folders”, right click, add search folder, and define the criteria. Then right click on your new folder and select Add to Favorite folders to make it easily accessible.

Tim Marman says: August 2nd, 2007 9:14am

Search is MUCH improved in Outlook 2007… it integrates with the engine for Windows Desktop Search, with search boxes everywhere that are near instantaneous.

+1 for search folders too. I wrote a bit in the past about how I use search folders for feed reading and how I’m doing GTD in Outlook 2003. I guess I should update that post, because it’s even better in Outlook 2007.

Another favorite hack is to show incomplete tasks and tasks completed today to give you a sense of accomplishment.

MCTX says: August 2nd, 2007 10:03am

If you are a GTD follower on moving action email to TaskList. Try Ctrl-Shift-V (move) on message and “T” for Tasks. Then tab over for date (today, tomorrow, next monday, 6 months) and Ctrl-S for save.

The same works for Copy(Ctrl-Shift-Y) if you want to leave a copy in orginal folder.

Doug K says: August 2nd, 2007 11:33am

the best search for Outlook is from a third-party company, Lookout. Unfortunately MS bought Lookout and disappeared them. I have the Lookout installed in Outlook, it searches 2.5G of email in a couple of seconds. But it’s no longer available, and I didn’t keep the install kit, dang.
It may be that Lookout is integrated into Windows Desktop Search, in which case it would be worth downloading that beast and testing.

Foofy says: August 2nd, 2007 11:39am

As an addition to MCTX’s tip, you can also drag and drop the messages to other folders or the Shortcut bar. Also try dragging selected text or dragging to the other folders.

(Edit: Try not to post comments while logged in with the Boss’s account.)

Business Hacks » 8 Great Outlook Hacks on BNET says: August 2nd, 2007 12:01pm

[...] it or hate it, Outlook is a part of daily life for countless computer users. Web Worker Daily offers eight tricks that can help you make the most of Outlook, including viewing multiple weeks in the calendar, setting Inbox reminders to act on messages, and [...]

Litis says: August 2nd, 2007 12:03pm

A tip for Microsoft Outlook? Hmm… I might have one:
Use Mozilla Thunderbird, not Microsoft Outlook.
:)

thompson says: August 2nd, 2007 2:09pm

For those of you inhabiting the real world. Office currently has a monopoly, and whether you can admit it to yourself or not, it has some benefits. The Outlook .PST format is a handy little suitcase. I also like the MBOX format from Apple Mail, but they have not released that product for Windows.
I like the integrated Calender function and the newer abilities present in Outlook 2007. It is true to say that Outlook can be a great mail program, but when it misbehaves, Outlook can be ugly.
Thunderbird has it’s own shortcomings and for the average user, Plug-ins aren’t as easy to find or install. Outlook for all it’s faults, does an acceptable job of handling many things at once.

Top Posts « WordPress.com says: August 2nd, 2007 4:58pm

[...] 8 Tips To Make the Most of Microsoft Outlook How much of your day is spent on e-mail? A study done by the ePolicy Institute found that the average worker spends a […] [...]

gaali says: August 2nd, 2007 8:52pm

Doug, You can get lookout at http://www.majorgeeks.com/Lookout_d4808.html. Lookout is a must for outlook users.

kOoLiNuS says: August 3rd, 2007 3:56am

uhm, my previous comment containing 2 link probably was labeled ad spam, can you check it ?

Klemont Wright says: August 3rd, 2007 7:49am

to save inbox space while keeping those huge picture and video emails that you can’t live without, create sub-folders in your Archive folder. This can be used for all files. Instead of keeping them in your in box, especially those emails with photo attachments that your friends and family can’t wait to fill your inbox with. Anyway, I have several sub-folders with different names to keep organized. Some people create their sub-folders in their in-box folder, but the problem (space) is that all the emails are still in your in-box. You can keep them in your archive forever if necessary.

Tris Hussey says: August 3rd, 2007 9:57am

I like Lookout became Outlook 2007’s instant search. I agree with Copernic for DS … as for making Outlook really tick … ClearContext. It absolutely rocks!

And here is the hack to make Outlook 2007 run faster: http://www.pimpyourwork.com/finally-a-real-tip-to-speed-up-outlook-2007/

John Kenney says: August 3rd, 2007 12:06pm

Best recent discovery was figuring out how to color code messages from different sources so they pop better in my main view pane.

You can customize color, font, treatment, whatever. By person/address or groups of people or whatever. Very helpful.

View > Arrange by… > Custom… > Automattic formatting…

Anne-Marie says: August 3rd, 2007 12:35pm

Thank you for the permanent delete tip. After wondering why Office was locking up, I realized I had a huge amount of deleted emails in my send and deleted folders - and spent most of the morning cleaning it up.

Top Posts « WordPress.com says: August 3rd, 2007 4:58pm

[...] 8 Tips To Make the Most of Microsoft Outlook How much of your day is spent on e-mail? A study done by the ePolicy Institute found that the average worker spends a […] [...]

Kolz Blog » Blog Archive » 8 Tips To Make the Most of Microsoft Outlook says: August 4th, 2007 2:36pm

[...] 8 Tips To Make the Most of Microsoft Outlook August 1st, 2007 by Barb Dybwad How much of your day is spent on e-mail? A study done by the ePolicy Institute found that the average worker spends a whopping one hour and 47 minutes a day on e-mail, but web workers often spend far more time than that on it. That’s why it makes sense to take a break from sending and receiving your e-missives and get to know some of the efficiency-boosting tips and tricks you can use. A couple of minutes spent studying these can make you faster, better organized and more productive. Outlook is a fairly ubiquitous e-mail engine, and happens to be what I use all day. Here are eight Outlook tips that have helped save me lots of time and boost my efficiency. Viewing Multiple Weeks in Outlook’s Calendar. Sometimes an aerial view of your time commitments for the next several weeks is a great way to make plans. When you open Outlook’s calendar, show two consecutive months of dates in the upper right pane, then hold down your mouse button and drag to select every date from the left- top-most date to a date six weeks out. When you let go of the mouse button, voila! You’ll see six weeks of appointments neatly arranged for you to view from the clouds. Select Print if you want the aerial view of the weeks on paper. Set Reminders to Act on Messages. If you spend a lot of time in Outlook, this tip can really boost your efficiency. Easy as it is, it’s very underused. To set a reminder—visible in your Inbox–to act on or reply to any message, right-click on the message you want to set the reminder for, select Follow Up, and choose your Due By time and date. When you click OK, the message will be flagged for you to remember to respond to, and the date and time will be automatically kept track of. To clear the flag, right click on the message and choose Clear Flag. Use Advanced Find. If you get tired of waiting for Outlook to search for messages, or you get sick of sifting through too many search results for any given search term, use Advanced Find. Click Ctrl-Shift-F to bring up a dialog for it, and select options such as searching only in the Subject field of e-mails to save time. Quickly Peruse Related Messages. If you get a lot of e-mail, you’re familiar with the woeful feeling of wondering what was said before about any topic you’re currently reading about. You might even be wondering what you said about it if you said it a few weeks ago. For an on-the-fly look at all messages related to one you’re currently reading, open a message, select the Actions menu, choose Find All, and select Related Messages. A dialog will pop up and pertinent messages—sent and received–will be listed for you to review. Permanently Delete Messages. You can avoid the multiple-step process of deleting messages, then emptying the Deleting Items folder by simply holding down the Shift key when you hit Delete for any message. You’ll be asked if you want to permanently delete the message. If you’ve selected lots of messages for deletion, it works the same way. Just hold down the Shift key as you click Delete. Quickly Undelete a Message. If you have just deleted a message and want to bring it back, reach for the Ctrl key and press Ctrl-Z to make it reappear. Ctrl-Z is also the undelete tool to reach for in other Windows applications, and can be a lifesaver if you just deleted several pages of content in, say, Word. Check Spelling in All Messages. Do you frequently misspell things or is the professionalism of your e-mails very important to you? You can easily have Outlook check your spelling in all outgoing messages. Just click on the Tools menu, click on Options, and select Always check spelling before sending. Quickly Add a Contact from an E-mail. If you want to save the sender of an e-mail to your contact list, with the e-mail open right-click on the person’s name in the From field and select Add to Contacts. Especially if you delete e-mails frequently or haphazardly, this can ensure that your contact list stays organized. Do you have any Outlook tips of your own to share? Share This [...]

Chris Ainsworth says: August 5th, 2007 8:16pm

Use categories instead of folders to “store” email. That way, you can add as many categories to each message as you want, then you can build as many Search Folders in Outlook as you need to find the message categories. You can then use a Search Folder that looks for uncategorized email as replacement for your main inbox.

Since it’s difficult to store email in multiple folders in Outlook (without mucking about with making copies of email and having duplicates crowding your folders), categories will allow you to, in a sense, tag your email and have it show up where/when you need it, as you use Search Folders to slice and dice your email.

Rebecca says: August 6th, 2007 12:27am

re. flagged e-mails [To set a reminder—visible in your Inbox–to act on or reply to any message, right-click on the message you want to set the reminder for, select Follow Up, and choose your Due By time and date. When you click OK, the message will be flagged for you to remember to respond to, and the date and time will be automatically kept track of.]
*** further to the above…right click on grey toolbar in your inbox (From/To etc), Customise Current View/View by/then choose ‘Flag Status’ on Dropdown menu.**** this groups all flagged emails together according to colour you choose (urgency etc). Click and drag out of this grouped view when dealt with.

Make the most of Microsoft Outlook « Lawyer’s Right Hand says: August 6th, 2007 5:22am

[...] in MS Outlook, Excellence at 7:20 am by lawyersrighthand Web Worker Daily offers these 8 Tips to Make the Most of Outlook. Some of the tips were new to me, while a couple of others were timely reminders of features [...]

Technology Talk - 08/06/2007 says: August 6th, 2007 4:55pm

[...] Worker Daily gives us 8 Tips to Make the Most of Microsoft Outlook.  If you use Microsoft Outlook as your primary e-mail client, this is a must-read article. [...]

Liv2Freeze says: August 7th, 2007 3:28pm

Enjoyed the tips, even though only 2 were new, they served as good reminders. Question on the OUtlook Calendar- when I pull in multiple weeks, all I get is a bunch of little boxes which I need to scroll over in order to read the entries. How do I get a list view or something that is remotely readable without having to use the mouse?

TR says: August 11th, 2007 1:03pm

More on: Control-Z.
It’s actually “undo,” a convention used across Microsoft’s products and is helpful for undoing many actions, including when your elbow hits the keyboard and you have no idea how to undo the resultant random keystrokes.

It can reverse typing, formatting, moving between folders, and, as mentioned in the article, sending something to the deleted items folder. Unfortunately, it cannot be used in conjunction with the permanent-delete shortcut, shift-delete (also highlighted above). Once you shift-delete, it cannot be undone using control-z.

ERB Tech » What I’ve Dugg says: August 11th, 2007 4:50pm

[...] Making the Most of MS Outlook [...]

Web Worker Daily » Blog Archive Essential Tips for MS Outlook « says: August 16th, 2007 4:00pm

[...] Tips for MS Outlook In a previous post, I collected a few Microsoft Outlook tips that can help Outlook users get around hassles. Some of them were surprises for a few readers. In [...]

MS Outlooks Tips at TechBlog says: August 16th, 2007 7:05pm

[...] great post from the WWD. For all of us that use MS Outlook, there are some great tips for newbies which include e-mail your team, junk e-mail, specifying holidays on the calendar, and a [...]

Phil A says: August 17th, 2007 3:08pm

2 tips. Forget Outlook search and install Copernic Desktop Search. Couldn’t work without it. Secondly install Speedfiler, for those of us who have multiple projects and multiple folders it’s a god send.

Kolz Blog » Blog Archive » 6 More Essential Tips for MS Outlook says: August 18th, 2007 8:37pm

[...] Tips for MS Outlook August 16th, 2007 by deepchannel In a previous post, I collected a few Microsoft Outlook tips that can help Outlook users get around hassles. Some of them were surprises for a few readers. In [...]

nym lotay says: August 23rd, 2007 3:39pm

guys this is cool advice, thanks for sharing it with me; i am new to the whole GTD thingy - which i think by way is brillant. what i can not underdstand is WHY AREN’T MORE BLUE CHIPS taking it up and making it mandotary process. any way happy hunting - Nym

The Executive Assistant’s Tool Box » Blog Archive says: August 24th, 2007 6:38am

[...] This is a fabulous article about how to make Outlook work for you. Keep your eyes open for more on this topic in the future right here at EA Tool Box. [...]

Synch Your Google Calendar and Contacts with MS Outlook « Web Worker Daily says: October 8th, 2007 4:00pm

[...] For many more tips on Microsoft Outlook, see my previous post. [...]

Web Worker Daily » Archive Quick Steps Toward Working More Efficiently in 2008 « says: December 3rd, 2007 4:00pm

[...] you use Outlook all day, as I do, this blog has done quite a bit of coverage on how to get more out of it and work faster. There are also many useful [...]

Web Worker Daily » Archive Open Thread: What Did You Get This Year? « says: December 26th, 2007 4:25pm

[...] to make it perfect for you. Don’t forget our past tips on web worker standards like Firefox, Outlook, Gmail, iGoogle, and Google [...]

Web Worker Daily » Archive Five Ways to Get Off to the Right Start in 2008 « says: January 1st, 2008 6:41am

[...] Get Better at E-Mail. Depending on whose market research you look at, the average worker spends between 90 minutes and three hours on e-mail every day. If you, like many a web worker live in Gmail all day, pick up some new skills. Likewise, if you are constantly in Microsoft Outlook, there are proven ways to work smarter. [...]

Web Worker Daily » Archive 8 Ways to Optimize Your Time in MS Outlook « says: January 7th, 2008 4:00pm

[...] January 7th, 2008 (4:00pm) Samuel Dean No Comments If you work in Microsoft Outlook, whether you choose to or are required to by an IT department, you probably waste much more time in it than you should. It’s also very common for Outlook users to ignore the features available to them other than e-mail and calendars. In this post, I’ll gather up eight tips that can boost your efficiently with Outlook. Also, see the many excellent reader comments in my previous Outlook tips post. [...]

Community Lynx » Blog Archive » 8 Ways to Optimize Your Time in MS Outlook says: January 7th, 2008 5:33pm

[...] If you work in Microsoft Outlook, whether you choose to or are required to by an IT department, you probably waste much more time in it than you should. It’s also very common for Outlook users to ignore the features available to them other than e-mail and calendars. In this post, I’ll gather up eight tips that can boost your efficiently with Outlook. Also, see the many excellent reader comments in my previous Outlook tips post. [...]

Khan says: January 8th, 2008 11:27pm

Quickly Peruse Related Messages.
Please correct Action menu to Tools Menu.

Daryl says: March 12th, 2008 11:13am

For those on the lookout for lookout, you’ll find that the previous link above no longer works.

At the time of posting this comment, the following link does, however, work:
http://web.archive.org/web/20060831223528/http://www.lookoutsoft.com/Lookout/download.html

(if I have managed my A HREF properly…)

Headruch says: June 17th, 2008 3:26pm

I am having a problem emptying my deleted items folder. I am also having issues with deleting items from some of my folders. I get the message “The folder is Full” when deleting from folders and “The messaging interface returned an unknown error”
What can I do to fix this?

How I Learned to Love Outlook - Or at Least not to Hate it as Much | Sheri Larsen's Flying Cloud says: June 27th, 2008 1:14pm

[...] Web Worker Daily: 8 Tips To Make the Most of Microsoft Outlook [...]

WebWorkerDaily » Archive Setting Reminders in Resnooze and Outlook « says: August 1st, 2008 4:02pm

[...] by letting you remind yourself to follow up on messages you’ve received. You’ll find instructions in this post–very [...]

Darren says: August 11th, 2008 5:08am

Can anyone tell me - can I see who has viewed my calendar and when? Is ther a way?