Manage Your Life with Outlook For Dummies E-Book

Greg Harvey

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 473

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2008

Beschreibung

* An all-new guide that unlocks the secrets of greater Office 2007 productivity-a must-have for power users and everyone who would like to work more efficiently * Offers scores of tips, tricks, and techniques to boost productivity with the programs people use every day-Word, Outlook, Excel, and PowerPoint * Topics covered include dealing effectively with e-mail, effectively managing files, using and creating templates, reusing and remixing content, sharing and reviewing content, and efficiently managing time and scheduling * The CD-ROM and companion Web site offer podcasts of key productivity tips from the book Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.

Leseprobe

Manage Your Life with Outlook For Dummies®

Table of Contents

Introduction

About This Book

How to Use This Book

Foolish Assumptions

How This Book Is Organized

Part I: Preparing for Personal Productivity

Part II: Making Outlook Your Key to Personal Productivity

Part III: Taking Control of Your E-Mail Inbox

Part IV: Developing Your Outlook Productivity Practices

Part V: The Part of Tens

Appendixes

Conventions Used in This Book

Special Icons

Where to Go from Here

Part I: Preparing for Personal Productivity

Chapter 1: Planning for Better Balance between Your Work and Personal Life

“If I Only Had a Life . . .”

Checking out some typical warning signs of work/life imbalance

Making work/life balance your number one priority

Imagining what work/life balance would look like in your life

Exploring Common Excuses for Remaining Unproductive

I’m just not an organized person

I’m just not good with technology

Not enough time to get it all done

I experience too many interruptions to be productive

I just don’t do all that well with self-help systems

Outlook and Personal Productivity

Chapter 2: Exploring Accepted Beliefs on Personal Productivity

When Organization Is King

Examining the relationship of clutter to productivity

Discovering why messy doesn’t necessarily mean unproductive

When Time Management Is Key

Identifying your time traps

Mastering moment-by-moment management

Multitasking in the Mix of Personal Productivity

Harnessing the Power of Goals and Objectives

Exploring the importance of setting goals in achieving peak productivity

Exploring the importance of establishing achievable objectives

All you need is a good review

Flowing Like Clouds and Water

Doing tasks wholeheartedly

Appreciating the true goal of personal productivity

Chapter 3: Surveying Some Popular Outlook Productivity Systems

Getting Cozy with FranklinCovey’s Planning System

Understanding Covey’s seven habits of highly effective people

Examining the importance of planning in Covey’s time management system

Understanding Covey’s Time Management Matrix

Checking out FranklinCovey PlanPlus software

Having Fun with David Allen’s Getting Things Done Productivity System

Looking at the five stages of the Getting Things Done productivity system

Doing away with your to-do lists!

Checking out the Getting Things Done Outlook Add-In

Seeking Out Sally McGhee’s Productivity Solutions

Understanding the stages of the McGhee Productivity Solutions (MPS)

Getting to know the Integrated Management System (IMS)

Checking out the MPS Take Back Your Life! 4Outlook add-in

Getting in Line with Linenberger’s Total Workday Control System

Looking at the eight best practices of task and e-mail management

Checking out the Information Management System Outlook add-in

Chapter 4: Defining Personal Productivity on Your Own Terms

Making the Most of Every Moment

Establishing your daily priorities

Appling some good old-fashioned 3D decision making

Anticipating interruptions

Getting it all down in writing

Too much information!

Keeping yourself ready for change

Finding Your Own Formula for Productivity Success

Knowing yourself

Considering productivity part of your self-fulfillment

Mastering your productivity tools

Getting yourself organized

Prioritizing your tasks

Always having a plan

Focusing on what you can do

Staying open to change

Avoiding information overload

Developing your interdependence

Part II: Making Outlook Your Key to Personal Productivity

Chapter 5: Mastering Information Management with Outlook

Making Outlook Your Personal Information Manager

Getting Really Comfy with the Outlook Window

Outlook’s medley of menus

Outlook’s trio of toolbars

Outlook’s plethora of panes

Using Outlook’s Medley of Modules

Dispatching any illusions about the functions of the Mail module

Scheduling some time for the Calendar module

Getting in touch with the Contacts module

Understanding the responsibilities of the Tasks module

Remarking on the utility of the Notes module

Recording the uses of the Journal module

Making short work of the Folder List and Shortcuts in the Navigation Pane

The Outlook Shortcut Keys You Need to Know and Use

Switching modules and views

Creating new Outlook items

Taking the shortcut keys out for a spin

Chapter 6: Giving Outlook a Productivity Makeover

Changing the Outlook Startup Module

Changing the Outlook startup folder

Automatically launching Outlook each time you start your computer

Customizing the Outlook Toolbars

Modifying the contents of a built-in toolbar

Rearranging buttons on a built-in toolbar

Creating your own toolbars

Checking out a recommended toolbar configuration

Adopting a New Point of View

Customizing the current view

Defining a whole new view

Have It Your Way in Outlook Today

Making Outlook Today your home base

Customizing the appearance of Outlook Today

Setting Up Categories That Are Just Your Type

Using category lists in Outlook 2003

Using category lists in Outlook 2007

Tailoring the Look of Assorted Outlook Modules with the Organize Pane

Customizing the Module Buttons in the Navigation Pane

Adding Outlook Gadgets for Windows Vista

Part III: Taking Control of Your E-Mail Inbox

Chapter 7: Doing Your Initial E-Mail Inbox Housecleaning

Getting Ready to Do Your Inbox Housecleaning

Using the Mailbox Cleanup Feature

Rounding Up and Deleting Unneeded Messages

Archiving Messages in Your Inbox

Organizing the Messages You Need to Keep

Creating Inbox subfolders for wanted e-mail

Rounding up and moving e-mail messages into their respective Inbox subfolders

Living with an Empty Inbox

Chapter 8: Doing Your Ongoing E-Mail Inbox Housekeeping

Keeping Your Inbox Spick-and-Span

Looking at various strategies for effectively dealing with new e-mail

Prioritizing and dealing with messages that require a response

Creating message rules to automatically organize some of your e-mail

Setting your e-mail options

Using AutoArchive to automatically clear out older messages

Backing Up Your Outlook Data Files

Copying your .pst data files to a new drive or disk

Restoring your backup .pst data files

Part IV: Developing Your Outlook Productivity Practices

Chapter 9: Creating and Sending E-Mail Messages Like a Pro

Composing Effective E-Mail Messages

Punching up the Subject line

Making good use of e-mail abbreviations

Composing concise and to-the-point messages

To Cc: or not to Cc: — that is the question

All about attachments

Creating Your Own E-Mail Signature

Tracking Your Important E-Mail Messages

Requesting a delivery and read receipt for a single message

Modifying tracking options

Chapter 10: Using Calendar to Keep Yourself on Schedule

Keeping Up with the Calendar Module

Subscribing to and downloading Internet calendars

Navigating your Outlook calendars with the greatest of ease

Customizing the Calendar options

Adopting a New Calendar View

All About Scheduling Appointments and Events

Scheduling one-time appointments and events

Scheduling recurring appointments and events

Setting up a meeting and sending out meeting requests

Sharing Your Outlook 2007 Calendars

E-mailing your calendar

Publishing your calendar to Microsoft Office Online

Chapter 11: Using Contacts to Stay in Touch

Adding New Contacts Like a Pro

Organizing Your Contacts

Eliminating duplicates in the contact records

Customizing the Contacts module’s views

Adding contacts to a distribution list

Putting Your Contacts to Good Use

Exporting Contacts to Other Programs

Chapter 12: Using Tasks to Successfully Stay on Top of Your Obligations

What Makes a Task So Special?

Task Management with the Outlook 2003 TaskPad

Adding a new task in the TaskPad

Selecting a different TaskPad view

Task Management with the Outlook 2007 To-Do Bar

Getting Productive with the Outlook Tasks Module

Removing completed tasks from your task list

Adding a new task from any module

Specifying recurring tasks

Assigning tasks to others

Chapter 13: Using Notes to Capture Your Ideas

Making Outlook Notes a Routine Part of Your Productivity Practices

Creating and Organizing Notes

Customizing and printing your notes

Using notes to create other Outlook items

Creating notes from other Outlook items

Searching Outlook notes

Sharing your Outlook notes

Successfully Using OneNote 2007 with Outlook

Inserting Outlook meeting details into OneNote

Creating Outlook tasks, appointments, and contacts from OneNote

Chapter 14: Using the Journal to Keep an Eye on Your Activities

Understanding How the Journal Can Help You Be More Productive

Making the Most of the Journal Module

Using automatic journaling

Changing the Journal view

Manually creating Journal entries

Chapter 15: Outlook on the Go

Getting Outlook Data onto Your Mobile Devices

Sending Text Messages from Outlook to a Mobile Phone

Using Outlook with Instant Messaging

Part V: The Part of Tens

Chapter 16: Top Ten Personal Productivity Strategies

Know Yourself When It Comes to Productivity

View Personal Productivity as Part of Self-Fulfillment

Master Your Productivity Tools

Get Yourself Organized

Prioritize Your Tasks

Plan for the Future

Focus on What You Can Do

Stay Open to Change

Deal Tactically with Information Overload

Develop a Healthy Sense of Interdependence

Chapter 17: Top Ten Outlook Productivity Techniques

Utilize Every Single Bit of Outlook

Organize Your Inbox

Keep That Inbox Near Empty

Send Really Effective E-Mail Messages

Make Outlook Today or the Calendar the Center of Your Productivity World

Share Your Calendar As Needed

Do Terrific Task Management

Take Note of Every Idea

Use Automatic Journaling to Evaluate Your Productivity

Take Outlook with You Wherever You Go

Appendix A: Personal Productivity Resources

Appendix B: Personal Productivity Self-Assessment

Manage Your Life with Outlook® For Dummies

by Greg Harvey

Manage Your Life with Outlook® For Dummies®

Published byWiley Publishing, Inc.111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030-5774

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Copyright © 2008 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

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About the Author

Greg Harvey has authored tons of computer books, the most recent being Excel Workbook For Dummies and Roxio Easy Media Creator 8 For Dummies, and the most popular being Excel 2007 For Dummies and Excel 2007 All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies. He started out training business users on how to use IBM personal computers and their attendant computer software in the rough and tumble days of DOS, WordStar, and Lotus 1-2-3 in the mid-80s of the last century. After working for a number of independent training firms, he went on to teach semester-long courses in spreadsheet and database management software at Golden Gate University in San Francisco.

His love of teaching has translated into an equal love of writing. For Dummies books are, of course, his all-time favorites to write because they enable him to write to his favorite audience: the beginner. They also enable him to use humor (a key element to success in the training room) and, most delightful of all, to express an opinion or two about the subject matter at hand.

Greg received his doctorate degree in Humanities in Philosophy and Religion with a concentration in Asian Studies and Comparative Religion last May. Everyone is glad that Greg was finally able to get out of school before he retired.

For the past two years, Greg has been actively researching productivity in the modern workplace and the various ideas and systems developed for improving work/life, especially using Microsoft’s Outlook software.

Dedication

To Katie Feltman in great appreciation of her unwavering support for the concept and execution of this book

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

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Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:

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Copy Editors: Virginia Sanders, Susan Christophersen

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Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies

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Composition Services

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Introduction

Make no mistake about it; the subject of this book is enhancing your personal productivity rather than using Microsoft Outlook. As far as this book’s concerned, Outlook is merely a means to an end, and that end is simply to bring your professional and personal lives into greater balance. And the full expectation is that this greater balance will bring with it a greater sense of satisfaction and fulfillment to both aspects of your life.

Fortunately, when it comes to enhancing your personal productivity, Outlook can serve you quite well. Beyond its obvious e-mail capabilities, Outlook offers a whole array of tools you can immediately start bringing to bear in your effort to deal more effectively with both your professional and personal obligations. The pages ahead, then, are chock-full of ideas, suggestions, and practical techniques all designed to guide you towards making Outlook the principal toolkit you use in your pursuit of enhanced personal productivity, better work/life balance, and greater happiness.

About This Book

Given that the subject of personal productivity has both its theoretical and practical aspects, so does this book. It consists roughly of one part vision and three parts application. The vision stuff in the first part gives you ideas on the current thinking of what it takes to achieve peak productivity as well as ideas on how to assess your own particular situation. The practical, Outlook-related information in the remainder of the book then gives you the lowdown on how to mold this program to fit your work/life situation so you can actually realize your productivity vision.

This doesn’t mean, however, that the book is meant to be read from beginning to end or from cover to cover. Although the chapters are organized in a logical order (progressing from the more theoretical aspects of personal productivity to the downright practical with Outlook), each topic covered in a chapter is really meant to stand pretty much on its own. It’s really up to you to figure out where you need to go and what information will be of most help.

How to Use This Book

This book is like a reference in which you start out by looking up the topic you need information about (either in the Table of Contents or the Index), and then you refer directly to the section of interest. I explain most topics conversationally (as though you were in my office). Sometimes, however, my regiment-commander mentality takes over, and I list the steps you need to take to accomplish a particular task in a particular section.

I do recommend you start, at the very least, by perusing the theoretical, assessment-type stuff in the chapters in Part I, even if you think you know exactly where you’re coming from and are quite sure where you want and need to go. I say this because framing (or reframing) the problem and possible solutions are often tremendous motivators that can really help get you going and keep you going. This type of fundamental assessment can also prevent you from wasting time on exploring practical, Outlook techniques in chapters in the later parts that really don’t address your most pressing and immediate productivity snafus and conundrums.

Foolish Assumptions

The only assumptions I make about you, dear reader (other than you’re highly motivated to bring your professional and personal life into better balance), are that you currently use either Microsoft Outlook 2003 or, the latest, Outlook 2007 for taking care of your e-mail and that your computer is running some version of the Windows operating system. And, as a result, you run Outlook every day (whether or not your computer automatically launches the program at its startup) so that Outlook is readily available to you whenever you’re at the computer.

As for your experience and skill level with Outlook, it really doesn’t matter whether or not you’ve ever strayed any further than its Inbox or that you have loads of experience using its more advanced features and other modules. The important thing here is that you maintain a willingness to explore aspects of this program that are new to you and to adopt a new perspective towards those aspects with which you’re already familiar.

Beyond that, you simply need to be open to developing habits that support and enhance your overall personal productivity. Remember that there are no gold stars for knowing more about Outlook and its hundreds of features. In fact, the only brownie points given are for knowing how to use those Outlook features that actually put you in greater control of your work and life.

How This Book Is Organized

This book is organized in five parts. Each part contains two or more chapters with related content. Each chapter is further divided into loosely related sections that cover the basics of the topic at hand. You should not, however, get too hung up about following along with the structure of the book; ultimately, it doesn’t matter at all if you find out how to manage your to-do list in the Tasks module before you find out how to do scheduling in the Calendar. The important thing is that you find the information — and understand it when you find it — when you need to explore a new aspect of personal productivity or use Outlook to achieve it.

In case you’re interested, here’s a synopsis of what you find in each part that follows.

Part I: Preparing for Personal Productivity

The four chapters in this part set the stage for using Outlook as your personal information manager. They not only give you basic information on the current thinking on just what it takes to be truly productive in the modern work world, but they also enable you to take a good long look at your situation and come up with your own definition of personal productivity.

Part II: Making Outlook Your Key to Personal Productivity

The two chapters in this part give you an overview of Outlook’s complete capabilities as a personal information manager (far beyond just your e-mail and address program). Chapter 5 acquaints (or reacquaints) you with the modular setup of Outlook and how you can use its various features in your quest towards increased productivity. Chapter 6 then gives you suggestions on how you might customize Outlook so that it better serves your productivity goals.

Part III: Taking Control of Your E-Mail Inbox

Increased personal productivity with Outlook starts and ends with taking control of your Outlook e-mail Inbox. The chapters in this part give you the lowdown on exactly how to do this. Chapter 7 shows you how to do a basic Inbox housecleaning and Chapter 8 then goes on to show you how to do ongoing housekeeping to keep your Inbox under your control.

Part IV: Developing Your Outlook Productivity Practices

The first six chapters in this part cover Outlook productivity practices in detail across each of its major modules. The final chapter in this part then gives you suggestions on how to take your Outlook data with you when you’re on the go. Together, the practical information in this part is designed to give you everything you need to truly make Outlook your complete personal information manager.

Part V: The Part of Tens

The two chapters in the Part of Tens give you access to two of my top ten lists. Chapter 16 gives you my top ten personal productivity strategies that encapsulate the attitudes that I think are essential for you to cultivate in your quest for increased productivity. Chapter 17 then gives you my top ten Outlook productivity techniques that you can use as a checklist in determining the types of new Outlook habits you should nurture.

Appendixes

The two appendixes give you a guide to more resources on personal productivity along with a tool for assessing your needs and goals. Appendix A offers a list of print and online productivity resources that you can consult for more information on this fascinating subject. Appendix B acts as an assessment tool that you can use to record your vision, aspirations, and near- and long-term objectives for achieving greater personal productivity and better work/life balance.

Conventions Used in This Book

Throughout the text, I give you keyboard shortcuts that you need to learn by heart in order attain top productivity. Most of these shortcuts are key combos that use the Ctrl in combination with other letters, although some use the Shift key as well. With these shortcuts, you need to hold down the Ctrl (and Shift key) as you type the letter.

When it comes to menu commands, this book uses command arrows to lead you from the initial menu, to any submenus, and finally to the command option you ultimately want. For example, if you need to open the File menu to get to the Open command, that instruction would look like this: Choose File⇒Open.

Finally, if you’re really observant, you may notice a slight discrepancy between the capitalization of the names of dialog box options (such as headings, option buttons, and check boxes) as they appear in the book and how they actually appear in Outlook on your computer screen. I intentionally use the convention of capitalizing the initial letters of all the main words of a dialog box option to help you differentiate the name of the option from the rest of the text describing its use.

Special Icons

The following icons are strategically placed in the margins to point out stuff you may or may not want to read.

This icon means the paragraph contains nerdy discussions that you may well want to skip (or read when no one else is around).

This icon alerts you to shortcuts or other valuable hints related to the topic at hand.

This icon highlights information to keep in mind if you want to meet with a modicum of success.

This icon indicates some suggestion or hint that you may find really helps you become more productive.

This icon alerts you to information to keep in mind if you want to avert some dire future problems.

This icon flags material that is specific to Outlook 2007, the latest version of the software.

Where to Go from Here

I have a couple of suggestions for where to go from here (after you get a chuckle from the great Rich Tennant cartoons). You may want to go directly to the Part of Tens to check out my top ten lists; in Chapter 16, you find a list for general productivity strategies, and Chapter 17 offers a list with a particular emphasis on Outlook productivity techniques. Otherwise, I suggest you start out by taking a look at the material in Chapter 1 and using its information and suggestions to start devising your very own plan for becoming as productive as you possibly can with Outlook so that you can immediately begin to bring your professional and personal lives into greater harmony.

Part I

Preparing for Personal Productivity

In this part . . .

Increasing your personal productivity to achieve greater work/life balance is not simply a matter of acquiring and applying new skills in Outlook. Before that, you need to do some assessment work. The chapters in this first part are designed to help you go through the process of understanding the place from which you’re starting as well as visualize the place you intend to be.

Chapter 1

Planning for Better Balance between Your Work and Personal Life