Sean Wallbridge
I was sending this out as a public service announcement for a client and it occurred to me I might as well blog the content as well, for anyone out there that might be listening. The intent is to provide a couple of quick Outlook Productivity tips to some end users, so don’t look at this as some giant comprehensive list, there are lots of places to go for that.
Tip #1 – Keep as few items in your INBOX as possible
At the end of the day, you really shouldn’t have anything in your Outlook Inbox and here is why:
Stress: Emails in your inbox mean something is left undone. Every email should have one of the following five actions, thus meaning it shouldn’t be in your inbox at the end of the day…
- Discard the email (delete it, the info isn’t useful so get rid of it)
- Delegate the email (task it to someone, now … not tomorrow)
- Take immediate action (if it will take 5 minutes or less to resolve, do it now)
- Put in a reference folder (don’t leave it in the inbox *see performance below*). Put it in a ‘non-default’ folder
- File it for follow-up (drag into tasks or your calendar and create a ‘task or appointment’ from it – see Tip #2), if the action item requires follow-up
Performance: Outlook will run slower if it has a massive Inbox – it takes longer to produce views, Antivirus programs will expect to scan it on every open, etc. and your OST files will be big (for caching) thus correcting corruption would take longer too. By Inbox, I mean the ‘actual’ inbox. You can safely create subfolders underneath it, beside it, etc. But it is ideal to keep the ‘actual inbox’ folder, tidy.
Microsoft Says So Too… http://support.microsoft.com/kb/905803
Tip #2 – Drag emails onto your tasks and/or calendar folders, to instantly create a task or appointment, based on the content of that email.
This one I use daily. If you have an email, that is some sort of ‘action item’ or requires an appointment to be scheduled to discuss or perform some work, simply ‘drag’ that email onto your Tasks folder (to create a task) or onto your Calendar folder (to create an appointment). This saves all the steps of typing out any details, etc. for the meeting or task – instead, it captures the whole ‘thread’ of your email, so all the history is intact (and then you can delete the original email, if you so choose).
Like this (drag an email onto tasks, creates a task, that you can then assign, set reminders for, etc.)…
Tip #3 – If you have to send really large files, use www.yousendit.com (so long as the content isn’t sensitive). Our mail system, just like any other, has a ‘maximum’ email size, in order to prevent someone trying to send a gigantic attachment that brings everyone else to their knees. In our case, it is 15MB (which is generous actually, many systems still reject after 5MB). So, in cases where you need to send emails larger than 15MB OR the destination email system is rejecting messages larger than their limit, consider using YouSendIt (www.yousendit.com). This is a handy little service where you simply do the following:
- Go to the website www.yousendit.com (for free, you can send up to 200MB, for like $8/month, you can send up to 2GB)
- Put in the recipients email addresses, a subject line and some text describing what you want to send
- Browse to the file you want to send and then click ‘send it’
What it does next is ‘uploads’ your file to a website, and then sends the other folk(s) a link from where they can download it (thus it doesn’t bungle up your email) and you can then send the file to dozens of people but you only upload it once.