Each Day Empty

If you keep your addresslist in Outlook, it would be mighty useful to be able to find a contact as quickly as possible. If only to look up a phonenumber or an address.

The standard button bar has a text field to do just that: ‘Search address books’.

Unfortunately, many people use their mouse to put the cursor in that edit box, which makes it quite a bit slower than if you could use a shortcut key to access this functionality. And Outlook doesn’t make it real clear what the shortcut key is. I’ll tell you: it’s F11.

If you press F11 in the Outlook main screen, you can then type in a few characters (at least three) of the name you’re looking for.

Then press the Enter key to start the search. If Outlook finds just one contact, it will immediately display the contact. If it finds multiple contacts, it will display a simple ‘Choose Contact’ dialog in which you can select the contact that you want.

You could also press F11 and then press F4 (or Alt+ArrowDown). This will open a list with the most recently searched for contacts.

Using more of the keyboard is the way to go if you value performance. If you’ve read my Each Day Empty eBook (I renamed it last week from ‘The Happy Outlook Book’ as some thought this was a confusing title), you know that I consider using keyboard shortcuts to be one of the most important strategies to optimize your use of Microsoft Outlook.

Where Getting Things Done gives most of the mental strategies needed to quickly process incoming e-mails, the process is made much more powerful and quick when adding some shortcut keys to your repertoire.

Fortunately, Outlook has lots of shortcut keys that you can take advantage of. As soon as you’re getting used to keep the mouse motionless on your desk, you’ll start to find situations where you’d like to use the keyboard.

From the Reading Pane / Preview Window

Like when you need to save one or more attachments from an incoming e-mail. Lot’s of people that we train or coach use the mouse for saving attachments, but even that can be tackled with keys only.

1. Open your inbox and display an e-mail with attachments in the Reading Pane in Outlook (View | Reading Pane | Right).
2. Press Alt+F, N to open the Save Attachments menu item from the main menu.

   

3. Select the attachment that you want to save, then press Enter to specify the location and filename for that file.

   

4. Or choose ‘All Attachments…’ and press Enter to specify the folder where you want to store all attachments for this e-mail. The original filenames will be used to store them in the folder you specify.

From an open e-mail

Some people open each e-mail to process it. That is quite a bit slower, but if you prefer to open each e-mail when processing it, saving all attachments with the keyboard is a bit more difficult, but can still be done.

1. Open an e-mail with attachments by pressing Enter.
2. Press Alt+H to select the first Tab on the Ribbon (Home).
3. Press ‘X’ to select the button ‘Other Actions’.
4. Press ‘N’ to select the ‘Save Attachments’ item.
5. Press Enter to select the dialog in which you can select which attachments you want to save.
6. Specify the location of the folder in which you want to save these attachments.

If you open an e-mail and want to save just one attachment, you can also press Shift-Tab, the press the Right cursor key and finally press the context menu key to open the menu which allows you to save the attachment.

Save time

Once you’ve trained your fingers to use the keyboard for saving attachments, this may save you 40% of the time needed to save an attachment. And apart from saving the time, it will also help you to keep focused on your work instead of having to invest the eye-hand coördination effort that using the mouse needs.

The easier you make it for yourself to perform each individual step of processing e-mail, the greater your chance that your inbox will be empty each day. At least once every day.

In the Each Day Empty eBook I describe how you can quickly get your inbox to empty each day. But after a summer holiday you may be in for some serious help to attack your inbox when you arrive at the office again. My own Outlook started to download 3200 mails when I returned – and I was glad that I already knew some of the following tips.

1. Learn how to sort and group e-mails in your mail reader. In Outlook you could use the View | Arrange By item in the main menu.
2. Sort all mails in your inbox by Subject. A lot of the spam that got through your spamfilter will be grouped together now. You can quickly remove all mails starting with Cyrillic symbols (unless you happen to live in Russia). Also all spam that happens to have the same subject over and over again can easily be spotted.
3. Then sort all your mails by the To field. This may not be relevant to everyone, but I still get e-mails (especially spam) that was sent to another e-mail address than my own addresses. Sorting this way I can remove these messages easily.
4. Now sort the remaining e-mails by From and Date. This way you will group all mails that came from each specific sender – and in the order that they were sent. Your mileage may vary, but I tend to quickly scan through all mails starting with the oldest one. But I don’t reply to any of the mails yet. This way I can read up on the developments, better understand my customers and employees, and still prevent myself from replying to something which is changed or revoked in a newer e-mail.
5. After taking these steps, I’m up-to-date again. I’m aware of current issues, I know whether there are serious problems that need my attention and I know which e-mails I’m going to want to answer first of all.

Even before I go on vacation, I already think about the first days when I’m back in the office. In my out-of-office autoreply I do mention the date that I think I will be answering e-mails again - and it is several days after I return from vacation. This way I prevent having to tackle my e-mail straight away and in an ‘urgent’ mood, just as I’m feeling rested and relaxed from my vacation.

Fortunately, once I’m up-to-date again it’s quite easy to keep my inbox empty each day for the rest of the year.

Once you start using Outlook as your trusted system, you run into a few problems immediately. One of them is the fact that adding tasks to Outlook folders can take quite a few steps to accomplish. Time better spent on more satisfying or creative tasks. Enter Fingertips.

Throughout almost all of Outlook you can press Ctrl+Shift+K to create a new task item in the default tasks folder. This works pretty good, but only for the default tasks folder, not for your Someday/Maybe and Waiting For folders. And it still requires you to start Outlook or switch your focus to Outlook.

For frequent users of the task list functionality in Outlook, using Fingertips could be a great idea. With Fingertips you can easily add tasks from anywhere in Windows to any tasklist in Outlook. And you can create custom commands to add tasks with specific categories or boilerplate text.

Open Fingertips command window

Once you have downloaded and installed Fingertips, you can open the Fingertips command window from anywhere in Windows to add a task to Outlook, start an application or surf to a favorite website.

Press Ctrl+Grave (`) to open the Fingertips command window

The Grave is probably located at the top-left side of the keyboard, or left to the spacebar. Pressing this key combination should display the Fingertips command window. In the options dialog of Fingertips, you can set this key combination to another combination if you prefer to do so.

Type the "na" command and the subject for the task

Type na, a space and the description of the task that you want to add to Outlook

"na" is the default Fingertips command to add a Next Action to the default task list in Outlook. Any text that you type after the default command and a space will be used for the subject of the task. Don’t use comma’s right away, as they are used by Fingertips to separate parameters for tasks.

Press Enter, or add a semicolon

Press Enter, or add a semicolon ( ; ) first, if you don’t want to see the Task Item itself

After pressing the Enter key, Fingertips will add the task to Outlook and display the Task Item for you to add any other information, set categories or modify the subject. If Outlook isn’t running yet, Fingertips will start Outlook first.

If you want to add a task to Outlook without extra information, you can close the command line with a semicolon ( ; ). Fingertips will then just add the task to Outlook, without displaying the Task Item to you first.

Creating custom commands in Fingertips

Once you get the hang of it, you can press the "Edit" or "New" button at the bottom right corner of the Fingertips command window to open the Options Dialog. In this dialog you can modify commands, copy them or create new commands.

As far as I know, using Fingertips is the fastest and easiest way to add tasks to Outlook. What are you waiting for?

Today Gina Trapani wrote two articles about two of my projects on Lifehacker.com, the premier website with lifehacking tips and tricks.

The first article is about Fingertips, a free utility that enables you to quickly add items to any list in Outlook. I developed it to make it real easy to use Outlook as my trusted system. I will definitely write more about Fingertips on this website.

The other article is about The Happy Outlook Book (now renamed to The Each Day Empty eBook), the book that I wrote about using Getting Things Done in Outlook.

Or as Gina Trapani says:

“For more GTD-inspired Outlook productivity strategies like this one,
check out the Happy Outlook Book e-book,
my source for this excellent Move and Copy toolbar tip.”

Thanks Gina!

Did you know? Since Outlook 2007 you can hide or display the Navigation Pane (at the left side of the screen) by clicking Alt+F1.

Use Alt + F2 to toggle the display of the To-Do Bar at the right side of the screen.

Ctrl + F1 hides or displays the Ribbon, this doesn’t work in the main Outlook window, but it can help to free up some space when editing a Task Item or other item.

Did you know that using a simple [w] in your emails can greatly improve the quality of your life? Read this step-by-step explanation for Microsoft Outlook to find out how this works exactly.

If you delegate, order, or ask anything by email, you can instruct Outlook to add that email to a Waiting For list, just by adding a simple [w] to the body of the email.

A [w] at the bottom of your email is so inconspicuous, that most people will not even notice it. However, it can be a powerful tool to keep your Waiting For list up to date and your mind at rest.

To enable this feature, we’ll have to create a new WaitingFor-Email folder and add a rule.

I copied this description from my webpage at http://waiting-for.com. I built that website to inform others about the [w] and encourage you to do the same if you want.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you receive a lot of mails each day, it can be quite handy to see immediately if a mail was sent to you directly, or if you’re just on the CC list.

In Outlook you set this up like this.

Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to this weblog.

My name is Taco Oosterkamp and I’m fascinated by using Outlook in the context of Getting Things Done, the system for time and stress management that was developed by David Allen.

On this blog I’d like to share tips and tricks about setting up Microsoft Outlook for maximum productivity. I will take inspiration from both the Each Day Empty eBook that I authored last year and the training courses that I develop and teach in the Netherlands.

Use the sign up box at the top-right corner to receive all published articles for free.

Enjoy! 
Taco Oosterkamp

(And yes, that’s my real name and it has nothing to do with burritos :-))