Save attachments with the keyboard

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.