The UsefulTechnology Blog

As my regular reader knows (if he's still conscious), I'm a big fan of Microsoft Outlook's CTRL+SHIFT+V shortcut which calls up the 'Move to Folder' dialog box. I use this a gazillion times each day to convert emails to tasks and calendar items using Outlook's handy AutoCreate functionality.

Another technique for mouse-fanatics is to press the right mouse button while dragging an item from one pace to another. When you release the right mouse button a list of available options will appear giving you a choice between copying and moving and text or attachment. 'Move' is generally better than 'Copy' because this avoids creating a duplicate entry. Call me Mrs Fussy-Knickers, but having a single instance of each item really helps keep Outlook neat and tidy.

Are you one of those people who like to print out emails? Nothing wrong with that, of course, as long as you only print them out for good reasons and not because you're too bone-idle to read them from the screen! Here's how to get more out of printing from Outlook:

While printing emails is sometimes unavoidable you can customise the way they print to reduce paper and ink consumption. In Outlook go to File > Page Setup > Define Print Styles. In this dialog you can edit either of the default print styles which are Table Style (for printing multiple items in a table) and Memo Style (for printing each selected item separately). You can also create your own print styles if these don't suit your needs. The customisation screen looks like this (including the header/footer options that I use on my shared printer in the office for Table Style printouts):

Why might you want to change Outlook's print styles? If you print emails on a private printer (i.e. not used by anyone else) then there's little point printing your User Name in the footer of the email. That's just wasted ink. Or you could customise the margins to maximise the printed area on the page while ensuring that important words won't have holes punched through them to fit in your filing system. Or change the orientation or page layout to make better use of your chosen paper size. Or add some custom text to the header or footer so your printed emails can be returned if ever you lose them.

Whatever you do, try to reduce the amount of paper and ink you use to print email. That's another small step we've taken to saving the planet...

If you use Personal Folders (.pst files) in Outlook, most of the time you simply add more stuff making them bigger. But if you delete items from a Personal Folder file to save storage space, you may not realise there are 2 very important things to do before you'll get the space back on your hard disk:

1. Right click on the Deleted Items folder within your Personal Folder and choose Empty "Deleted Items" Folder
2. Right-click on the topmost folder in your Personal Folders' file and select Properties, then click the Advanced button before clicking the Compact Now button. Outlook will compact your .pst file freeing up the space on your hard disk that it no longer needs. Note: if you've deleted a lot of stuff the compacting can take a little time so please be patient.

Item 1 on this list seems fairly obvious, but is easily overlooked. Item 2 is less obvious. "So why is it needed?" I hear you scream. In order to minimise processing delays Outlook doesn't automatically downsize .pst files when items are removed. This is because most .pst files simply grow and grow as items are added. Only the dedicated few are efficient enough to delete items they no longer need. Indeed, you could argue that deleting unwanted items from a .pst file is an inefficient use of times these days now that storage is so affordable. But it's still good practice to tidy up your Personal Folders every once in a while. Your local data retention legislation may even require you to do this if your Personal Folder contains old personal information (like contact details) about others.

Next time you dust off your .pst file remember to follow the two steps above. Your hard disk will thank you for it.

Did you know that you can change any folder in Outlook to display a web home page by default instead of its normal contents? For example you could change a mail folder to show a web page relating to a work project. The big downside of doing this is that you can't then see the normal contents of that folder, so this tip works best for empty folder that you intentionally create to display web-based information within the Outlook interface.

To set a folder home page, right-click on your chosen (preferably empty!) folder and select Properties. Then click on the Home Page tab and you'll see a dialog that looks like this:

Now simply enter a URL for your folder home page. You could choose a internet website, an intranet site or even an HTML page from your local computer. If you want to get really fancy you can even programme your own folder home page using the powerful Outlook View Control (see this KB Article for more information).

Don't forget to select the Show Home page by default option before clicking OK.

Now when you click on that folder you'll see the HTML page you selected, not the normal contents of that folder. I use this technique to display important intranet sites in a logical place in my folder structure. Useful stuff!

I had the privilege of watching the British Grand Prix at Silverstone as a guest of Vodafone/Ferrari yesterday. It was a great day with excellent hospitality, some star appearances, oh, and a bit of racing thrown in as well. The race itself was a bit of a procession with Alonso leading from start to finish. But it was still difficult to figure out the placings during the race, even with big screens all around.

The F1 veterans had brought along portable radios so they could listen to the commentary during the race. I wish I had! On my way home, I parked up for 3 hours in the UK's biggest car park (the M25) while waiting for the emergency services to re-open the road after an accident and compiled this list of technology every sporting fan should carry to get the most out of watching live sports:

• DAB Portable radio
• Noise cancelling headphones
• Digital SLR camera with long zoom lens
• 3G Windows Mobile Device to monitor race news on Internet
• Remote desktop access to media center PC at home so you can live rewind recorded television footage to figure out who just hurtled past you
• Motorised golfing trolley to transport all your techno gear

Or, for the optimal viewing experience, you can stay at home and watch it on television. However hard you try though, the canapés never seem to taste as good in your living room ;-)

Eileen recently posted about the ALT+1, ALT+2 etc shortcuts you can use to change the number of days that your Outlook calendar shows. That's a neat shortcut. One of my favourite related tips is to head into Tools > Options and click Calendar Options where you can change the default days that show in your '5 work week' calendar view. I like my weekly calendar to show all 7 days because (1) I use my calendar for both business and social activities and (2) Saturday and Sunday are invariably the most fun days of the week! Of course, I always use the 'Private' tick box in personal appointments so people who can access my calendar don't know I'm at a swingers party! ;-)

With all the day boxes ticked in this dialog box you'll now see 7 days when you press the '5 Work Week' button above your calendar. (Yeah, I know that doesn't make any sense, but go with it; it's a lot better than missing out on a great party just because you forgot to look at your weekend appointments!)

If you like working this way you may also wish to customise your calendar toolbar to now get rid of that utterly useless '7 Week' button. That view was always ugly and confusing. I'll bet you're glad to see the back of it.

Right, is it the weekend yet?

PS Don't forget to also customise your normal working hours so people can see when you're typically available for meetings if you share your calendar.

You can customise a bucketful of things in Microsoft Word, like shortcut keys and autotext entries. Trouble is, while it's easy to create shortcut keys, it's much harder to remember them.

Thankfully, help is at hand. Word makes it really easy to make a print out of your customisations. In Microsoft Word, click File, Print then choose what you'd like to print from the Print what: drop down list.

Careful formatting of your email messages can make a world of difference to the impact they have on their recipients.

THING TO DO:
One simple but underused technique is to
centre align your main call to action on the page

This simple technique can give the most important section of your email real standout, almost guaranteeing it will get read. Remember, of course, that someone reading your email in plain text, say on a mobile phone, may not see this formatting so use other text like "PLEASE ACTION:" to draw their attention to your request.

Speed tip: If you use Word as your email editor you can do this without even lifting your fingers from the keyboard by pressing CTRL+E. Your current paragraph will be centre aligned instantly.

By default, Microsoft Outlook opens to the folder view you specify in the top setting in the Tools > Options > Other tab > Advanced Options... window.

But you can also open Outlook to whichever folder you like by adding shortcuts to places like your desktop or web browser links. If you've ever tried to drag an Outlook folder to your desktop to create a shortcut you may have discovered that this doesn't work. The secret? Hold down Control before releasing the mouse button. Your shortcut will be created and you can now easily open Outlook directly into that folder.

Another (more complicated) technique is to use command line switches. To do this press the Start menu in Windows, select Run... and type outlook.exe /select Outlook:folder name (substituting folder name for the name of the folder you want). For a comprehensive list of command line switches see my previous blog entry.

Microsoft recently invited employees to submit their favourite Windows Live Local map collections for the UK. Here are some of my favourites:

UK Premiership Football Stadia (figure out how far from your seat to the hot dog stand)

UK Hedge Mazes (print out before you get lost inside!)

UK Theme Parks (scare yourself with a bird's eye view of a rollercoaster)

UK Qwerky Collection (including the Big Brother House from the air)

As a follow-up to my earlier post about message expiry settings, you might also like to customise your Inbox view to alert you to expired messages you have received. Here's what I do:

• In Outlook go to the Inbox
• Either right-click on an empty space in the Inbox message header window and choose Customize Current View or go to the View menu, select Arrange By then Current View, then Customize Current View
• Click the Automatic Formatting button
• Click Add
• Enter a names like Expired Emails
• Click Font... and selected the formatting that you'd like Outlook to apply to all expired emails in your Inbox (I use a strikeout effect so expired emails are effectively crossed out in my Inbox. I can still read them if I wish but I instantly know that they're out of date without having to consult the Info Bar)
• Click Condition... then the Advanced tab
• Click the Field drop down box and select All Mail fields then Expires
• In the Condition drop down box select on or before
• In the value box enter the word now
• Click Add to List then OK 3 times
• That's it

All emails in your Inbox that are expired will now be formatted just as you'd like them to be. Now if you could only teach your fellow Outlookers to make better use of the message expiry feature we could all avoid reading a lot of out of date messages.

Like fruit, communication is best when it's fresh. While you can't quite add a 'best before date' to your emails you can set a date after which they will expire (kind of like telling your words how long they have to live). This is handy if, for example, you really need a response to your email by a certain date/time. If the recipient hasn't responded by your deadline then the email will expire saving them the inconvenience of subsequently responding to an out of date request.

To do this click the Options... button on the toolbar while composing your email and tick the Expires after: box then set a date and time for the expiry:

The date/time you chose will then be displayed in the email recipient's Info Bar when they read the message.

Sadly there's no easy way to have Outlook read out a "This message will self-destruct at 12:35" warning with some onerous music in the background but those with a penchant for HTML will no doubt already know how to do this.

Great news for fast-fingered slow-brained writers everywhere: the 2007 Microsoft Office System features a new contextual spelling feature that detects many of the glaring errors that traditional spell checkers miss. This could be the cure I've been looking for to keep my blood pressure below danger point by eliminating common confusion between words like compliment and complement, discrete and discreet, lose and loose. Thank goodness!

Read about it here.

Just released and shipping now: brand new free tools to help customers transfer data from Lotus Notes applications to Windows SharePoint Services. The new tools comprise the Application Transporter a new Application Analyzer and improved Exchange-Lotus Notes Mail Connector.

Download at your leisure from:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/interopmigration/collaboration/default.mspx

Also from:

Microsoft Application Transporter 2006 for Lotus Domino
Microsoft Application Analyzer 2006 for Lotus Domino
Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Connector for Lotus Notes