Outlook is a great program, but mainly I do one-on-one sessions for Outlook users. I do not tend to do as many Outlook classes as I do for applications like Excel, Access, etc. I do, however, get questions about Outlook from different students in some classes. I thought I might include some of the questions that I receive most on Outlook in this post, along with some tips.
- MailTips: For Outlook 2010 users who are on an Exchange server, you have a great feature available to you called MailTips. MailTips help you avoid common mistakes in Outlook For example, it would help you when you accidentally hit “Reply All” when you only meant to hit “Reply”. At the top of the message, it tells you how many recipients you are including in your reply, which would help you to quickly realize that it is going to 145 people instead of 1. To turn this feature on or off, go to the File tab > Options > Mail > MailTips.
- Calendar Share: Many of us work in a team or department. Sometimes, we need to be able to access someone’s schedule. Using Outlook, you can share your schedule via e-mail, on the Web, or using an Exchange server. To e-mail your calendar, choose the Home tab > E-mail calendar > choose the calendar to share > choose the date range > choose any other options > click OK. To publish the calendar online, go to the Home tab > Publish Online > Publish to Office.com. When you publish to Office.com, you can decide who gets to view the calendar. To share via Exchange server, on the Home tab, choose Share Calendar. You can pick the person(s) to share it with by adding them to the “To” line. The recipients are notified by e-mail that you have shared your calendar.
- Access Outlook remotely: Outlook used to be difficult to deal with when accessing it when you were away from the office. Now, you can use the Web Office Outlook to access your email from any of the major Web browsers. And, with cells phones, especially the Windows phone, you can get access to your Outlook information easily.
- Phone messages in Outlook: This is a fun, new feature in Outlook 2010 (if you use an Exchange 2010 server). You can access your voice mail (often in text and audio format) using the Unified Messaging and Voice Mail Preview elements.
- Conversation View: In Outlook 2010, you can now look at your inbox in conversations, instead of individual messages. Click the View tab and make sure there is a check in the Show as Conversations check box. You can choose to do this for All folders or just the current folder you have selected. When you go back to look at your inbox, you can open or expand a conversation by click on the small triangle/arrow to the left of the message header.
Hope some of these tips can help you enjoy using Outlook even more!
Have you ever thought about becoming Microsoft certified in Word, Excel, Access, Outlook or PowerPoint? I’m surprised at how many of the clients I train have not thought about adding a Microsoft Office Specialist certificate to their list of accomplishments.
In last week’s blog, I looked at Microsoft Office 2010 beta version. My focus was mainly on the overall changes across the whole suite of applications. I wanted to look at the new updates to the individual applications, too.
As 2009 is rapidly coming to a close, I know many companies are evaluating 2009 and planning their budgets for 2010. This year has been a rough one in terms of the economy. However, it looks like we are having some good indicators that we are at least beginning the recovery process. Some companies cut back on training budgets for 2009. As a proponent for training (as if you can’t tell from my blog posts) I have been thinking lately about how to encourage organizations to add that training component back to their budgets for 2010.
When some organizations think about providing training for their employees, they sometimes worry about the logistics of having the training on-site. What they usually find out is that they needn’t have worried at all. You don’t need to have a dedicated training room to have a successful training class on-site. The training room setup can prove to be very simple.
