Michael Linenberger's Blog

Hi there, in this quick poll I’d like to simply ask this:
What sort of product do you or your colleagues need next?

First I’d like to thank those of you who responded to my quick poll about whether a Mac version of the MYN video course was needed. The results? Only 18 people said a Mac version was needed. So that pretty much eliminates that idea.

And so I want to keep asking, what do you or your colleagues need next?

The last new product we made, the Outlook Inbox Ninja video course, captured a ton of our latest thinking. So are there variants of that which you think are needed? Or a whole other area of course work? Perhaps smaller, quicker training? Different price points? Different platforms? Note, all of our products are at our store link, so maybe glance at that as you consider what is needed next.

Thanks for your thoughts, I appreciate it. We are planning our next push forward to help people like you get even better control of work and communications, and want to make sure we hit a target that really helps people—lots of people. So write anything that comes to your mind, either in a reply to this email or in the comment section of the blog posting.

Thanks again,

Regards, Michael Linenberger

In the big online world of misinformation about email and work habits, it is refreshing to read this thoughtful article in the NY Times about the importance of responding to incoming email.

The author’s point is that workflows break down if email is not a reliable way for people with reasonable work messages to reach you. People are forced to seek you out in person or on a call, which takes much longer. He even says that for managers, email non-responsiveness has become a marker of ineffectiveness when those above you consider you for promotions and new roles—bad email habits can be career limiting.

My thoughts? It depends on the industry and corporate culture of course, but I largely agree. Here are my rules on email responsiveness that go well beyond that article:

Reasonable Response Time

Email readers and writers should assume that a reasonable response time for email is around 24 hours. If, as an email writer, you have an emergency that needs a faster response, use another medium (phone call, text, IMS, or even a walk-in personal visit). (The exception to this is for those in a quick-response help desk or emergency team where quick email response IS expected. But that’s not most of you.)

Supervisors: Don’t Demand Instant Email Response

So, as a supervisor, don’t try to use emails as your method of getting quick responses from your staff. Don’t send an email and then 30 minutes later call the recipient and say “Hey, didn’t you get my email, I need this now.” That forces your staff to be constantly monitoring their Inbox which means they will get lost in other low-priority mail all day. That will lead to them being non-productive for real work. You as the supervisor should use a phone call (or other agreed-to faster means) for urgent, quicker-than-24-hour matters.

This is about the new yellow highlighting on flagged emails in Windows Outlook in Office 365.

First, here is how you turn it off if you don’t like it (and how to turn it on if you don’t have it and want it):
https://www.michaellinenberger.com/blog/option-to-turn-off-flagged-mail-highlighting-added/

And here are more details:

As I have mentioned in a previous post, the new versions of Windows of Outlook that are rolling out to the monthly Office Insiders group in Microsoft Office 365 are pretty darn good. You might have to activate the Coming Soon switch to see them, but the things I’ve mentioned so far that I really like are:

• The Simplified Ribbon option (Excellent!)
• Slightly more space between messages in the Inbox (Nice)
• And slightly more vertical space between tasks in the To-Do Bar task list (Very Nice)

Whoever in Microsoft is managing these new changes, I’d like to take you out to lunch! Unlike changes in years past, each and every one of these changes, I feel, makes desktop Outlook a better product without limiting previous features. Bravo!

One of the new features rolling out in recent Insider Coming Soon versions of Outlook is one I’d like to highlight now. It is this: Flagged mail now gets a yellow highlight.

Microsoft has been improving Outlook Mac lately, so I am thinking about creating a Mac version of my MYN-Outlook Complete Video Training.

But my Question is this: Is a Mac Version of the Video Training something you would be interested in? 

I don’t want to spend the effort to create all these custom videos if there is little demand, so let me know what you think—reply in the comments section of this post, or, if reading this in my email newsletter, by replying to the email. Thanks!

I’ve covered the normal forward version of this a billion times: in Windows Outlook you can convert an email into a task—with all the text of the email placed automatically in the body of the task. Doing that is one of the core skills of 1MTD and MYN and something I hope you are doing all the time.

But you can do the reverse of that too… Yes, you can convert a task into an email!

Here’s a not uncommon scenario of why you might want to do that:

You create a task from email. Then later, you complete the task and want to write back to the original requestor saying the task is done, and you want to include their original email text to provide context of the accomplishment.

To write that reply, you could search for the original email to create the reply, and that can take a bit (unless you’d attached it to the task–see last paragraph). But wait, the text of that email is in the task—isn’t there a way to convert that task back to an email?

There is! Here is how to create an email from an existing task:

I’ve been meaning to mention this for a while.

Starting in late 2017 Microsoft started releasing a new version of Outlook Mac 2016 and Outlook for Office 365 for Mac that enables drag-and-drop conversion of emails to tasks.

This feature is similar to what is available in the Windows version of Outlook, but no option is provided to include an attachment in the converted task.

I’ll write more about this in the future.

Michael