Michael Linenberger's Blog

June 22, 2015

Ever been running a meeting and noticed that half the participants are reading their Outlook mail on their smartphones? I had the luck of departing the corporate-employment world just as smartphones and laptops were becoming ubiquitous in meetings. But as I teach seminars live inside corporations these days, I see them in constant use and see the negative effect they have in meetings.

Cited about halfway through this New York Times article is an anecdote from a leader in a multibillion dollar products company who required smartphones to be left out of his weekly management meeting. He said when he first started that rule, his employees were like crack addicts, missing their fix. But soon the meetings became vastly more productive. Within weeks, they slashed the length of the meetings by half, he says.

Studies show that multi-tasking is not an efficient activity. Those studies show that any perceived gains in productivity are actually an illusion. Continue reading →

June 21, 2015

Continuing on from my posts about work-life balance, I just read another interesting article in the New York Times, this one about the impact of rude or mean bosses. According to the article, these are bosses who, as part of their daily interaction with staff, routinely do one or more of the following:

• Interrupt people;
• are highly judgmental;
• neglect to say please or thank you;
• take too much credit for other people’s work;
• put other people down;
• walk away from a conversation because they lose interest;
• answer calls in the middle of meetings without leaving the room;
• or even openly mock people by pointing out their flaws or personality quirks in front of others;
• and more (see the article).

The article states that such incivility in the workplace is a problem that has gotten much worse in recent decades.   Continue reading →

June 19, 2015

If you are like me you read a lot of your e-mail on your smartphone. But what if you want to convert an e-mail you read into a task? Most smartphone mail apps cannot do that (there are exceptions and I’ll list them below).

What I do is mark them with a flag, and then when back at my desktop or laptop, convert them to a task there (and remove the flag, and file the e-mail).

Now, I normally only recommend using flags for deferred replies. So I wish there were another way to mark these. But most smartphones have no other way. It’s not so bad though; I find when I look at them later it only takes a second for me to recall why I flagged the item. It works. If you use Gmail, then use the star in the same way.

If this doesn’t work for you for some reason, another method is to forward the email to yourself so it pops into your Inbox a second time, but this time put the word TASK in front of the subject line. A little drastic, but it works.

Here are some smartphone apps that allow converting e-mails to tasks:

• iOS: eMailGanizer; TouchDown for iOS
• Android: TouchDown

Michael

June 16, 2015

One of the primary reasons using Outlook Categories is faster than using lots of topic-named folders is that you can auto-categorize incoming mail very easily using Outlook Rules. These menu-created rules automatically assign categories to incoming e-mail based on sender or subject line or keyword in the e-mail, and so save a huge amount of filing time.

Rules with Categories Are Much Better than with Folders

If you’ve use Outlook Rules before to auto-file into topic named folders, you’ll find using them with categories is much better. Why? Because the mail is delivered to your Inbox after it’s categorized. That way you can still read and act on the mail. Continue reading →

June 15, 2015

You may know that I highly recommend using Outlook Categories instead of using multiple Outlook folders when filing mail. Categories take a little time to learn at first, but after that they are very easy to use. Best of all, they save a huge amount of time when compared to using topic-named folders.

Why Categories Save Tons of Time Compared to Topic-Named Folders

Here are the reasons why filing with Outlook Categories is so much faster than using multiple topic-named folders: Continue reading →

June 15, 2015

In all my classes I talk about using a single folder instead of using multiple Outlook folders when filing mail. Here’s why: Speed! Single folder filing is much faster both when initially storing mail and when finding mail. I call it the Processed Mail folder, but you can call it anything you want.

Single Folder is Faster for Filing Mail

I know, having lots of individual folders feels very logical and orderly. And it mimics the old paper filing systems, so it just seems right. But using multiple folders is soooo slow! Because it’s so slow you’ll rarely file, and then everything ends up clogging up your Inbox anyway.

Rather, storing all mail in one folder is very easy and fast; just shift select or control select and drag everything to the one folder when you are done with it. Because it is so fast I can empty my Inbox every day using this approach. An empty Inbox feels great, and you can clearly see new mail in the Inbox as it come in. Continue reading →

June 14, 2015 (updated Dec 5 2016)

You probably know that you cannot see Outlook Categories on the native iPhone/iPad Mail app (the Mail app delivered with your iOS device). For example, you can’t display a list of mail grouped by Category. But, you can still easily display your e-mail by Outlook Category, one category at a time. You do that using the Search box at the top of the Mail app (swipe down to see it).

To do this, simply type into that search field the phrase Category:accounting (assuming accounting is the Category you are searching for). This will display all mail in the selected folder that has that Outlook Category assigned to it (and only that mail).

Here’s a screenshot from my iPhone where I am searching in my Processed Mail folder:

The only mail now shown is mail in the Processed Mail folder with that category assigned to it. So, if you are using Outlook Categories to file mail (something I highly recommend, see Chapter 8 in my Outlook book), and use an iPhone or iPad, you can find your mail!

(Note: I’ve only tested this on an Exchange account, so I am not sure how this would work with say an Outlook.com account, or any other servers that support Outlook Categories. Let me know if you test that.)

This search also works in the third party iPhone/iPad Outlook app (the one created by Microsoft). I am not a fan of that app however, I prefer the regular iPhone Mail app.

Still No Way To Assign Categories

By the way, there is still no way to assign Outlook Categories to mail within the native iPhone Mail app (or in Microsoft’s Outlook app).  That’s okay by me though, because I do all my e-mail filing at the end of each day when back at my laptop or desktop. It’s just much easier to do mail filing on a full copy of Outlook.

If you want to assign categories on your iPhone, you’ll need to install one of two 3rd-party e-mail apps: Preside, or Touchdown. If you are a power user, Preside is my current favorite, it has a ton of optional settings (by the way Outlook Categories are called Tags in Preside). But by default is in a very simple mode.

Michael

June 13, 2015

Here is an Outlook tip I suspect half of you already know about, but it you don’t I think you’ll find it quite useful. It’s using the Resend This Message command in Outlook.

The scenario to use this is if you have sent an e-mail, and then realize that you need to resend it, maybe to someone else. Rather than manually copying the contents of the old e-mail into a new one, do this (these steps are for Windows Outlook 2010 and 2013, but similar steps work in older versions of Outlook):

1. Go to the Sent Items folder and open the e-mail
2. Find the Move section of the Message ribbon (just to the right of the Quick Steps section) as shown in the Outlook 2013 image above.
3. Click the third icon down (it’s labeled Actions if your e-mail window is large enough)
4. Choose Resend This Message (also shown above).

That opens the message in it’s original sent state with the To field editable, and you can now address it to someone else. Note that the Send button is active so you can send it again.

There are other ways to do this, but I think this is by far the quickest. I use it all the time!

Michael

June 8, 2015

We’re well into the first half of June now so it’s time to officially declare summer is here. When I was a kid I used to celebrate the arrival of summer in a big way. It’s when my freedom from school arrived and the warm weather allowed me to explore and play in the outdoors. I couldn’t wait for summer to arrive; I suspect you felt the same back then.

Of course, as an adult with lots of responsibilities, you still have to work. But summer still means warm evenings outside after work, outdoor lunches, and an upcoming vacation. Or does it? 40% of Americans do not take the vacation time they have accrued. And with many Americans working 70 to 80 hour weeks, their evenings may be spent in the office or driving back from work–not enjoying the evening at home. Even weekends for many of us are being spent at work or doing work. More and more of us enjoy almost no time off, and summer will pass us by.

Why is that? Continue reading →

May 16, 2015

Last November (2014), Microsoft released a new Mac version of Outlook—one that replaces Outlook 2011 for Mac. While some people are calling this Outlook 2015, or Outlook 15, Microsoft is simply calling it Outlook for Mac, and it is only available to Office 365 subscribers.

We had put off looking at it since we rarely use Macs anymore and none of our clients were asking us about it. But recently we have been getting a few questions asking for guidance, so we downloaded it (through our Office 365 subscription) and took a quick look today.

MYN/1MTD Recommendation: Don’t Uprade if Using Tasks

To cut to the chase, if you are an MYN or 1MTD user and using tasks in Outlook 2011, don’t upgrade yet. The reason is Microsoft has for some reason removed the Scripts menu, so there is now no easy way to convert emails to tasks using a script. Converting e-mail to tasks is a crucial part of MYN/1MTD, and in Outlook 2011 for Mac an added AppleScript was the only way to do it quickly. In this newer version, there is NO way to do it quickly—the only way we see to do this now is to copy and paste the contents of an e-mail into a manually-created new task (ugh!). Continue reading →