Michael Linenberger's Blog

March 9, 2014

A quick note about a fix we just completed. In the past months, newer web browsers from many browser vendors were often having issues with our paid Video Training–in some cases the videos would seem to start but then freeze at the start. Only IE would run them smoothly in many cases. That problem has been fixed! It was a problem with our server software–it needed an upgrade to match more stringent security features being released in the newer browsers. We upgraded the servers last week, and this weekend we modified the video pages to use the new servers. So if you were avoiding your favorite browser when running our paid video classes, you should be able to go back to it now! (Let us know if you still see any issues). And thanks for your patience with our periods of “down for maintenance” in the late evenings last week as the servers were being upgraded.

Michael Linenberger

March 4, 2014

Two new apps are out for Toodledo that should work with 1MTD and MYN. One of the apps is for Android and one for BlackBerry 10.

We haven’t tested either, so have no set-up instructions. But in conversations with each developer we are told they should accept the MYN settings (which means they will work with 1MTD as well).  Continue reading →

Mar 2, 2014

[Updated Sept 28, 2015, to include Office 2016 and other updates]

With the recent release of the “new” Office Online, there are now three current Office suites (the other two being Office 365 and Office 2013/16—I am lumping 2013 and 2016 together because they are virtually the same). You may be wondering which Office suite you should use for general productivity. You may also wonder what the different cloud capabilities are—for example, is Office Online just the online version of Office 365, or is it more?  And you may wonder which one(s) work best with the MYN system. Adding to this confusion is the relatively new Outlook.com—is that really Outlook?

In this in-depth article I am going to sort out the various Office and Outlook products so you can make better choices. This article is a bit long, but if you are confused about these products and are thinking about using one or more, investing ten minutes right now to read this is worth it. Continue reading →

Feb 26, 2014

As part of last week’s release of the new Office Online product brand rollout, Microsoft renamed its previously existing Office Web Apps to be: Excel Online, Word Online, PowerPoint Online, and OneNote Online. Most of the press is dismissing this as no more than yet another rebranding. But I disagree; I feel it goes well beyond that—it creates a full new Office suite directed at consumers, one that is distinct from its business offerings in Office 365 and Office 2013.

How does it do all that? Continue reading →

Feb 18, 2014

We’ve been waiting sometime for the App versions of Office to show up. The versions for Windows tablets were code named Gemini and originally rumored for last fall. And there were rumors that an iPad version would follow. Obviously the fall release did not happen. Now it looks like they may arrive first on the iPad, sometime before June, (so, sooner than the Windows versions).

No matter what the platform, the idea is that these would be full touch-controlled apps, with nearly the power of the desktop applications. In other words, much better than the current online versions of Office, which often feel stunted. A year ago I was describing the need for apps like this, stating that the OneNote touch app for Windows tablets was a taste of things to come, and I still feel they are needed for the rest of the Office suite. Good to see they are on their way!

And it will be interesting to see what they do with Outlook. We need an Outlook that is touch-friendly, but that also has the power needed for MYN (assign and group mail by category, convert emails to tasks, and a task view that can do MYN sorting).

Michael Linenberger

Feb. 10, 2014

I’ve been having a good-natured comments exchange with a reader about the practicality of 8-inch Windows tablets. I truly don’t know the right answer here, so I am promoting this to its own blog post to collect more comments.

Productivity Tablet?

As you know, I am all about the advantages of Windows tablets as a Productivity Tablet—one that can run tablet apps as well as a full range of traditional office software (in desktop mode), when needed.

My confusion is this: If the main advantage of a Windows tablet is the ability Continue reading →

Feb. 5, 2014

I have an older article on filtering flagged mail out of the To-Do Bar, but a reader recently showed me a better way to accomplish that. Here is that newer and better method.

Background

In Outlook 2007, 2010, and 2013, any mail you flag in the Inbox will be listed in the To-Do Bar like other tasks. I call these “flagged-mail tasks.” Many Outlook users have a love-hate relationship with this feature, but I encourage using them for one and only one purpose: flagging mail you cannot reply to immediately (see page 182 in Total Workday Control Using Microsoft Outlook 4th Ed. for more information). The idea is to flag them for a day or so and then clear the flag; don’t retain them long. Below is how these look in an MYN configured To-Do Bar Task list (this figure is Outlook 2010; in Outlook 2013 and 2016, the flagged mail items often have NO icon in the left column).

Problems with Flagged-Mail Tasks

However, if you create and hold on to too many flagged items, you can end up with five, ten, even fifteen extra “tasks” in the Continue reading →

Feb. 3, 2014

As I explained fully in this post, we’ll be periodically updating the PDF copy of the Outlook book Edition 4 that we sell on our website. Today we released the first of those updates. Anyone buying and downloading the PDF book starting now will get that updated copy. And anyone who bought the book before can download the latest copy at no charge; just go to the same link you used before (shown below; you may want to bookmark this):

https://www.michaellinenberger.com/PDF-TWC-ED4/

When you go there you’ll be asked to log in, so just use the same credentials you created when you first bought the book.

You can tell you are getting the newer book because the file name now has a 4.1 at the end.

The changes incorporated are relatively modest. A long list of typo corrections, some corrected links, and some Outlook feature corrections or feature additions were made. For an example of feature additions, the new Outlook 2013 feature that Microsoft released via software updates in November (that I wrote about here) is now documented in the book (page 41).

I expect we’ll be releasing updates like this several times a year, and we’ll announce them on this blog.

Michael Linenberger

Jan 31, 2014

It’s not often that I come out with new configuration changes for the MYN Outlook system, but here’s an optional one that you might want to consider. It’s to show tomorrow’s tasks in the MYN Task List in Outlook. Below is an image of how this would look (gray items are tomorrow’s tasks).

Why Do This?

First of all, here’s the background. Continue reading →

Jan 29, 2014

I cringe at having to write this. It’s almost getting silly. It’s timely that Sunday is Groundhog Day since this is becoming like the movie Groundhog Day—where the same cycle repeats over and over again: I post a date, then I announce a further delay. Then do it again. And I am doing it again now. I hate this because I know a lot of you are eagerly awaiting the Kindle/Nook/epub version of the book. And it’s embarrassing to keep missing my own stated dates.

What’s Going On

What’s going on is this: we are using a much more complicated approach to creating the epub/mobi file. Continue reading →