E-mail Overload?

In a recent meeting, someone stated that they had a hard time navigating and locating specific messages that were sent to the entire system. This got me thinking, so I took a look at the number of messages that were sent to three major distribution lists that I am a member of. Those are Everyone Staff List, All Reference Staff List, and Central All List.

In the past month:

• 70 messages were sent to the All Reference Staff List.
• 45 messages were sent to the Everyone Staff List.
• 20 messages were sent to the Central All List.

That is a total of 135 messages in one month. Most, if not all, were sent Monday through Saturday, so that ends up being about 5 to 6 messages a day.

Of those 135 messages (numbers approximate):

• 50 included tax help information (closings, form requests, etc.)
• 13 included equipment/facilities information (early branch closings, broken copiers, etc.)
• 13 included information on library programs.
• 12 included information on personnel issues (correct holiday abbreviations, staff vacations, etc.)
• 7 included First Responder ideas.
• 5 involved Bowling.
• 5 involved In-Charge announcements.
• The rest included random information about branch deliveries, item searches, statistics, weather, etc.
  

So what does this all mean? Why is the useful information? To me this means that we are not facing an impossible task, but we need to spend time each day making sure our e-mail Inbox is organized. A good way to do that is to follow the Four D's of E-mail Decision Making.

• Delete It (if it has nothing to do with you or can be found easily some place else)
  
• Do It (if it takes less than two minutes to do it, just do it then return to your email)
  
• Delegate It (if someone else should do it, then let them know)
  
• Defer It (if it takes longer than two minutes to do it, save it till you have completed reading and organizing your email)

Also, create folders. If you have trouble finding information about special branch closings, create a folder titled Branches. Then, just click and drag those messages into that folder as soon as they appear.

Or, create a folder titled To Do. Then for each message that requires you to perform an action, just click and drag it into that To Do folder.

Create a folder titled Personnel. Then click and drag messages pertaining to Holidays or Insurance into that folder.

And most importantly, once you are done with a message, or you have no need for a message, then delete it. If you find yourself thinking, "hmmm, this could maybe, possibly be useful in a certain circumstance..." DELETE it! Or, "well, I know this can be found on the intranet-" DELETE it!

See our Outlook Help page for help in creating folders and more.

Fundamental Skills: Saving and Opening Documents

If you are not comfortable with Saving and Opening files, please view the presentation below (readers using an aggregator will need to access this original post to view). This is a vital skill that is needed in order to do other fun things like insert attachments, uploading resumes, etc.

Enjoy.

Search for the Format You Want

Someone recently passed on a Google search tip that could be useful when creating a quick First Responder display. This tip could also be useful for customers wanting to print something basic on a broad topic. For example, you would like to display a fact sheet and some of your books about Manatees. You need to find something that can be printed quickly and easily.

We all know the Web is not the best format to print from, but the Web also holds many PDFs. PDFs are wonderful in that the documents remain the same no matter what computer you are on, hence the name Portable Document Format. For example, if the IRS did not use PDFs for their tax forms, different computers would arrange the text in different ways. Not what the IRS wants. So whenever people want to place their documents online and they also want to ensure that the format of those documents is not changed, they will place them online as PDFs.

To perform a search from Google for only PDFs, click on Advanced Search. Enter your search terms in the first text box. Then, about the sixth line down, you will see File Format with a text box that lists several different file formats. Select Adobe Acrobat PDF. Your search results will return PDF files only. These are all files that are "ready to print".

How Do I...?

Phil Bradley has a nice collection of "How to" sites for the Web. So if you want to use the Web to manage a project online, or to discover music, books, or movies, or to discover many other ways the Web can help you do things, check this out. Look on the right sidebar under Categories to see a list of topics.

Search with Google (or other search engines) in the Address Bar

Many of you know that you can search the Web by typing words in the Address Bar. The browser will understand that you did not type a web address and will perform a search with a search engine.

You may not have known that you can select the type of search engine the browser will use. To do this, click on Search on the Internet Explorer toolbar (same toolbar with the Back and Home buttons). A search pane should appear on the left side of your screen. Click on the Customize button on the top of that pane.

A dialog box will appear and you will see an option to "Choose a search provider for address bar searches". Select the search engine of your choice and click OK. Now, your random words you type in the address bar with use the search engine of your choice.

Toggling Between Open Programs

I was recently conducting a presentation in which I was toggling between Internet Explorer and PowerPoint. Someone asked after the presentation how I did that.

To toggle between open programs, press and hold the Alt key and then hit the Tab key. In the middle of the screen, you will see icons of all open programs. Each time you hit the Tab key (while still holding down the Alt key), you move to a separate program. To go to the selected program, let go of the Alt and Tab keys.

Use SHIFT to Select Multiple, Sequential Items in Lists

Earlier, I wrote about using the CTRL button to select multiple items in lists.

Now, it is time to explain a similar trick. You can use the SHIFT key on the keyboard to select sequential items in lists. It works like this:

• Select the first item
  
• Press and hold the SHIFT key on the keyboard
  
• Select the last item, and all items in between will automatically be selected.
  

For example, let us say that you have come back to work after a long weekend. You open your e-mail account and you have received 25 spam e-mail messages and no work e-mail messages. You would NOT have to click on each item to delete them. Simply click on the first spam, press and hold the SHIFT key, then click and the last spam. The entire list is highlighted. You can then click the delete button and they are gone.