Manage Personal Information Using Outlook

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CHAPTER

6

Manage Personal Information

Using Outlook

In this chapter

What Is a Personal Information Manager?

Using Outlook as a PIM

Third-Party Tools

142

145

Improving Your Outlook

146

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Chapter 6 Manage Personal Information Using Outlook

What Is a Personal Information Manager?

The past few years have seen the increase in popularity of personal information management (PIM) systems¡ªsoftware- and paper-based systems that track contacts, appointments,

to-do lists, priorities, and goals. Businesses send employees to classes and workshops on how

to use a PIM. Entire books have been written on personal information management, prioritization and organization. Popular PIMs include the Franklin Planner System, the

DayRunner system, and computer programs such as Act! and Sidekick.

An additional development that¡¯s helping Outlook rise to meet the needs of PIM fans everywhere is the explosion of handheld devices. You can now take your calendar, tasks, contacts,

and email with you no matter where you go. Most handheld devices are smaller than the old

paper-based PIM products and don¡¯t require the added hassle of transferring information

back and forth. Your personal digital assistant (PDA) can remind you of upcoming appointments and meetings and can even take audio notes during meetings. Through synchronization software, you can transfer data between your handheld and Outlook with no user

intervention.

Although these are all good systems, Outlook can also be used as a PIM system.

Using Outlook as a PIM

Microsoft¡¯s goal with Outlook 2003 is to make the most-needed information easy to access

and manipulate. Through the use of Quick Flags and search folders, you can create views of

your Outlook data that provide you with only the information you need, in an easy-tounderstand format. Categories help separate data into specific groups, Outlook Today gives

you an overview of the day ahead, and activities and journal entries help record what you

have done, where, and when.

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PIM features such as Categories, activities, Journal, labels, and Outlook Today enable you to

track all of your day-to-day activities and organize appointments, meetings, and phone calls

right in Outlook 2003. If you already use Outlook for some of these tasks, you can easily

adapt it to handle just about all of your PIM needs, saving you the hassle of running two

programs or synchronizing data between a paper organizer and Outlook or another electronic PIM.

What Are Categories?

One of Outlook¡¯s often-underutilized features is Categories. A category is a group that you

can define and assign to any number of Outlook items. You can create categories for holiday

greeting cards, hardware vendors, financial contacts, or family. There is no practical limit to

the number of categories you can create in Outlook. You can assign a single category or

multiple categories to any Outlook item.

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Why Should You Use Categories?

Outlook can store vast amounts of information. At some point, all of that information can

become overwhelming. If you look at your Journal folder and you have 3,000 journal

entries, it can be a very daunting task to make sense of them all. Assigning categories to the

majority of your journal entries enables you to create custom views and filters to look at

individual categories or several categories at once. You can print a record of all items in a

certain category or even perform a mail merge to all contacts in a chosen category.

For example, assume that a lawyer needs to track all of her billable time. Every client needs

an itemized bill detailing exactly how long each meeting, phone call, research project, or

email took to complete. Using journal entries for all this information is a good start to keeping track of it all, but if no categories are assigned to the journal entries, it¡¯s very difficult to

group them all together and aggregate the total time spent. Assigning categories to each

journal item enables the lawyer to view only the relevant journal entries and print or export

them to another type of file for summary and billing.

CAUTION

Although journaling can help you track all of your daily activities, it¡¯s one of the features

in Outlook that can quickly eat up the most space in your Personal Folders file or

Exchange mailbox. Before you turn on journaling, check with your system administrator

to see whether you have storage limits imposed on your mailbox.

?

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For more information about categories, see ¡°Creating and Using Categories,¡±

p. 149.

For more information about journaling, see ¡°Staying Organized with the Outlook

Journal,¡± p. 361.

Organizing Your Day with Outlook Today

Outlook Today gives you a quick overview of your upcoming appointments and tasks. You

can customize the amount of data displayed or even build your own custom Outlook Today

page with filters, sorts, and views of multiple Outlook folders. Having all relevant information at a glance can greatly decrease the amount of time you spend looking for contacts, figuring out appointment locations, and answering emails.

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For more information about Outlook Today, see ¡°What Is Outlook Today,¡± p. 170.

How Search Folders Work

A Search Folder can display information located in any Outlook folder. Search Folders are

virtual folders that exist either on the Exchange Server or in the Personal Folders file.

Outlook ships with three built-in Search Folders:

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Chapter 6 Manage Personal Information Using Outlook

¡ö

Large Messages¡ªMessages over 100KB

¡ö

Unread Mail¡ªAll messages that have not been read in any folder in Outlook

¡ö

For Follow Up¡ªAny flagged messages in any folder

You can create your own Search Folders to organize your Outlook data. You can manipulate

Search Folders just as you can other folders¡ªby creating custom views and print styles. The

criteria for Search Folders can be anything from messages from a certain person to messages

with specific words, mail with attachments, or high priority mail.

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For more information on Search Folders, see ¡°Search Folders,¡± p. 543.

Quick Flag an Item for Follow Up

Along with Search Folders, the Quick Flag feature is designed to provide quick access to a

valuable organization tool. The Quick Flag feature enables you to click once on an email

message and flag it for follow-up so that you never lose track of items that require your

attention. The flags are large and colorful, ensuring that a quick glance at the Inbox can tell

you exactly how many items you have left to address. Combined with the new For Follow

Up Search Folder, you can be sure that no flagged item will get lost in the shuffle of everyday email. Multiple flag colors enable you to coordinate an email item¡¯s flag with a label in a

corresponding appointment or an automatic formatting rule in a view. New sorts and

arrangements enable you to group items by their Quick Flag colors; for example, to find all

the items with a blue flag that need to be completed before you go on vacation.

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For more information about Quick Flags, see ¡°Quick Flag a Message,¡± p. 478.

Label Your Appointments

Outlook 2002 introduced calendar labels. Labels can be assigned to appointments, meetings,

and events and function as visual categories. Items you label take on a specific color in your

calendar. You can customize the label names to suit your needs. If you create a blue label for

family appointments and a green label for business meetings, you can tell from one look at

your calendar how many business meetings you have today and whether any of them conflict

with a family appointment.

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For more information about calendar labels, see ¡°Using Labels to Organize Appointments,¡± p. 278.

Tracking Activities for Contacts

An activity is any Outlook item that relates to an Outlook contact. Activities can be journal

entries, emails, meetings, documents, notes, or tasks. You choose which folders contain

items that are activities and which activities you want to view at any one time. This feature

enables you to quickly view all emails exchanged with the contact, all meetings scheduled

with the contact, all journal entries made for the contact, and all tasks related to the contact.

You can see where all of these items are stored and filter by item type (tasks, appointments,

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email messages, or notes). Activities are tracked automatically. There is no special setup that

needs to be configured. To view activities, open any contact record and click on the

Activities tab. After a short delay, all information related to that contact is displayed. You can

then go directly to any of the items listed for that contact.

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For more information about activities, see ¡°Tracking a Contact¡¯s Activities,¡± p. 229.

Using the Journal to Track Your Activities

Outlook¡¯s Journal enables you to track phone calls, meetings, documents, conversations, task

requests and responses, and a variety of other types of activities. You can track the amount

of time spent on each activity. The first time you access the Journal folder, Outlook asks

whether you want to turn on journaling. If you click Yes, a variety of different types of activities are automatically tracked. You can track creation and modification of Word, Excel, and

PowerPoint documents, as well as all contact you have with some or all of your Outlook

contacts. In addition to the items that can be automatically tracked, Outlook provides a variety of activity types you can manually create in the Journal folder. You can even modify the

Windows Registry to track custom activity types.

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For more information about journaling, see ¡°Staying Organized with the Outlook Journal,¡± p. 361.

Additional PIM Features

A good personal information manager needs to track not only contacts, tasks, and appointments, but documents as well. Outlook can store a document as an attachment to any item

except for a note item. You can attach Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, Access databases, images, or any other Windows files.

Any good PIM program should enable you to work with the information contained within

to schedule, communicate, and plan. Outlook 2003, when paired with Word 2003, enables

you to create new letters to contacts and perform mail merges. Even without Word 2003,

you can schedule meetings, assign tasks, and create journal entries with a single click.

The last main feature of any good PIM is the capability to share. The only way a paper

planner can be shared with others is through the use of a copy machine. With Outlook, even

without an Exchange Server, you can use email and the Internet to plan meetings and share

contacts, files, and tasks. When used with Exchange Server, Outlook is a powerful corporate

communication tool, as well as a corporate PIM. You can plan meetings, assign tasks, and

share folders with other users. Public folders can provide department calendars, meeting

planners, and group schedules. The addition of SharePoint Team Services can provide

shared meeting workspaces as well as document collaboration.

Third-Party Tools

No program can be all things to all people. There are probably PIM features you need that

Outlook doesn¡¯t provide. In that case, you can use a large number of third-party add-ins to

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