New Outlook Software

Outlook 2010, I love you, I think. Yesterday I attended an internal training class that introduced me to Outlook 2010. This is one of the beginning steps (from the user perspective) of a renovation, evolution, revamp, revision of our firms desktop software. From the perspective of our IT department, this is the mid-point in a long line of projects that will culminate in current Office Suite software for our firm’s users.

Since other Slawyers may be going down (moving up?) this particular software update road, I am sharing a couple of my Outlook 2010 experiences. Note that we jumped from Outlook 2003 straight to 2010 so the ‘new’ features may be only new to me.

• The Send button has moved (to the left of the To and other header fields in the email drafting window) [I might appreciate this once I get used to it]
• Users can customize the category names so instead of “green category”, my category flag can have a unique name [super groovy productivity innovation from my perspective]
• I can have multiple categories attached to an email [I like this a lot too]
• Preview attachments [I’m liking this feature as an option to opening all attachments since we have faxes appear as email attachments at my shop]
• Viewing multiple calendars [excellent]
• Automatic automation of “quick steps” for moving items to folders [It is disconcerting to see a ribbon button created for a task that I asked the software to do once – move something to a particular folder – without the software asking if I wanted to create a button for repeating the action]

Like any software change, everything will be great if I remember to read the screen.

Comment if you have some tips to share about email productivity, or Suggest a Tip by clicking the link in the footer at tips.slaw.ca