Using Outlook as a PIM

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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-to-understand 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.

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.

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.


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.

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:

  • Large Messages Messages over 100KB

  • Unread Mail All messages that have not been read in any folder in Outlook

  • For Follow Up Any 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 by 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.

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.

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.

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, 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.

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.

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.



Special Edition Using Microsoft Office Outlook 2003
Special Edition Using Microsoft Office Outlook 2003
ISBN: 0789729563
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 426

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