Although the weather and the traffic are enough to make some swear off the winter holidays all together, two short work weeks in a row is what makes it worth enduring. The business world in general moves at a slower pace during this pleasant period — and it’s even more relaxing if you remember to set your away messages before you leave the office on Dec. 24. We’ve compiled a list of tips to get you ready for your yuletide break.

Outlook: Activating the Out of Office Assistant (versions 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007)

By Mary Hazel McDermott

Top tips to get you ready for your yuletide break.

Before you leave on vacation or even a long weekend, it is a good idea to set up an Out of Office message. This allows Outlook to reply automatically to each person that sends you a message when you are not there. Outlook replies only once to each person to avoid creating a large volume of messages.

Turning on the out of office message:

1. Click on the Tools menu and click on Out of Office Assistant. (If you do not see Out of Office Assistant, the option may be disabled; call the help desk for assistance.)
2. Select “I Am Currently Out Of The Office.”
3. Set up your AutoReply message.
4. Click OK.

Turning off the out of office message: Read more…

admin Time-Saving Tips BlackBerry, happy holidays, Lotus Notes, out of office, Outlook

I’m sure it wasn’t intended as a humor piece, but this morning’s NPR radio report about the e-mail gaffe that occurred at the Bush White House in 2002 and 2003 was fine entertainment. In particular, this quote from Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy from 2007 made me laugh: “That’s like saying the dog ate my homework. Those e-mails are there. They just don’t want to produce them.”

While many companies do have admirable archiving systems in place, just as many firms leave the details up to chance, the honor system, and other faulty methods.

Although I have never tried to get out of an assignment by saying a dog ate my homework, I have fouled up plenty, and confessing was quite difficult in some cases. But, what I have learned over the years is that if you ask for help, you will commit fewer blunders and have less mess to clean up.*

Back to the government e-mail issue. According to an article by Computerworld’s Patrick Thibodeau, the whole mess stemmed from a Domino/Notes-to-Microsoft Exchange migration. The old archiving system was phased out, but the new one was never implemented. From that point on, Thibodeau explains, the government manually archived messages. The result was millions of “missing” e-mails. Read more…

admin FAIL, This Week in Tech News archiving, Douglas Schweitzer, e-mail, Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange, NPR, Patrick Thibodeau, Sen. Patrick Leahy