“If it’s 4:30 pm in Phoenix…”

Have you ever had to plan a meeting for participants across multiple time zones? Outlook can help you out in many cases by allowing you to see more than one time zone or automatically adjusting for different time zones. In this post, we offer tips for time zones and many other issues related to scheduling meetings in Outlook.

Part One: Planning, Changing, Canceling

And, if it’s 4:30 pm in Phoenix, it’s 10:30 am in Sydney — but what day?

Planning a Meeting in Outlook

(Outlook 2002, 2003, 2007)

By Matt Mahoney

The core feature of Outlook is the calendar. This invaluable tool helps you keep track of your appointments and enables you to schedule meetings with colleagues. Here’s how to invite attendees to a meeting.

Outlook 2007:

1. Click the File menu, choose New, and then choose Meeting Request.

2. On the Meeting tab of the Ribbon, click the “Scheduling” button (depending on your mail server configuration, this button may also be called “Scheduling Assistant”), located in the Show group. Then click the “Add Others” button at the Read more…

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E-mail has revolutionized communication. It enables us to connect with people as far away as Tokyo and Sydney in a split second, and helps us be more productive. But it also has enormous potential to offend, anger, bombard, confuse and overwhelm its recipients. After all, it doesn’t have the benefit of body language, tone of voice, and other distinctly human elements that are necessary for message context.

Your best defense against a message recall failure is to reread your message before you send it.

Although we should all know proper e-etiquette by now, a gentle reminder is needed now and again. (See this article, which illustrates how much damage a hastily sent e-mail can cause.) Below are a few timeless tips for keeping your communication professional and not at all offensive to your colleagues. (Tips are for Outlook versions 2000-2007, except where noted otherwise.)

Reply to All with Care

By MaryHazel McDermott

Reply to All is an option available in Outlook and many other e-mail programs that should be used sparingly. When you use Reply to All, you may be sending your message to scads of people who do not even need the information. Read more…

admin Etiquette, How To all caps, CIO, Etiquette, message recall, Outlook, reply to all

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…

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It’s that time of year when we look back on what was and ponder what is to come. The year 2009 brought a number of significant tech developments — the iPhone as a legitimate business tool (AT&T’s bandwidth issues notwithstanding); the Cloud’s emergence; grandmothers embracing social media; Windows 7 — all of which promise to change the way we work.

Still, all our readers cared about was learning how to use a secondary axis in Excel, how to change BlackBerry calendar views, and why help desk techs are so surly.

Here’s a list of our top 10 posts from 2009. Read and enjoy.

10. Get It Together: 5 Ways to Stay Organized in Outlook
9. 5 Lessons to Learn Before Outsourcing
8. A Kinder, Gentler Help Desk
7. Top 5 Most-Asked Help Desk Questions
6. 7 Productivity-Boosting iPhone Tips
5. Out of Office, Out of Mind
4. How the Help Desk Earns its Bad Reputation
3. Follow the Format: 5 MS Word Tips for Managers
2. 4 BlackBerry Tips Every Manager Should Know
1. Management Tool Best Practices: 3 Excel Tips that Promise Charting Greatness

MORE INFO IN: Desktop Application Support | Contact PC Helps

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There’s no doubt mobile devices have altered the way we work. According to Pew Internet and Research, almost half of American workers report doing at least some work at home, and about 20 percent say they do job-related tasks at home every day.

Accessing your e-mail using keyboard shortcuts takes productivity one step further.

In preparation for the holiday, here are some tips to help you keep your mobile work time to a minimum while you’re enjoying the family feast:

For the BlackBerry

Filter Incoming Mail

Say, for example, you receive a daily report that you will not read or deal with on your phone and would prefer to just handle it back at the office. Can you create a filter for that?

Of course you can. Here’s how:

1. Click on the Messages icon to open your messages, then click the trackwheel or Menu button and select Options.

2. Select E-mail Filters.

3. Click your trackwheel or Menu button, select New and then type a filter name. Read more…

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It’s an unusual day around here if someone hasn’t called asking for help with a mailbox that has reached its size limit. Such calls are as common as the cold, but they’re hardly seasonal.

Try teaching organization tips when a deadline is looming or has passed. It’s futile.

And if there’s one thing that can arrest productivity, it’s a full mailbox. (For an interesting look at e-mail’s ill-effect on employee output, read “Avoiding Death by E-mail” written by Tom L. Barnett and published on Computerworld.com.)

Depending on your company’s policy, it can mean an inability to send mail at best, and loss of all e-mail functionality at worst.

Usually, the calls come from users who need to send an e-mail right now, and do not have time to properly free up space. Sometimes they have already begun mass-deleting and they still cannot send mail. Read more…

admin Worker Productivity Computerworld.com, e-mail, Outlook, support, Training

Recently, I was reading our customer comments and one in particular caused me to pause: The customer stated that he didn’t know Outlook personal folders could fill up.

I thought to myself, “Where do you think all that mail goes? The great .pst in the sky?”

I thought to myself, “Where do you think all that mail goes? The great .pst in the sky?”

That was the bad-mannered former software consultant in me, and I quickly reminded myself everyone has their own areas of expertise — some technical, some not.

Case in point: I know someone who is a carpenter and general contractor. He had very little formal education; most of it has been on-the-job. If you need to know what kind of wood something is made of — whether it’s a common type like Spanish cedar or an exotic species such as Bubinga (African rosewood) — he’ll tell you in a second. That’s his specialty, and he knows it well.

But when he tries to work with document templates and database files for his business, he’s not so nimble. For that, he brings in help. Read more…

admin Rants Bubinga (African rosewood), carpentry, Outlook, software support, Spanish cedar, Training

It’s officially summer and the Fourth of July is nigh. It’s time to turn on your away message and get lost. But before you do, make sure you are covered. Here are some tips to keep your e-mail house in order while you enjoy the season: Read more…

admin BlackBerry, How To, Outlook, Time-Saving Tips BlackBerry, Fourth of July, Office 2007, Out of Office Assistant, Outlook

By far, the most common Outlook question we get here is how to free the application from the shackles of a full mailbox. When you reach the mailbox size limit, your ability to send e-mails is the first to go. For any corporate worker, that’s akin to not having a computer at all.

Often callers want help clearing enough space to send the e-mails that are waiting in the Outbox; they have no time to go over proper mailbox maintenance – deadlines are looming, meetings have started. Read more…

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