This happens to just about everyone out there - You are collaborating on something with a group of people. There is a lot of information flying about and emails are shooting through the air like juggling pins. This little-known feature in Outlook 2007 provides a way to quickly find the beginning of each of those emails being sent and recieved. It's hard to explain, that's why I like video demos!

Check out the video included with this post.

Click To Play

Some users like to keep the email they send and receive for a fairly long time, and most of the time they just keep them in Outlook. Not the best practice, but hey, it's not the worst either. For those of you that do keep your emails in Outlook for a very long time, you may be faced with a storage issue at some point.

In Outlook 2007, you have the ability to quickly and easily save the attachment to your computer, remove the attachment from the email, then create a little note for yourself telling you what you did with the attachment.

Check out the video included with this post.

Click To Play

While I LOVE Outlook and all it can do for managing your daily business information, one area that has always been lacking for me is in calendar printing options.

Never Fear - the Calendar Printing Assistant is here!

A free download from Microsoft, the Calendar Printing Assistant for Office Outlook 2007 is an application for people who need an easy way to print and customize their Outlook 2007 calendar information. It puts you in control of the tools you need and helps you plan and create designer-quality output.

A very cool feature is the ability to print multiple calendars in either side-by-side view or overlay mode. Awesome!

There are plenty of calendar templates to choose from, including a way to print your own yearly calendar with your custom picture. S-W-E-E-T!

They are authored in a documented, open XML file format, which makes them easily extensible to third parties.

Check out the video included with this post.

Click To Play

In honor of Flag Day, this Outlook video tip is about the new and improved flagging features of Outlook 2007. It takes your productivity to a whole new level, what with tight integration with the new To-Do Bar of Outlook, keeping up on what you need to keep up on has never been easier. List Makers Unite!

Thanks to my friend and colleague, Andrea Cannavina of www.legaltypist.com, for suggesting the idea for this video tip.

Check out the video.

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As promised in an earlier podcast, here is the video demo of the Pinpoint Marketing Tool from www.pinpointtools.com. This great product will take your Outlook or Business Contact Manager to the next level in two very important areas:

• Marketing campaigns - Schedule your "drip" marketing by combining emails, postcards, and letters into campaigns to stay top of mind.
• Action Plans and Automation - Create Action Plans to be more efficient - enter a pre-defined set of tasks with just one click.

You really MUST see this in action! Watch the videos below - there's a part 1 and a part 2 to keep the video size small. The video player has a Fullscreen Toggle button to see it better.

PART 1:

PART 2:

RECENTLY RELEASED!

Google has released a sync tool which provides an AUTOMATIC 2 way sync between your Google and your Outlook 2003 or 2007 calendar. It was easy to install and set up, plus it works! Just log into your Google calendar and you'll see it at the top.

If you don't want 2-way sync, that's cool too. You'll be presented with sync options.

Check out Google's article on it.

First, download the application and go through the installation process.  Once installed, there are 3 options you can choose from:

2-way sync, applies changes to both your Google Calendar and Outlook calendars with each other
1 way sync where Google Calendar events will be presented on your Outlook calendar
1-way sync where your Outlook calendar events are presented on your Google Calendar.

Check out the video below.

This is one of those unplanned and unscheduled video tips, and it was prompted by a simple email I received less than an hour ago. I immediately thought it would be a great example of how to utilize the new internet calendar functionality of Outlook 2007. It's just another way to show you how Outlook 2007 will help you to be more productive...plus it has the added bonus of taking you just a few minutes to do. In my book, that's always a plus.

Check out the video to see this shining example of the internet calendar (.ics) feature in Outlook 2007.

*Video available in both formats: m4v (for small portable media players) and wmv (for larger desktop viewing)

Enjoy your day!

Looking to find more about how to work with Outlook and SharePoint? Here's a great article (with screenshots) about how these two provide online and offline functionality for sharing documents.

Check out this blog post from the link below:

http://blogs.msdn.com/outlook/archive/2007/09/28/sharepoint-outlook-the-perfect-link.aspx

Great information!

Andrea Kalli

*Video available in both formats: m4v (for small portable media players) and wmv (for larger desktop viewing) 

Finally! A great new Outlook 2007 feature is its ability to incorporate integration with Internet Calendars. Internet Calendars are calendars that are shared through the Internet. These calendars are based upon a global Internet standard that allows calendar information to be exchanged between people regardless of the application that is used to create or view the information. This particular video focuses on how Outlook 2007 now works with Google Calendars. A really great feature for someone that needs to update another person's Outlook calendar and have been looking for a simple solution that is free. The really great thing is that Outlook periodically checks the Google Calendar for updates, and if any are found, they are downloaded to the calendar copy in Outlook. Couple this feature with the side-by-side calendar view and the new calendar overlay view, and you've got some slick functionality. More to come on how to utilize Internet Calendars with Outlook and other great new calendar functionality.

Most of us are about keeping things simple.  Especially business people. So many things to remember, so many things to do, so many steps to take.

  *Video available in both formats: m4v (for small portable media players) and wmv (for larger desktop viewing)

If you work with a product or software application long enough, you figure out ways to make it work for you and the ways that you like to do things. Take billable time, for example. Specifically, keeping track of your billable time with clients, either for meetings or for working on their projects.

I've simplified this process by utilizing color coding for calendar items. Combined with the To Do Bar in Outlook 2007, I'm easily able to see what's coming up on my calendar that is of a billable nature...something that's always very important to a business owner.

For me, this is a process that I've integrated into my business by combining my Outlook calendar, Business Contact Manager 2007, and Microsoft Office Accounting. I track my billable time on my calendar, link it to customer record in Business Contact Manager, and create the invoice item directly from the calendar item. See what I mean? Simple and easy.

Also, as a bonus, you can assign multiple color categories to any item. What this means is that you can have something color coded as a billable item AND for a particular project. Again, the benefit of using colors for calendar items is the ability to easily see what is coming up on your calendar by using the To Do Bar on the right.

Now, take this same concept and apply it to other things on your calendar that could be color coded for easy visual identification on the To Do Bar.  Maybe billable items are not something you track. Perhaps you're more project focused. You'll benefit from color coding items on your calendar based on the project you're working on.  Using these simple features in Outlook 2007 can really help you identify the nature of what's coming up on your calendar.