Archive for May, 2009

SAVE YOUR REPLIES WITH YOUR ORIGINAL E-MAIL IN OUTLOOK

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

As you all know, I am all about saving time and keystrokes. You must be highly organized to run an efficient office and this little tip is but one more way to achieve that end.  This article will also be very well liked by law offices especially.

I am sure there have been instances when you go back and re-read an e-mail and you have to scratch your head and wonder what your response was when you originally received it. This little tip will show you how to never have that experience again!

In most law offices, folks create special folders for client specific e-mail.  You must have folders other than your Inbox for this particular trick to work, so that is a very good thing.

The reason law offices do this is so that when a client calls and they need to referencethe client’s  latest e-mail, they don’t have to scroll through hundreds of other of e-mails to find it.

Follow the steps below to learn how to save your repleis with your original e-mails.

  1. Make sure that you have a special folder other than your Inbox to store client specific mail.
  2. Click on Tools | Options.
  3. At the top of the dialog box that opens, under the Preferences tab, under E-mail,  click on E-mail Options.
  4. Once that dialog box opens, under Message Handling, click the Advanced E-mail Options.
  5. Under Saved Messages, select In Folders Other than the Inbox, save replies with original message.
  6. Click OK three times to exit and you are finished.

Now, when you open up a particular client folder, you will not only find your original e-mail from them, but also your reply to that e-mail.  There will be no more guessing!

You may want to take a look around at the other options available to you under the Advanced E-mail Options even if just to make yourself more familiar with them.

USING THE STATUS BAR IN MS EXCEL

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

The lowly status bar just sits at the bottom of your MS Excel screen and most folks don’t pay it much mind, but it can come in quite handy sometimes.

For instance, I am sure that you all know how to sum a range of cells in MS Excel, but did you know that you can get the sum of that range of cells without clicking on AutoSum? Yep, you sure can! Suppose you are in the middle of keying in the collected fees for the week and the attorney stops by and says “how much have we netted thus far?”  Well, there is a very easy way to tell him within a second, using the lowly Status Bar!

Follow the steps below to learn how:

Select the range of cells.

Look down at the right-hand side of your Status Bar (at the bottom of the MS Excel screen).

You will now see the word Sum and the total of the selected cell range.

Now that you have gained a bit more respect for that lowly Status bar, I will let you in on some other smooth actions that it is capable of that can save you time and keystrokes.

If you right-click on your Status Bar in MS Excel, it will give you the option of:

  • None
  • Average
  • Count
  • Count Nums
  • Max
  • Min
  • Sum

Pretty cool huh?