Email Best Practices 2.0

Email newsletters seem easier but require an extra step

To subscribe to an email newsletter you just give them your email address and emails soon start arriving. However, unless you create an Outlook rule to redirect them to another folder, they will all arrive in your Inbox. Not good.

You don’t want less important email mixed in with your normal business email. It’s distracting and it makes your important business email much harder to find. Creating the Outlook rule to redirect it is easy but a nuisance (and can be problematic in Outlook if you have a lot of them).

RSS automatically puts your info aside for reading later

What is RSS? RSS is the industry-standard way to be notified of and receive new web content without having to manually check (for more info, do a web search on RSS).

The great thing about using the Outlook 2007 RSS feature is that your posts are all automatically delivered to a separate Outlook folder under RSS Feeds and outside your Inbox:

How to create RSS Feeds in Outlook

See Use Outlook as an RSS Reader from How-To Geek. The comments at the bottom of the How-To Geek article are helpful too.

Notes

• If you already have a workable way to automatically separate your email newsletters from your business mail, then this won’t add much value.

• Many sources (like this one – Email Best Practices 2.0) offer both RSS and email newsletter formats. Many sources may have just one.

• If you do a lot of reading (i.e., dozens of daily sources) you will prefer an RSS newsreader program like Google Reader. I use Feedly which is a nice-looking front-end to a not so pretty Google Reader. Newsreaders are highly configurable and designed for power reading.

Search Folders are highly configurable, but one of their best uses is one of the simplest: show all the email (both sent and received!) between you and a correspondent in one place.

Search Folders primer

Search Folders are virtual folders. They’re folders but they don’t contain the actual emails (they still live in the physical folder). What they do is just collect references to them into a single folder so it appears like they exist there.

Outlook comes with a few predefined ones, but here we’ll show you how to create your own.

Create a “Correspondent” Search folder

If you create one of these for each of your top 5 correspondents, and put them in your Favorite Folders area, you’ll be surprised at how much browsing time you’ll save.

First …

then …

and …

Notes

• They are updated dynamically as new emails arrive.

• Grouping on Received or Subject works really well.

• When you delete them the Search Folder disappears but the emails in them don’t (that’s a good thing).

• Did I say highly configurable? There’s lots more you can do with Search Folders. It’s worth playing with them to learn more.

• If you like the concept of virtual folders, you may like Nelson Email Organizer. It creates Correspondent, Date, Status, Attachment and others automatically for you.

This is yet another feature I think many people aren’t aware of or aren’t in the habit of using enough.

How it works

It operates on text columns like From, Subject, Categories.

Now, suppose I’m looking for an email I know who’s subject started with the word tax. Rather than scroll all the way down, I press t, and I jump immediately to:

This is a pretty smart feature. …

• It’s actually multi-key search. If I had entered ta I would have jumped to the emails starting with ta (like tax). Enter the subsequent keys quickly. Note it works only on leading characters.

• Searches up or down and it’s case-insensitive.

• Ignores prefixes like RE and FWD.

• Works when “Show in Groups” is enabled.

• Works in all Folders Lists as well.

• And works the same in NEO Pro too.

As a parting comment in Outlook Tip #2 Your Outlook Data Files. Out of sight, out of mind I suggested you back up your data files but didn’t tell you how. This free tool makes back up easy.

You can download the Microsoft Outlook Personal Folders Backup tool here and you can learn more about it here. I was able to download, install and try it all within a minute.

In a nutshell

It creates an exact copy of your any or all of the data files in your Outlook profile. You choose where they are backed up to and you choose how often (in days) it reminds you to run the backup. Then it simply performs the backup by prompting you when you exit Outlook. After you install it you will find a Backup command on your Outlook File menu to configure it (I had to restart Outlook to see it).

A few comments:

Thanks to Gerard den Hertog of Caelo Software for suggesting this tool.

A common example

In confirming a phone meeting in an email reply I usually copy the phone number from my customer’s email signature, paste it into the message, and continue typing:

Arrgh! Then I have to use Format Painter to get it back to normal. With emails, in all but a few cases, I want to preserve my formatting.

How to change the default in Outlook 2007

In Outlook 2007 you can change the default. When you have an email open in the Email Editor, press Alt+f then click Editor Options. Click the Advanced tab on the left, then scroll down to Cut, copy and paste section. Here are the settings I use:

I don’t believe there is a way to set the defaults in Outlook 2003.

How to override the default in Outlook 2003 or 2007

In any case, you can always manually control whether to paste with or without formatting using the Paste Special command.

Find Paste Special on your Edit menu/Clipboard panel, or just press Ctrl+Alt+v and choose Formatted Text or Unformatted Text.

The problem

Suppose I want to send a message to Bryn Hamilton. I enter ‘ha’ (the first two letters of his last name) in the To field.

What I get with auto-complete …

If I then click Check Names (or press Ctrl+k) …

What gives?

Two different lists are used:

Auto-complete. accesses the hidden “nickname list” that Outlook automatically adds to over time from email addresses that you have used (and it sometimes uses the Address Book). It’s a convenience feature to make it easier but it’s hard to predict and doesn’t always give us what we’re looking for (and it can get corrupted).

Check Names is a command you can click to check addresses you’ve entered. It uses your Address Book or Contact folders designated as Address Books. It’s actually just a manual way to invoke the “Auto Resolve” checking that goes on when Outlook actually sends the email.

Try it

It’s surprisingly helpful. In Outlook 2003, look for on the Message Toolbar. In Outlook 2007, it’s on the Message Ribbon and looks similar.

It’s especially helpful when entering multiple addresses and much faster than using the To/CC dialogs. For example, in the To field I could type campbell; hamil; hayes ;gupta and after pressing Ctrl+k I would immediately see all the addresses resolved. If choices need to be made, I’m prompted.

I’m talking about the Outlook Data Files stored on your computer

Where your Data Files are stored

   Vista & Windows 7 (default folder)

  C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook

   Windows 2000 and XP (default folder)

  C:\Documents and Settings\YOURUSERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

A few things to look for

The Resend This Message command is often simpler. I use it almost every day yet many people aren’t aware of it. It’s great for resending a recurring email like a monthly report where I want to preserve the format and just edit the content.

Open the email, then click Other Actions (on the Message tab) and choose Resend This Message:

You’ll be able to edit anything in the message.