Arrow-Tip #39 Its About the Clicks – the Fewer the Better!
I’m continually surprised how little things can make such a large difference. Take babies for instance – the smallest people in the house and yet the most demanding. Spending 30 minutes to clean out and reorganize a closet can provide more value than an expensive new storage cabinet. And then there are Outlook buttons – such a small thing to add a commonly used button to your Outlook tool bar, but a big time saver!
Is there something you do in Outlook continually that makes you think, “gee, I wish I had a button for that rather than having to go through 3 layers of sub menus.” Here are some common examples:
- Save and New in Company – creates a new contact with the same company name, business phone number, business address and web site as the selected contact.
- New Journal Entry – creates a journal entry that will be linked to the selected contact
- Not Junk – moves a selected email currently in the Junk folder back to your inbox and gives you the opportunity to designate the sender as safe
- Filter – allows you to filter items in the current view
Well, guess what – you can have that button by customizing your Outlook tool bar. Just right click in any of the blank space in the toolbar area and select Customize from the pop up menu.
The Customize Window will now open (see thumbnail below).
On the Commands tab you will see a list of all of the menus in the left hand list box and in the right hand list box you will see all of the commands on those menus. You can drag any of those commands to an existing tool bar and drop it. That’s it – you now have a readily accessible button that you can access with one click instead of multiple clicks.
While your working your tool bar, you might also want to take the opportunity to check out all of the existing buttons – the one you’re adding may have already been there all along or there may be a feature there you weren’t even aware of.
Yes, its the little things that make me happy – hopefully this little tip will help make you happy too!
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