Indiana University: IT Training Tips Blog

Several months ago I finally broke down and purchased a smart phone. I was out of town and my GPS stopped working, and I decided to take the plunge. Instead of buying another Garmin, I would buy a smart phone that included a navigation app.

Even though I am usually an “early adopter” and pride myself on keeping up with all the new devices on the market, I had never liked the idea that while you can do so many things on a smart phone, typically the phones are so small that you can’t really see what you are doing. When the sales person showed me the Samsung Galaxy Note II, I knew that this large mobile phone was perfect for me.

I have been using my Samsung now for approximately 3 months and I absolutely love it. I don’t know how I ever got along without it. No, it’s not a trendy iPhone, but the screen is large enough (5.5″) that I can actually read the email in my Inbox. I can follow the directions on my navigation app, read and edit important documents, and I even have enough screen space that I can surf the web and actually SEE what is there.

The Samsung Galaxy Note II is an Android device and so there are multitudes of apps available for use with it. As I mentioned earlier, I love the Navigation app and I use it all the time. The Samsung “Speak your destination” feature is fantastic, and it allows me to press a button, tell my smartphone where I want to go, and immediately see the route on my screen.

Since I don’t have time to explore the many applications that are available for my new phone, I thought it would be fun to put this topic out there so that you, the followers of our blog, could chime in and tell us about your favorite Android apps. Got one that you really like? Let us know. Add your comments below.

One of the great things about Outlook is that Microsoft recognizes that users may need to access, read, and even manage others’ calendars, messages, and task lists. In our IT Training Outlook workshops, we cover a number of different ways that users can access, share, and manage multiple calendars, but because most users tend to want to maintain control of their own Inbox, we don’t do as much with the sharing of email. There are times, however, when this may be necessary.

Let’s say that you are an administrative assistant and you need to be able to open your own personal Inbox and your organization’s Inbox, too, and you need to be able to switch back and forth between the two very quickly. In situations such as this, you could add a second Outlook profile to your computer, but then you would still have to open each account separately. A better option may be to add a second Inbox to your Outlook account.

To do this, follow the directions below:

1. Open the first Outlook account.

   

2. Click on the File tab to move to Backstage view.

   

3. Look on the left side of the screen, and verify that the Info button is selected.

   

4. From the middle panel, click on the Account Settings button. A drop-down menu appears.

   

5. From the drop-down menu, click on Account Settings… An Account Settings dialog box opens.

   

6. Click to select the name of the first Outlook account.

   

7. Click on the Change… link that is located just under the tabs. A Change Account dialog box appears.

   

8. Click on the More Settings… button in the bottom right corner. A Microsoft Exchange dialog box opens.

   

9. At the top of the dialog box, select the Advanced tab. Directly underneath the tabs, you see a section that will allow you to open additional mailboxes.

   

10. To continue, click on the Add button. An Add Mailbox dialog box appears.

    

11. Type in the name of the additional mailbox, and click the OK button.

    

12. The new mailbox should now be listed in the Mailboxes field at the top of the Microsoft Exchange dialog box.

    

13. Click the OK button.
14. Click the Next button in the bottom right corner of the Change Account dialog box. You see a congratulations message in the Change Account dialog box.

    

15. To continue, click the Finish button.
16. Click the Close button. The newly added Inbox should now be listed at the bottom of your folders list. You can easily move back and forth between the two by selecting the appropriate folder from the list.

    

Outside keyboard shortcuts to move conversations to folders, there is no good way to ‘star’ messages in Outlook with the keyboard. In this article, I will show you a macro that builds on the macro functionality explained in this article by using follow-up flags to mimic the star functionality in Gmail.

Before I go any further, I’ll add the same warning I included in the last post here:

This article is not for beginning users of Microsoft Outlook or for users who only use one incoming mail folder. It requires a decent understanding about how to organize email, work with the Office 2010 interface, and knowledge about how to create and modify a macro. Information about how to create a macro can be found in the workshop Excel 2010: Basic Automation Using Macros and more in-depth Visual Basic for Applications information can be found in the workshop Excel 2010: Advanced Macros and User Defined Functions.

Now that that’s out of the way, I’m going to show you how to use a macro to add a one day flag to a particular message and then move it to a folder called ’01 – Today’.

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In my last few posts, I have been discussing how to create and use business cards in Outlook 2010. Today I will explain how you can add your picture to your business card.

Follow the directions below:

1. To get started, open the Contacts folder in Outlook.
   
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In a previous post, I explained why electronic business cards could be useful and how you can create one from scratch in Outlook 2010. If you don’t consider yourself to be very creative, or if you simply don’t have the time to design a professional-looking business card, you can always download a template from Microsoft Office Online instead.

To download a template, follow these steps:

1. Open an internet browser and go to the following web page:  http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/results.aspx?qu=outlook&av=zol
2. Select one of the electronic business cards from the list and download it. When the Save As dialog box opens, use the default save in location that is specified.
3. The electronic business card will automatically open in an Outlook contact form.
   
4. Replace the name and contact information that is displayed in the fields with your own (or with someone else’s information if you are creating the card for another person).
5. On the Ribbon, in the Options group, click on the Business Card button. The Edit Business Card dialog box opens. Edit the card as desired.
   
6. When finished, click the OK button at the bottom of dialog box.
7. On the Ribbon of the Contact form, click the Save & Close button.The new business card is now stored with the rest of your contacts in Outlook.
8. To find out how to insert it into a message, read the previous blog post titled  “Quick Tip: Create a Business Card in Outlook 2010.”

The very first business cards were used in France in the 17th century. Gentlemen wrote their signatures and contact information on a small rectangular paper and presented these visiting cards to a host. Later, in the 19th century, business cards became an essential accessory for any fine lady or gentleman. They were frequently engraved and extremely ornate. Today most professionals keep a stack of business cards in their briefcase or wallet, and they are usually always anxious to pass them out to clients and friends. But times have changed. We’re living in the computer age now. Since most people keep their contact lists on their computers these days, have business cards outlived their usefulness?

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I caused quite the stir earlier today on my personal Twitter account when I announced:

So I decided that I would share with you all. If you’ve been a long-time TweetDeck user like I have been, you may or may not have noticed the added feature called Global Filter. (more…)

Before I get started, a little bit of fair warning. This article is not for beginning users of Microsoft Outlook or for users who only use one incoming mail folder. It requires a decent understanding about how to organize email, work with the Office 2010 interface, and knowledge about how to create and modify a macro. Information about how to create a macro can be found in the workshop Excel 2010: Basic Automation Using Macros and more in-depth Visual Basic for Applications information can be found in the workshop Excel 2010: Advanced Macros and User Defined Functions.

At this year’s Statewide IT Conference, I attended a session by Martin Wagner called INBOX ZERO – Master your email inbox using GTD principles. I’ve since streamlined my mail management, turned off Outlook’s email reminders, and generally become more efficient at managing my email.

But there was a catch…

Being a long-time Gmail user, I wanted to get more Gmail-like functionality added into Outlook.
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Recently I decided to investigate the Camera command in Excel 2010. It provides one possibility for capturing data from various spreadsheets and viewing it all in a single spreadsheet. But before I could play with the camera, I had to find it and display it. In my installation of Excel it was hidden by default.

Customizing the Ribbon is possible from the Options window. Go to the Excel (or other Office 2010 application) Options window by choosing the File tab and clicking Options near the bottom of its menu. At the left side of the Options window, choose the “Customize the Ribbon” category. In this window proceed as follows: (more…)

If you are like me, you keep your Outlook account open all day as you work. Sometimes I minimize Outlook to my taskbar, but not always.  Since I have two monitors, many times I have Outlook open on the left monitor while I work on the right one.

I rely on Outook for many things. Not only do I use it to communicate, but I also look at my calendar many times each day. By default, Outlook displays the view for only one folder at a time. In other words, you see either your Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, Notes, etc. So what if you want to read your email messages while viewing your calendar? After all, aren’t we all multi-taskers these days?

Easy! Simply right-click the Calendar button in the Navigation pane and then click on Open in New Window.

Your Outlook calendar opens in a new window.

Now you can drag this window to a second monitor or arrange the two open windows side by side on your first monitor.

Need to see your contacts, too? No problem. From the Calendar window, right-click on the Contacts button. In fact, you can open any Outlook folder in a new window in this way. Just remember that if you want to open more than two Outlook windows at once, you must right-click in the second open window to open a third, in the third open window to open a fourth, etc. (You can’t open multiple windows by right-clicking from the first window. After the second one appears, each time you right-click again the second window changes to the new one.)