by Tony Rushin
We’re all creatures of habit. When my laptop recently got re-imaged, I took the opportunity to upgrade from Office 2010 to Office 2013. There weren’t significant user interface differences between the two versions so for the first three weeks I used my same old Office 2010 habits when I was using Office 2013. Over the last week I’ve been learning some of the Office 2013 enhancements: there are some nice gems in there. Since, like many of you, I live in email, I’ve been focusing on Outlook 2013. Here are my top three cool enhancements.
Unread email
In Office 2010, if I wanted to just see the unread emails in my inbox I’d have to click on “Filter” and then choosing “Unread”. In Office 2013, Microsoft has eliminated a click and made it real easy for me to quickly review my Unread emails.
Hint: remember to click “All” when you want to go back to seeing your full Inbox / folder.
Reading Pane
Office 2010 has a nice reading pane (often referred to as the “preview pane”), allowing you to see the subject and part of the body of an email without having to actually open the email. Office 2013 takes it a step further by letting you reply or forward the email directly from the reading pane.
Hmmm… looks like an interesting WSJ article. Note: using the reading pane, versus opening the email, keeps you slightly safer since some malware can get launched just by opening an email from one of the bad guys. Hint: you can configure Outlook to mark your email as “read” when you see it in the reading pane or only mark it as “read” if you actually open it.
Attachment Reminder
I’ve forgotten my share of attachments over the years, resulting in a Homer Simpson moment once I realize what I’ve done (or didn’t do). Outlook 2013 minimizes the chances of this happening by searching the content of the subject line and email body. It’s a fairly sophisticated algorithm that looks for context as well as content: “I hate to disappoint you, but she’s already attached” goes out fine while “please reference the attached” is held up when I hit “Send”.
Do you use Outlook 2013? If so, what are your favorite productivity tips?
When you included “I hate to disappoint you, but she’s already attached” as an email test, you obviously were speaking about your utility trailer that you had already hooked up to your truck so that your neighbors request to borrow it had to be denied. Correct ?