Four Ways to Supercharge Productivity in Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook Training For Fort Lauderdale Organizations

Are you taking advantage of the wonderful automation features available in Microsoft Outlook? You can save hours each week, and getting started is easy.  

If you’re like most busy professionals, you don’t get a great deal of satisfaction from repetitive tasks and might often find yourself thinking “Isn’t there a better way to do X…”? Fortunately, today’s productivity software offers an array of automation solutions that you can use to help improve your productivity and reduce frustration. Microsoft Outlook is part of the Office 365 suite of software that has over 155 million active users around the world, making it the most popular productivity software in the world. Want to get even more out of your Outlook? These four tips are designed to help supercharge your software and eliminate boring, repetitive tasks.

1. Create Templates for Your Emails

Individuals in customer service, training or support roles might find themselves sending similar emails to clients or internal teams throughout the day — perhaps changing a few words here and there. Instead of re-typing the information multiple times each day, did you know that you can create a template and use it for your responses with only a few clicks? These short, quick and customized responses can be found when you have a message open and click ‘View Templates’ from the ‘Messages’ tab. There are a few samples to get you started, or you can easily create your own template for a response.

2. Define Email Signatures for Various Personas

It’s not unusual for people to manage both business and personal emails through Outlook, but you may not want to include your entire professional signature with logo and titles when you’re sending a personal email. However, you might want to include your cell phone number or other details such as your LinkedIn profile, which makes creating separate personas or signatures highly attractive for busy professionals. Creating your email signatures is quick and you can easily append them to any emails that you are sending as well as choose which signature to use automatically and when it should be applied. To create your signature, open any message or create a new message and then click ‘Signature’ from the ‘Message’ tab, then click ‘Signatures’. This brings up your signature editor and allows you to customize the information and save your signatures for use in the future.

3. Update Your Email Quick Parts to Speed Automation

Do you find yourself needing to mix and match paragraphs or sets of bullet points on an ongoing basis? When you’re creating common, repetitive content you can create a Quick Part. Start with a new message or by responding to a current email and enter the information that you want to save and reuse in the future. Highlight the text in the body of your email and click the ‘Insert’ tab, and select ‘Quick Parts’ where you’ll find the current Quick Parts that are stored. You can also ‘Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery’. When you’re ready to use the text, simply select ‘Quick Parts’ and click the content you want to add to your email.

4. Provide Contacts with Rapid Support When You’re Out of the Office

Enjoying time away from the office is a healthy way to reset, but returning to your desk after a sick day or vacation to find dozens of emails asking for assistance ASAP can make you want to back slowly out of the building and run away. People may be wondering where you are or sending multiple emails if they don’t receive an immediate response while you’re out of the office, but there is an easy way to keep people informed of your whereabouts and also provide people with a way to get immediate assistance when you’re not available. Turning on your Out of Office automatic response is simple:

• Click the ‘File’ Tab
• Click ‘Automatic Replies’ from the ‘Info’ tab
• Type your automatic reply
• Select a date range for the replies to be sent

You can also send auto-replies indefinitely, which is convenient for human resources offices to respond to job applications, for instance. Note that you can set a separate out of office replies for inside your organization and for external emails that aren’t coming through your corporate server.
Are you ready to get the most out of your business technology? Contact the professionals at LAN Infotech today at 954-686-8276 or fill out our quick online form to schedule your free initial consultation. As South Florida’s most trusted technology partner, LAN Infotech’s experts provide a comprehensive suite of IT services for a range of businesses from healthcare and law firms to nonprofits. See the difference that working with a proactive solutions provider can make for your business when you contact LAN Infotech! From our free on-demand training webinars to our multiple awards from the Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce and the South Florida Business Journal, we are committed to the success of businesses in our area.