Control the Emails Received on Your BlackBerry

Is your BlackBerry being overwhelmed by emails (newsletters etc) that you only need to read on a real computer? Do you need a way to receive these emails on your computer but NOT receive them on your BlackBerry?

Recently, I discussed increasing productivity by diverting newsletters etc out of the Outlook Inbox to a dedicated folder ... a folder that you can look at later at your leisure.

To stay productive, it is also important to stop unnecessary emails from being delivered to your BlackBerry.

There are two options for doing this.

Option 1: Use a non-BlackBerry email address to subscribe to newsletters and groups
This only applies for new newsletters or if you are willing to go and change your email address for all the groups, newsletters etc you are already part of. If not … take a look at Option 2 further down.

It's easy to get yourself a 2nd (or 10th email address if you want) using the free email offerings from Google, Yahoo etc.

Get yourself one of those email accounts and use that for any newsletters etc that you want to subscribe to.

Option 2: Configure your BlackBerry to filter out newsletter and group emails

Your BlackBerry comes with an online service that lets you configure exactly what gets delivered to your BlackBerry. It is very easy to use this to filter out (i.e NOT DELIVER TO YOUR PHONE) any unnecessary emails.

The emails will still go to your computer … but they'll no longer clog up your BlackBerry. Let's get started ...

Your service provider should have provided you with a URL to use with your BlackBerry. You should also have a username and password.

Logon to the website using the username and password to display the Email Accounts tab.



Click on the Filters icon on the appropriate email account line.



Click Add a Filter.



Enter all relevant information and then click Add Filter again.

You can now logout from the BlackBerry website.

Provided that you have entered the Filter information properly, you should have stopped a lot of unnecessary information from getting to your BlackBerry.

Benefits:

1. You become much more productive with your BlackBerry
2. You'll find that the BlackBerry's battery will last longer since it won't be downloading so much stuff now.

Deleting Email Addresses from Outlook's Auto Complete List

Whenever you type an email address in the To/CC/BCC field of an email, Outlook helps out by showing you a list of email addresses that match what you have typed. This can be very helpful in quickly entering a recipient's email address. But ...

People's email addresses change or you may have stopped communicating with certain people - yet their old email addresses keep showing up in the list.

Deleting Single Entries
It's easy to delete individual items from the list. Type a few characters in the To field to display the list. Then use the arrow keys on the keyboard to move to the old email addresses and click Delete.

Deleting the Whole List
Use with Caution because there is no way of getting the list back!
You can also completely delete the list to start from a clean slate by following the steps in this link:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/287623/en-us

How to Avoid Sending Emails to the WRONG person

This happened to me yesterday. I used Outlook's auto-complete feature to select an email address while addressing my email and selected the wrong person. I ended up sending the email to completely the wrong person.

My Outlook is configured to send out emails automatically and I wasn't able to stop it ... although I realised my mistake within seconds of clicking Send.

Luckily for me, the content of the email wasn't confidential so there was no real damage done. But things could have been worse ...

Here are two ways to avoid this problem.

Option 1: Disable the Send Immediately function (not my preferred option).

You can setup Outlook to only send out emails according to your preset schedule or when you click Send&Receive.

To turn off automatic sends:

Click Tools-Options.
Click Mail Setup.
Remove the tick next to "Send immediately when connected"

Option 2: Delay all outgoing emails in your Outbox for (say) 30 seconds - this is what I have now implemented

It is possible to do this manually but it has to be done for every email you write … I am way to lazy for a manual solution ... it's not going to happen.

Instead I use the Delay Guard feature in SendGuard 4 Outlook to delay all my outgoing emails by 30 seconds. The settings screen is shown below.



I have set it up so that it asks me if I want the email delayed whenever I click Send (if you find the message intrusive, just remove one tick on the settings screen for all emails to be automatically delayed without the message)




Why 30 seconds? I find that I realise within 30 seconds of clicking Send if there's something wrong with the email I just sent. After 30 seconds I've moved on to something else and the email would have been sent out anway.

Fixing Search Problems in Outlook 2007

Instant Search is one of the best features added to Outlook 2007. The problem was that it never worked well for me … until I carried out a series of quick fixes.

Overview

Search in Outlook 2007 uses Vista's (or Windows Desktop's) Search Indexes. If these are not built properly or corrupt you may find that Outlook Search does not work properly.

In my case, Search was failing miserably. It wouldn’t even find words in the email that I was currently on.

There are two possible solutions:

Disable Instant Search (Go back to Outlook 2002-2003 Style Search)

Rebuild the Search Index

Disabling is OK as a temporary solution but is not a real fix.

Step-by-Step

Warning: This process takes a long time. I suggest you run it just before you leave the office for the day (or just before you go to sleep)

If you are using Vista:

Click the Windows Start button and type "index. Indexing Options should appear under programs.

Click Indexing Options to bring up the Indexing Options screen.

Instruction for Vista Users are continued after the section on Windows XP below ...

If you are using Microsoft Windows XP:
Open the Control Panel:
In Classic view, double-click Indexing Options.
In normal view: Under See Also, click Other Control Panel Options, and then click Indexing Options.

Once your Indexing Options Screen is open ...



Click the Advanced button to bring up the following screen.



Click Rebuid.

Your current Search Indexes will be deleted and rebuilt. Tomorrow morning you should find Search working perfectly again.

Mailing Labels, Emails and Faxes using Microsoft Outlook Contacts

The Holiday Season includes sending out invitations, Christmas Cards, Greetings etc to your friends and customers. Mail-Merge can be a real time saver whether you use the postal service, faxes or emails.

Here are some resources to get you started.

In case you are not sure what mail merge is:

Mail-Merge takes one letter (or email) that you have written and creates personalized copies for everyone you want to send it to i.e. each person's copy will have their own name and any other details that you want written into the appropriate places.

How will you be reaching out to your friends this year ?

1. The Really Old Fashioned Way: Real Cards and Letters in Real Envelopes

Even if you will be sending paper based mail this year, technology can help you.

Here are step-by-step instructions to:

Use mail-merge in Word with Outlook data to create and print personalized letters

Use mail-merge in Word with Outlook data to print mailing labels and envelopes.

2. The Slightly Old Fashioned Way: Faxing

Despite what many people will have you believe, Faxing is not dead.

In fact in terms of deliverability, it can beat email - there is almost no chance that your fax won't get delivered because of an over-zealous spam filter.

You can use Microsoft Word and the free fax printer that comes with Windows 2000/XP/Vista to send out personalized faxes to your customers this year.

The Bad News: Windows Fax and MS Word don't talk easily to each other out of the box.
The Good News: Fax4Word allows you to fax merge straight from Word to the Windows Fax printer.

3. The New Way: Emailing

Out-of-the-box Outlook uses Word to carry out its Mail Merge. Here is a link to a tutorial to do this..

You may also want to take a look at Outlook addon software like eMailMerge 4Outlook.

It takes all the complexity out of doing email merges and replaces it with a simple Wizard ... plus it has powerful features that get around many built-in limitations of Outlook and Word ... plus you can use data from Excel files, Access databases etc.

How to Write an Effective Email

I read an article earlier today on Writing Effective Articles. The key points raised by the author (Janet Barclay) were:

1. Identify the action required
2. Include all relevant information and documentation
3. Make sure your subject line is specific
4. Enter the recipient information last
5. Do not combine unrelated subjects in the same message.

Read the full article How to Write an Effective Email on the author's website.

For some automatic protection, you may also want to try SendGuard 4Outlook.

SendGuard works inside Outlook. It automatically prompts you if it detects that you are about to send out an email with a number of common mistakes including:

1. You forgot to attach a file that was meant to go with the email
2. You left the Subject empty
3. You clicked Reply-to-All and may be accidentally disclosing information to the wrong people.
4. You clicked Reply (instead of Reply-to-All) and may be leaving some important people out
5. You used the wrong email account to send out an email

It even has a feature that lets you change your mind about a poorly worded email that you have already clicked Send on.

Let Outlook Highlight Important Emails

You can make better use of your time by getting Outlook to automatically highlight important emails by color-coding them for you.

Background
I subscribe to several newsgroups/mailing lists on the Internet. I use Rules to move these emails out my Inbox to read later so that they don't interrupt my normal work day.

The problem is that one newsgroup in particular has a few hundred emails every day. Most of the topics discussed are of little interest to me.

I'm only interested in emails that have the word Outlook in them.

I've setup Outlook so that it automatically highlights (Red Bold) any email with the word Outlook in it.

This way I don't waste my time scanning through hundreds of emails. I am also able to provide better value to other members of the newsgroup by responding to Outlook related postings quickly.

Step-By-Step
1. Go to the Folder in which the emails are. This can be the Inbox or any other folder.

2. On the menu at the top, Click View-Current View - Customize Current View to display the Customize View screen.

3. Click the Automatic Formatting button.



4. Click the Add Button

5. Enter a name e.g. "Colour Code Outlook Emails"

6. Click the Font button and using the resulting screen to choose how you want emails to be highlighted (I chose the colour Red and Bold). Click OK to return to the previous screen.

7. Click the Condition button to display the Filter screen and enter your criteria and click OK.



In my case I chose:

Search for the word(s): Outlook
In: Subject and message body

8. Click OK 3 times to return to your Folder.

Your Emails are Now Color Coded

Any emails in the folder that meet the criteria you specified will automatically be highlighted. Any new emails will also be highlighted.

You can use this technique whenever you need to highlight an email e.g. highlight all emails from your most important client.