You've Heard of OneNote - but do you REALLY know what it is????

AND MORE importantly - should you learn it and use it??

OneNote has been around for a while - it's been popping up on people's computer's with new versions of Windows, Microsoft Office, free downloads etc. If you're like me - sometimes you just don't have time to learn one more thing - I mean really - if you needed it - wouldn't you know? Spoiler alert: No!.

A comment from one of the user's that attended one of my most recent onsite OneNote classes is my favorite thing to challenge people to give OneNote a try.

At the beginning of my class - I have everyone introduce themselves and let me know what they'd like to learn or what they already know about the topic I'm teaching. In her intro she told me - she was required to attend and that she'd been using paper notebooks and non-digital way of keep tracking of things for many years and that she liked it and it worked great for her. She went on to say, so if you want me to...

Outlook: Delay Delivery

One of the things most of us do in Outlook is follow up on things via email. The Delay Delivery feature allows you to send a follow up email anytime, at the moment you're thinking about it - not have to remember (or worse yet forget) to do it later. This is a REALLY simple but extremely powerful time-saving tip. You can save time 2 ways, 1 - by remembering to do the follow up while you're thinking about what you want to say and 2 - because you so you don't have to remember and take time to do it later.

My scenario looks like this: I help someone with a solution to a software problem. I want to give them a couple of days or weeks to use the solution to see if it works. I know I want to follow up with them maybe in a few days, maybe a week but this becomes another "to-do" for me, something else I need to remember to do. Instead of scheduling something on my to-do list or putting something on my calendar, I setup an email and "delay-delivery" of it. There's a mil...

Setup These Outlook Rules if You Send Mass Emails or Setup Meetings

There are tons of rules and if you've been around the block and used Outlook for a while - you've maybe had some rules setup - like rules to file certain messages. I'm pretty sure you haven't heard of these. These couple of Outlook rules I'm going to show you are so helpful when it comes to decluttering your inbox and being efficient in Outlook.

Rule #1: Automatically File your Out Of Office Replies

Depending on how many emails you send and if you send emails to large groups of people - this can be life changing. Lots of people send mass emails inside their company and get 100's of our of office replies but even if you only send to groups of 5-10 you probably get a handful of Out of Office replies. They can be helpful when sending to an individual but when you receive large amounts, they can really clutter up your inbox. You can either file them and look at them at set intervals or just have them deleted.

1. On your
...

Search Folders in Outlook

Have you ever used a Search Folder in Outlook? Maybe you haven't even heard of a search folder?

What's a Search Folder?

A search folder has been a round for a few version of Outlook but the idea is to essentially create a saved search. It's a search folder, because it saves all your search results and basically combs your mailbox (all folders, inbox, sent items etc) to find messages that meet the search criteria you defined.

Why Should you Use a Search Folder?

Why should you care? Because this is an AWESOME, new way to "file" your messages. I say "file" in quotes because the best part about it is - you don't have to file messages between hundreds of folders, instead you use the "5 Folder" concept we discussed last week. If you didn't see that tip - check it out: Using ONLY 5 Folder in Outlook

So the cool part is you use the De-Cluttering method we discussed using the 4 D's. So when you file you don't need to scroll through hundreds of folders, instead yo...

Tuesday's Outlook Tip: Declutter your Inbox with ONLY 5 Folders...REALLY!!!

I know...I know....you're thinking "NO WAY, Kari doesn't understand. I literally have more than 7000 emails in my inbox and probably 250 folders." Oh but I do know. I've seen it all. Admins I've worked with that say things like - I know I have too many items in my inbox (15,000) no lie, executives that say, I don't like to file things because then I can't find them. Also true.  So stay with me....

Is one of your New Year's resolutions or goals to get organized? Mine is. Almost every year - this tip will help you get your email organized once and for all with a system that you can actually keep up.

Let me set this up and tell me if you can relate to either of these scenarios....

Scenario 1 - You can't ever find the messages you're looking for fast enough

You know you just saw that messages, you can't find it, you can't remember what folder you filed it in, you're clicking through folders, sorting and re-sor...

How many items are in your Inbox?

Truth be told - part of why I'm excited about this new Outlook Tip series I'm doing right now is - I need it. Do you have more than you should have? 

Experts say - your inbox should really have less than 100 items in it - and those 100 items should only be things you are either 1 - waiting on a response , 2 - actively working on, 3 - pending a reply that can't be done in a few minutes or more time to read 4 - following up on something delegated. If they don't belong in one of these categories - get them out of your inbox. Where?? That's for next week.

I'm guilty too - just like you - I let my inbox get away from me - but if you adopt some of these tips and the folder system (which I'll explain next week )- I promise it will be SO MUCH EASIER to get caught back up and get your inbox to a more manageable size.

The 4 D’s

During the time you have set aside to read your emails, you should process your messages by using the Four D's. Every NEW messages ...

Tuesday's Tip: Pivot Tables made SUPER EASY!

I've trained thousands of people in Excel - all levels and I can tell you almost everyone is intimidated by Pivot Tables. Today's blog post has just 1 goal: if you use Excel - you need to know how to create a Pivot Table. It's so much easier than you think - so check it out.

First - When and Why should you use a Pivot Table?

Talking to people - I've learned one of the big reasons for users not learning or using Pivot Tables is they think they don't need them.  So here's the deal, if you use Excel even a little - you need to know how to create a Pivot Table. They are for everyone. sure, you can use them for really complex things - but most people will use them to create super simple summaries of data....daily. 

If someone sends me some data - often times - one of the first things I do is create a Pivot Table to see how much data I have, how diverse it is, how many categories of information etc. It helps me understand the high level summar...

Tuesday's Tip: 3 Easy Keyboard Shortcuts to Save Tons of Time

As a fellow Excel user AND someone who's trained hundreds of people in Excel - I can almost guarantee you don't know all these keyboard shortcuts and if you don't, you NEED to.

Shortcut 1: CTRL + [ARROW]

First let me clarify, the [arrow] can be any of the 4 arrow keys on your keyboard. Keep in mind that's a little different on everyone's keyboard. For example, my 4 arrow keys are in the lower right hand corner of my keyboard - I work on a Microsoft Surface.

So the Ctrl with the arrow key moves you in any direction to the next blank. For example, if I am in cell A1 and I have 5000 rows of data and row 5001 is blank and I use Ctrl+↓ that will bring me to cell A5001. It's SO FAST! It's such a great easy way to move around a large set of data. Most people think it moves you to the bottom of the data set - but that's only true if there's no blanks in the data.

Keep in mind, this can be done in any direction using any of the ...

Hey! I'm super excited to start this journey of a blog with Microsoft Office tips. It's something I've been wanting to do for YEARS and today is the day! Here we go!

My goal is to provide you with FREE, practical, awesome tips to better user your Office apps - Excel, Word, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint - you get the idea.

Tip #1 - Excel Tip: Using the New Flash Fill

This tip is included in my FREE mini-course:

3 Excel Secrets to Super Charge your Excel Skills. If you haven't taken it yet - you can get it for free here.

It's such an awesome tip - it allows you to quickly and automatically fill values. It's hard to explain without seeing an example.

So the idea is - Excel tries to find the pattern to what you're doing, more specifically, what you're extracting or adding to the text.

I've documented one example below - but watch the video for another example and to see exactly how it works.

Example 1 - 

You've got a list of part numbers with similar formatting. 

You may want to...

SO excited to launch Tuesday's Tips - next Tuesday, 12/10/19.