Timely Tips November 2007: "Drag & Drop" to Create New Tasks

A Tip from Randy's Upcoming Taming the E-mail Beast: 45 Key Strategies for Better Managing Your E-mail Overload (and Regaining Your E-mail Sanity!)

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in this issue
E-mail "Drag & Drop" for Fast Task Creation
E-Book Version NOW Ready
Public Courses and Teleseminar in December
Dear Randall,


I hope that you are recovering from both Thanksgiving and Digestion Day here in the States. I'm feeling better after overloading on turkey and Grand Traverse Cherry Pie (a mighty yum!) Because I've been traveling both for work and family, I'm going to keep this month's Timely Tips quite short, but HIGHLY useful:
A Tip Featured in My New Book, "Taming the E-mail Beast"
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One of the key tips I share in my new book is how to very quickly create new tasks in Microsoft Outlook, by using "drag and drop" to pull an active e-mail and drop it onto your Outlook task function to auto-create a new task. Here's how it works: if you have an e-mail that has an embedded task that you need to complete, simply select the e-mail (usually a single left click) -- but keep holding down the left mouse button, and then drag the e-mail over to your "Tasks" icon in your Outlook Shortcuts view, and drop onto that icon.

What Outlook does is pretty cool -- it then automatically creates a new task based off of the information in that e-mail. The subject of the task will be the subject of the e-mail -- I usually type over the e-mail title with the actual description of the task. You will also note that the body text of the e-mail now appears in the notes field near the bottom of the open task window -- thus, you have all of the relevant related information from the e-mail handy. Simply select a due date, and, if you so choose, a category for your task, hit "Save and Close", and you've generated a new task with additional useful information in a very quick manner and form.

Play around with this -- you can also drag and drop e-mails into your Calendar icon to create new calendar events, and also into your Address Book to automatically create new contacts. I find it a very handy way to definitely save time in this very common business/technology function.


Speaking of Taming the E-mail Beast, the E-Book version
is NOW Ready! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I've got a very nice and workable version of this 20-chapter e-book, all about how to get your e-mail account under control, keep it under control, get CC's and forwards under control, and enhance your e-mail sanity and productivity.

I'm keeping the pre-publication offer available to you for just a little longer, as we build the related book readers' web site, which will feature several video tutorials from the strategies shared in the book. So, if you want to take advantage of the discounted pricing for the e-book, use the link below:




Simply click here:

http://randalldean.com/offers.html

Some New Public Courses in December
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I'll be leading a half-day public Time Management Course near Toledo, Ohio on Tuesday, December 11. And, then, on Friday, December 14, I'll be leading a half-day public course on e-mail and office clutter management in Southfield, Michigan. To get more information on these courses, use this link:

http://www.randalldean.com/New_Courses.html

And don't forget about the free "Taming E-mail" 50-minute teleseminar this Tuesday, December 4th, at 2 p.m. Here's the link:

http://www.randalldean.com/news_FreeTeleseminar0107.html


Until Next Time

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Once again, thanks for your continued support. Get started on that holiday shopping! And get those lights up -- my kids love them! Stay timely,

Randy Dean