Managing contacts has become more important than ever.
Here’s a few tips on how to make use of smart tools built into Outlook:
1. Rather than exchange business cards (so last century)…
Share your contact details using Linked In – just hit the box on the right of the search bar – and it will either let you scan someone’s QR code or present your own one to share. (note that the related ‘ ‘Find Nearby” feature has been discontinued – we suspect due to privacy concerns)
2. Create a new Outlook contact without typing
Just by dragging their email to contacts will create a contact based on the email.
I just dragged Bill’s email to the contacts icon in Outlook and it pops up a new contact. (By the way, dragging an email to the calendar would create an event – a really good way of planning time to work on whatever the email is about
3. Protect your contacts when sending a group email
Avoid a privacy breach by using BCC – while we often need to send the same email to large groups, its often not appropriate to share the list of recipients
BCC overcomes this, but we often forget to use it. BCC is hidden under the ‘options’ tab.
4. Clean up duplicate contacts
When you add new names, its easy to get duplicates.
I clean my duplicates us by using an app on my phone called ‘ContactOptimizer’ but you can also do this in MS-Office on your pc – Resolve or delete duplicate contacts – Outlook (microsoft.com)
Auto-file new emails based on who sent you the message.
Using Outlook rules, just highlight the email to use as an example, then click on the rule button in the home tab and set up a rule to deal with all other emails like this one.
Our Kambium colleagues are ready and waiting to help you and your organisation get more from the tools you already have, like Outlook.