Office 2016 For Seniors For Dummies (2016)

Part IV

Outlook

For a guide to organizing your mail in Outlook, visit www.dummies.com/extras/office2016forseniors.

Chapter 12

Managing the Details: Contacts, Notes, and Tasks

Get ready to . . .

Store Contact Information

Edit and Delete Contacts

Choose How the Contact List Appears

Use the Contacts List

Create Notes

Categorize Notes

Use Tasks and the To-Do List

Update the Status of a Task

Set a Task Reminder

Outlook has a lot more to offer than just email! Outlook is a full-fledged, personal information management program. It does a great job as an address book, a to-do list, and a storage cache for all the miscellaneous info that you might have “organized” on sticky notes all over your desk. Whatever information you need to organize, Outlook can help.

In this chapter, I show you how to use the Contacts part of Outlook to store and look up names and addresses, both email and postal mailing addresses. It’s a handy substitute for a standard paper address book. I also introduce you to the Tasks list (which helps you prioritize and manage your responsibilities) and the Notes database (where you can store everything from confirmation numbers for your next vacation to passwords for the Web sites you visit).

Store Contact Information

Outlook refers to the information you store about people and organizations as contact information, and stores it in a folder called Contacts. To access the Contacts folder, click the Contacts icon (which looks like two people) in the bottom-left corner of the Outlook window.

The Contacts folder, shown in Figure 12-1, shows each contact that you’ve entered.

Figure 12-1

Although Figure 12-1 shows several contacts, you don’t have any when you start out. You must enter each one individually.

To store someone’s contact information, follow these steps:

1. From the Contacts window, click the New Contact button in the upper-left corner. A new Untitled - Contact window appears.

In step 1, you can also choose Home ⇒ New Contact or press Ctrl+N to start a new contact.

2. Fill in the information you want to store for the person or organization. You can fill in as much or as little as you like. Figure 12-2 shows an example.

The more complete you make an entry for a person, the more helpful Outlook can be. However, it takes more time to enter all the details required for a complete record than to just enter a name and email address. None of the fields are mandatory.

3. Click the Save & Close button on the Ribbon. The contact is added to your Contacts list.

Figure 12-2

Here are some tips to consider when you’re entering contact information:

· Whatever you type in the Full Name field replaces Untitled in the dialog box’s title bar immediately.

· In the File As field, specify how this entry is alphabetized. The default is by last name, so it reverses whatever you put in the Full Name field. For example, if you enter John Doe in the Full Name field, the File As appears as Doe, John. For people’s names, this is usually the best way to go. For a company name (such as ACME Corporation), though, you probably don’t want it alphabetized as Corporation, ACME. To fix that, open the File As drop-down list and choose ACME Corporation.

· If you enter a company name (in the Company field), even more choices are available from the File As list. For example, you can choose to alphabetize by the company name rather than the individual, and to put the individual or company name in parentheses, like these:

· ACME Corporation (Doe, John)

· Doe, John (ACME Corporation)

· You can store multiple email addresses for the same person. Notice that E-mail isn’t just a field label, but also a drop-down list. Open the list and choose E-mail 2, E-mail 3, and so on for additional addresses.

· All Phone Numbers fields also have drop-down lists associated with their labels. You can store four phone numbers for a person, and you can choose which labels each of those will carry. For example, you could assign the label Mobile to one of the phone numbers.

· You can have three addresses for a person: Business, Home, and Other. Switch between them with the drop-down list in the Addresses section.

· When you enter an address but don’t enter it in proper mailing format (address, city, state, and zip code), a dialog box will prompt you to fill those in. This is for your own protection: to make sure every address you enter is usable.

· Use the Notes pane to store any additional information about the person that doesn’t match up with any of the fields.

· To customize how your Contacts appear, choose from sets of fields other than the defaults. The ones in Figure 12-2 are the General fields.

Edit and Delete Contacts

People move, get new phone numbers, and change email providers. In a paper address book, you have to cross out the old address and write new information. (That sloppy look is a big part of what I hate about paper address books!) With Outlook, though, you can simply edit the stored information onscreen.

Editing a contact is a snap.

1. Double-click the Contact.

2. When that Contact’s window opens (refer to Figure 12-2), make any changes, and then click the Save & Close button.

To delete a contact from the list, do the following:

1. Select the contact.

2. Press the Delete key on the keyboard, or right-click it and choose Delete, or choose Home ⇒ Delete.

If you delete a Contact by mistake, you can retrieve it from the Deleted Items folder. To restore an accidentally deleted contact:

1. Click the Mail icon (the envelope) in the bottom-left corner of the Outlook window. (No, it’s not really mail you’re after, but the Mail area provides easy access to the Deleted Items folder.)

2. In the Navigation pane, click Deleted Items.

3. Locate the deleted contact in the list of items. See Figure 12-3.

4. Drag and drop the deleted contact onto the Contacts icon in the lower left corner of the Outlook window. It’s restored.

Figure 12-3

If you want to completely delete a contact so that it is irretrievable, delete it from the Deleted Items folder.

If you don’t see the item in the Deleted Items folder, look in the Trash folder, if you have one. The name may vary depending on your email account type.

Choose How the Contact List Appears

Usually, the default view of the Contacts list is People; refer to Figure 12-1. You can easily switch to other views whenever you like, such as Business Cards view, as shown in Figure 12-4.

Figure 12-4

To switch to a different view, choose View ⇒ Change View and then click the view you want. For even more control, choose View ⇒ Change View ⇒ Manage Views.

Use the Contacts List

After you get your Contacts list set up, it’s good for lots of things other than a substitute for your paper address book.

To quickly locate a specific contact by filtering, follow these steps:

1. Click in the Search Contacts field (upper-right corner).

2. Type a word that the contact information contains. (It doesn’t need to be the person’s name. For example, you could enter a town to find everyone who lives there.) The Contacts list is temporarily filtered to show only entries that contain that word.

To clear the filter, click the Clear Search (X) button to the right of the Search Contacts field.

Your Contacts list comes in handy when you need to address email messages. Here’s how to use it:

1. When composing an email message, click the To button, opening the Select Names: Contacts dialog box. (See Figure 12-5.)

2. Click in the To field at the bottom of the dialog box.

3. Double-click a contact to add that person as a recipient.

You can do the same thing with the Cc and Bcc fields.

4. Click OK when you’re finished.

Figure 12-5

To start an email from the Contacts folder

1. With the Contacts folder displayed, select a contact.

2. Choose Home ⇒ E-Mail. A new message composition window opens with that person’s email address pre-filled in the To field.

If your PC uses a dialup modem connected to a live phone line, you can use Outlook to dial the phone for you. To place a phone call

1. Select the contact and then click Home ⇒ More ⇒ Call and then click the desired phone number for that contact, such as Business or Home.

2. In the New Call dialog box that opens, confirm the contact name and address and then click Start Call. See Figure 12-6.

3. Lift the phone receiver, click Talk, and begin your call.

Figure 12-6

Dialing a telephone isn’t a big chore, so why use Outlook to dial? For one thing, Outlook doesn’t make any dialing mistakes. That can be a great help if you have a disability. Another reason is that if you let Outlook manage the call, it adds a record of the call (and its length) to the Journal area of Outlook. The Journal is a tool for tracking your activities in Outlook. It’s used frequently by people who bill customers by the hour.

Create Notes

Lots of people use sticky notes to create reminders for themselves of bits of information: everything from Web site passwords to memorable quotations. Outlook includes Notes, which are the electronic equivalent of these sticky notes. You can store anything you want on a note, but they are best used for small bits of data, like reservation confirmation codes or membership ID numbers. You can leave a note open (as long as Outlook is open) so that you will be reminded every time you see it, or you can close the note so that it isn’t in your way. Figure 12-7 shows one open note, with the rest of them closed.

Figure 12-7

To create a note, follow these steps:

1. Display the Notes section of Outlook. To do so, click the More icon (…) in the lower-left corner of the window, and on the menu that appears, click Notes. See Figure 12-8.

2. Choose Home ⇒ New Note or press Ctrl+N. A new blank note appears.

3. In the new blank note that appears, type whatever you want.

The first few words of the first line will appear as an icon title, so try to be descriptive there. Unless, of course, you’re trying to camouflage information, like a password; then you might want some misleading text as the first line. I have a friend who keeps her passwords in a note that is titled Family Birthdays, thinking that someone snooping to steal her passwords would not care about family birthdays and would pass that by.

4. Close the note by clicking the X button in its upper-right corner. It’s saved automatically.

Figure 12-8

Here are some handy Note tips:

· To reopen a note: Double-click it. It remains open until you close it, or until you exit Outlook.

· To move a note: Drag it around by its title bar (the colored bar at the top of it), placing it anywhere onscreen, even outside boundaries of the Outlook window. It stays there until you close Outlook.

· To edit a note: Open it and edit away.

· To change the size of the note: Click on and drag its lower-right corner.

· To delete a note: Select it and do one of the following: Choose Home ⇒ Delete, press the Delete key on the keyboard, or right-click the note and choose Delete from the menu that opens.

Just like with a deleted contact, a deleted note is moved to the Deleted Items folder.

To retrieve a deleted note, open the Mail section of Outlook, display the contents of the Deleted Items folder, find the note, and drag it onto to the Notes icon in the lower-left corner of the window. You can also right-click it, choose Move to Folder, and then specify where you want to move it.

Categorize Notes

Because a note is such a multipurpose item, you might find it useful to create categories to differentiate one type of note from another.

By assigning a color to a note, you can indicate what type of information it contains. For example, you might choose to make financial notes green and make family notes blue.

To assign a color category to a note

1. Right-click the note and choose Categorize. A menu of color choices appears.

2. Click the desired color.

If you have used this category before, you are done at this point. The note’s icon and background turn that color. However, the first time you use a certain color, the Rename Category dialog box opens, so you can assign a name. Outlook doesn’t affix any special meaning to a color; you do that on your own. If prompted, change the name in the Name box. See Figure 12-9. Then click OK.

Figure 12-9

If you want to rename a category, you can do so by following these steps:

1. Choose Home ⇒ Categories ⇒ All Categories. The Color Categories dialog box opens. See Figure 12-10.

2. Click the desired category and click Rename. The name becomes editable.

3. Type the new name and press Enter.

Figure 12-10

Notice in Figure 12-10 that you can also create and delete categories and change the color assigned to a category. (This might be useful, for example, if you wanted to change the color used to represent a certain category but you didn’t want to lose the category information already assigned to existing notes.) You can have up to 25 categories.

A note can have multiple categories assigned to it. Each category is an on/off toggle for each note. A note’s icon shows only the color for the category last assigned to it, but it still retains its other categorization too. To remove a category from a note, select the note, click Home ⇒ Categorize, and click the category to toggle off for that note.

The categories are also shared by the Calendar and Tasks features in Outlook. As you are creating categories, think about how you might like to categorize appointments and events too.

Use Tasks and the To-Do List

The Tasks feature in Outlook helps you create and manage action items for yourself and others. Not only can Outlook keep track of what you need to do, but it can remind you of upcoming deadlines, record what percentage of a large job you’ve completed, and even send emails out that assign certain tasks to other people.

To view the Tasks area of Outlook, click Tasks in the lower-left part of the Navigation pane. (The icon looks like a clip board with a check mark on it. You might need to click the More icon to find it, as you did with Notes.) See Figure 12-11.

Figure 12-11

Notice that under the My Tasks heading in the navigation pane, there are two sub-headings: To-Do List and Tasks. There is a subtle difference in Outlook between them:

· Tasks are specific items you created in the Tasks section of Outlook. Something isn’t technically a task unless it was created in the Tasks section.

· The To-Do list contains everything from the Tasks list, plus other items you have marked for action, such as email messages you flag for follow-up.

In the Inbox section of Outlook, you can flag a message for follow-up by selecting it and then clicking the red flag button on the toolbar.

You can click either To-Do List or Tasks to specify which set of activities you want to look at. For the purposes of this book, I assume that you choose Tasks. I describe how to work only with to-do items that are true tasks, not other items for follow-up.

To create a task, follow these steps:

1. Click Tasks in the Navigation pane to display the Tasks area of Outlook. Then in the Navigation pane, click Tasks.

2. Start a new task by choosing Home ⇒ New task or pressing Ctrl+N.

3. Fill in the fields in the Task dialog box that appears. See Figure 12-12 for an example.

4. Click the Save & Close button. The task appears on the Tasks list.

Figure 12-12

Tasks might appear differently on the list, depending on their statuses and due dates. For example, overdue tasks appear in red. Tasks that are 100-percent complete appear in gray with strikethrough in some views, and do not appear at all in other views (because they’re no longer active). Choose View ⇒ Change View and choose the view you want.

To reopen a task, double-click it. The list of tasks looks different depending on which you chose (from the View ⇒ Change View command). Figure 12-13 shows the Detailed view with the reading pane set to Bottom (View ⇒ Reading Pane ⇒ Bottom).

Figure 12-13

Any notes you typed when you created the task appear in the reading pane if it is displayed.

Completing a task does not automatically delete it. Depending on the view, a completed task might disappear from the Tasks list, but it’s not gone. Switch to another view, such as Detailed, and it will reappear.

To delete a task — say, one that you completed — select the task and press Delete. (Or choose Home ⇒ Delete, or right-click the task and choose Delete from the menu that appears.)

Update the Status of a Task

As you make progress on a task, you can update its status in Outlook to reflect that.

· If the view you’re using contains a Status field (column), as in Figure 12-13: Click the task’s current status to open a drop-down list, and then select a new status from there. Your choices are Not Started, In Progress, Waiting on Someone Else, Deferred, or Completed.

· If the view doesn’t contain a Status field: Double-click the task to open it in its own window, and then use the Status drop-down list there.

You can also provide additional information about an in-progress task by entering a number in the % Complete field. If you set the % Complete value to 100%, Outlook automatically changes the Status to Completed.

Use the Priority field to prioritize tasks. All tasks have Normal priority by default. The other choices are Low and High. You can then sort or filter the Tasks list according to task priority if the view you are using includes the Priority field. (Switch to another view if it doesn’t.) The Priority field’s symbol is an exclamation point. High-priority tasks appear with a red exclamation point in that column; low-priority tasks show a blue down-pointing arrow there.

Set a Task Reminder

To help you remember to work on a task, you can set an alarm for it: a reminder. A reminder pops up onscreen at a certain date and time you specify.

To set a reminder for a task, follow these steps:

1. Double-click the task to open it.

2. Mark the Reminder check box.

3. Set the date and time for the reminder.

A default-assigned sound plays when the reminder occurs. To change the sound, click the Sound button (it looks like a speaker) and browse for a different sound file.

4. Click the Save & Close button.

Figure 12-14 shows a reminder being set for 8 a.m. on the task’s Due Date, for example.

Figure 12-14

Set your reminder to occur before the task’s actual due date to give yourself some time to work on it. For example, set a budget’s reminder for two weeks prior to the date.

When the date and time come for the reminder, it pops up in a box within Outlook (if Outlook is running) and a sound plays, if assigned. If Outlook isn’t running at that date/time, it pops up the next time Outlook starts.

In the Reminder box that appears (see Figure 12-15), click the Dismiss button to dismiss the reminder, or click the Snooze button to temporarily turn off the reminder but have it pop up again later. (You get to define “later” by specifying that from the drop-down list to the left of the Snooze button.)

Figure 12-15