Actions and reminders in Outlook

H

howman

0
For all of you Outlook users out there, I have a few questions I am hoping you can answer.

1. Let's say you receive a message and it has an attachment. You need to read the attachment but you don't have time to read it now. What do you do with the message? How do you remind yourself the attachment needs to be read?

2. You send a message to someone and you need a reply back by tomorrow. How do you mark the message or otherwise place a reminder in Outlook to follow up with the person if you did not receive a reply?

Thanks!
 
howman said:
1. Let's say you receive a message and it has an attachment. You need to read the attachment but you don't have time to read it now. What do you do with the message? How do you remind yourself the attachment needs to be read?

2. You send a message to someone and you need a reply back by tomorrow. How do you mark the message or otherwise place a reminder in Outlook to follow up with the person if you did not receive a reply?
Click to expand...

1. File the message in the appropriate folder, which in my case is usually a folder for the project or client. Create a task: @Read/Review Foobar systems email.

2. Create a task: @Waiting For Reply from John Q. Coworker?

Katherine
 
1. EZDetach automatically strips out the attachment for me and puts it into a directory structure based on the senders name and puts a link back into the e-mail (helps keep down the size of your Inbox). I normally create an @Computer Read/Review Next Action. The task has a link back to the document so I can always find it. I use the GTD add-in so I can link the task to a project if necessary.

2. As per Katherines suggestion. In addition, I might put a due date on the next action. If it's over-due the next time I do a weekly review then I may change the action from Waiting for to an @Call, an @Agenda, or if it's particularly time sensative @Deferred and schedule a meeting.
 
jac

1.I have an @action folder as a sub-folder under my Inbox. Anything that will takke more than 2 minutes to process (eg reading an attachment) goes into the @action folder. If it will take less than 2 minutes to process then I just do it. This keep my inbox clean. I process my @action folder once orr twice per day.

2.I bcc myself into all e-mails that I want to track. I have a @waiting sub-folder under my Inbox. I have a rule that automatically copies any e-mail that I bcc myself into the @waiting folder. I review the @waiting folder as part of my Weekly Review and just delete items that I have recieved the necessary feedback for or issue reminder e-mails for those that I haven't. If I need to follow something up by a particular date I will also mark it on my calendar (otherwise it might be too lat come Weekly Review time).
 
howman said:
For all of you Outlook users out there, I have a few questions I am hoping you can answer.

1. Let's say you receive a message and it has an attachment. You need to read the attachment but you don't have time to read it now. What do you do with the message? How do you remind yourself the attachment needs to be read?

2. You send a message to someone and you need a reply back by tomorrow. How do you mark the message or otherwise place a reminder in Outlook to follow up with the person if you did not receive a reply?
Click to expand...

You can drag the relevant message to the task folder. A task appears with the message as an attachment for easy access. If you are checking your lists regulalrly , having the task on the list should be enough to ensure that you do the deed. If that isn't enough to remind you, you can set a date and an alarm to use as a tickler.

Tom S.

Tom S.
 
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