Organizing meetings and notes with outlining in Microsoft Word

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Watch this video using your Windows Media PlayerCheckout the video for a step-by-step demonstration!
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Did you know that Microsoft Word has an awesome tool to help you create and organize new ideas? Most people use Word for typical word processing, but do you use its powerful outlining features? Hit the F1 key, look up “outlining”, and you’ll find a powerful tool that I use for a whole bunch of different reasons. Outlines help me create great documents by helping me transform raw ideas into well-structured thoughts. Anytime I need to take notes in a conversation I fire up a copy of Word in outline mode. I find that I can easily capture lots of ideas yet have the flexibility later to organize them into action plans.

Want a way to run a killer meeting? Use a projector to put a Word document in front of the audience and use outlining mode to take notes and action items. There is an AWESOME dynamic that occurs when you are taking notes right there in front of everyone’s eyes. People participate better and they make sure you enter accurate minutes. Best of all, at the end of the meeting all you do is email the document to all the participants and you’re done! I know that if you check out (and master) outlining in Word, you’ll find a great tool waiting to help you work better and faster.

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Speed up your selections in Word

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If you use copy and paste in Word, I’ve got a great little trick for you. Well I’ve got a much faster and easier trick for you. Usually you need to copy and paste either a word or a sentence and of course the normal way is to carefully drag your mouse across what you want to select, right? If you want to quickly select a word, just double click on it. If you want to select a sentence, hold down the control key and click anywhere in the sentence. When you combine this with using control C for copy and control V for paste and you too can be come a copying and pasting machine! It takes a little practice to get used to this but its well worth the effort. Of course, all these tricks are in the online help so just press F1 and search for “selecting” if you need a refresher.

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Use CTRL-Enter when surfing the Web

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If you use Internet Explorer to surf the Web, I’ve got a great tip for you. The next time you have to type in a Web site address, just enter the domain name, then do a control-enter by holding down the control key and hit enter. For example, instead of typing http://www.yourcomputerminute.com, just type in “yourcomputerminute” all by itself, nothing else, then do a control enter. Internet Explorer will automagically add the http://www in the beginning and the dotcom at the end. Try it!

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Using Autotext

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If you think about all the documents you create, you’ll probably realize that there are a few things that you end up typing the same way, over and over again. Things like maybe your company address, common phrases, standard clauses, or product information. Most people just end up actually typing that information in time and time again. There’s a much better way and it’s called “AutoText”. Autotext lets you store commonly used blocks of text, and then later if you need to use that text block it’s just a few clicks away. Autotext is even smart enough to watch your typing and if it sees that you’re re-entering a block of text you’ve already stored, it automagically tries to type it in for you. It’s a very cool feature that few people use and it’s really easy to learn. Just hit F1 for online help and type in autotext. You’ll love it!

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Create a new email and address it with just a click using Desktop Shortcuts

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If you use Outlook I’ve got a great tip for you. There are probably a few people that you send a lot of email to. This could be friends, family, or co-workers. You can save a lot of time by creating a desktop shortcut that allows you to create a new email and also address it with only a single click. Here’s how to do it. Right-click on your desktop, then click new, then shortcut. When Windows asks you for the location, type in “mailto:” followed by the email address of the person you normally send mail to. Finish it up and you’re done. Now all you do is double click on this desktop shortcut and Voila, an email is opened and automatically addressed.

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Create a custom tool bar in Microsoft Office

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If you use Microsoft Office I’ve got a great tip for you. There are a few commands that each of us use in Office over and over again and sometimes those commands take several clicks to get to. One example is adding someone to your Junk senders list in Outlook which takes 3 clicks and if you have to do that often, you end up spending a lot of time. Create a custom toolbar button instead. Just right-click on your toolbar and choose “customize”. Then click on the “commands” tab. Find the command you want to turn into a button, then drag and drop it on your toolbar. Next time all you need to do is just click on that button! Very cool.

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