Joe Hackman

Joe Hackman

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Using the proper Importance Flag with Email

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I received an Email Friday from a friend, I receive a lot of Email so sometimes I don’t get a chance to review non critical business Email until I have some free time. This morning while responding from the message I realized that part of the message involved a timely issue for Friday evening. The title did not indicate it and the message was flagged normally. This incident was a reminder to me of the usefulness and etiquette of the Importance options with Email correspondence. Here is my interpretation of the three options:

Low Importance

I recommend using this flag when sending Emails to people who you know to be very busy that are not time critical. Chances are busy people will respond promptly to all most messages anyway but it is a nice way to say “Hey I know your time is valuable, there is no rush here.”

Not Flagged or Normal Importance

Most Email fits in this category, most people don’t flag messages at all or use the subject line of the Email to indicate the nature of the message.

High Importance

This option is sometimes over utilized, I’ve seen some Email users that seem to flag a large percentage of their messages as high importance. This is acceptable if it is factual. I recommend using this option for messages where the response required is timely or the information will be considered urgent by the recipient. In conjunction with some carefully crafted subjects you can provide a range of urgency to the recipient.

Here is the location of this tag in Microsoft Outlook 2010:

Importance Feature Outlook 2010

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Quick Tip MrFixit for Windows Update Issues

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Have you ever encountered errors with Windows Update or had it just stop prompting you all-together? This might be the solution to your problem. Either way it is a web page at Microsoft that will provide the right tool depending on what Operating system you are running.

To run the utility navigate to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971058 and click on the Microsoft Fix It icon or link:

Mr Fixit Utility

You will have one option that can be selected, only use this option if the first attempt without it checked was not successful:

Mr Fixit Aggressive Options

After running the utility in either mode an additional screen will pop up with other options:

MrFixit Complete

If after a restart you still experience issues, you can run the utility again to access the help links in the utility. Microsoft does provide free support for windows update issues.

Windows 7 Quicktip Aero Snap Feature

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The Aero snap feature on Windows 7 is really useful. You can use it to maximize a window by left clicking and dragging that window to the top of the screen or drag left or right to have the active program use that half of the screen. This is what you might see in the Microsoft commercial. There is a small problem, what if you have 2 or more monitors? It doesn’t work unless you drag it all the way to the right, left or top most screen edge. You can actually use this feature even with multiple screens by using the windows key + arrow keys, these are the affects:

  • Winkey + L/R Arrow cycles the active window through all available visible options (Right Half, Left Half, Normal, Maximize)
  • Winkey + Up Arrow Maximizes the active window
  • Winkey + Down Arrow Minimizes the active window

These are must know keyboard shortcuts for Windows 7 users with 2 or more monitors and I like them even on single screens. Please note this does require the Aero interface to be enabled and not all computers support it. For a demonstration of this feature check out this video:

Quick Tip Email Sorting

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Use the “from” and “subject” fields to sort Emails while you are cleaning up your inbox. You should find it easier to get through your back log of messages by addressing issues with certain individual(s)… or certain subjects all at once. Quite often the most recent Email of a certain subject contains all the prior information and the older ones can be deleted.