Getting Things Done: Setting Up Outlook

I mentioned earlier in these series of pages that I rely heavily on Outlook to keep me organized. Hopefully some of the information below will give you some idea of the tweaks I’ve made to my installation of Outlook to make my life easier.

A couple of comments first:

1. The images below are from Outlook 2007 Beta 2. Much of what I will be sharing works also in Outlook 2002 and 2003; the biggest difference is that automatic color-coding of tasks and appointments and RSS functionality are introduced in OL07.
    
2. This section of my website has turned out to be a bit more verbose than I originally intended. Therefore, I hope you’ll forgive me if I assume a certain level of familiarity with Outlook in these examples. To the extent that I skip over a few details, keep in mind that there is a lot of good information available just by searching the web, or by reading the help file. If all else fails, I’m willing to field a few questions.
    
3. Many GTD devotees make a point of emphasizing how beneficial it is to learn keyboard shortcuts and to assign shortcuts to macros if you are practicing GTD in programs like Outlook. However, I frequently use Outlook on a tablet PC. When operating in tablet mode, keyboard shortcuts aren’t always that efficient; so, I don’t spend energy trying to learn them. Instead, I prefer solutions that require as few clicks as possible. Your situation may be different, so please feel free to adapt as appropriate.

Folders

I’ve written about them in prior pages, but to make it clear — I do use multiple folders in Outlook to organize mail and RSS posts. A screencap from Outlook showing folders relevant to this discussion can be found on the right. Those folders are:

• Inbox — I try to keep this folder empty
• Filed-Home — What I use in lieu of keeping everything in my inbox. My catch-all/trash folder. I also use Outlook’s AutoArchive feature to keep my file down to a manageable size.
• For Blog — contains mail/posts I want to blog about
• Reading — part of my to-read pile
• Reference — contains a select few emails kept on-hand for reference purposes; things I know I’ll want to look at later and for which it’s just faster to keep them separate rather than relying on WDS.

Rules-Based Filtering

I mentioned that I use Outlook on two systems. I consider my home Outlook to be my "primary" system, and my office Outlook to be "secondary". So, on my work machine, rather than moving mail into these special folders, I’ll actually email those items to special email addresses, and have Outlook at home automagically store them. (If you don’t have your own domain, but want custom mail address, I’d encourage you to try Gmail, and check out the plus-address functionality.)

The image on the right (click to actually see it legible-sized) shows how I’ve set up the Rules Wizard to capture all email headed to my for-blog address, categorize it as @Blog, and move it to my For-Blog folder.

Categories

Earlier, I discussed the different categories I used to handle grouping tasks by context or role. Outlook comes with several predefined categories in the master category list. You may find it helpful to wipe out the predefined categories and create a more useful list for yourself. The procedure to follow is different in Outlook 2007 than in prior versions. In OL07, it’s almost self-evident. In prior versions, information can be found in Microsoft documentation.

In the clip to the right (again, click for legible view), you can also get a taste of the automatic color coding of categories, and see that there is the ability (which I haven’t explored) to assign shortcut keys to individual categories.

One side-benefit of OL07 automatic color coding is that the scheme applies across Outlook, which means that a quick glance over the weekly view of your calendar can quickly convey what types of events are on your calendar without even having to look at the subjects:

Customizing Task Views

Even before I became familiar with GTD, I spent a bit of time tinkering with custom views for my tasklist. Now that I’m using an organization system that recommends keeping multiple to-do lists, but for which I only keep one…having customized filters/views comes in very handy.

A full lesson in customizing views is beyond the scope of this monologue. The way I learned was to do (from the Tasks window) View | Current View | Define Views and play from there, consulting the help file as needed. Below are snapshots of the two task views I use most often, and the rules used to set them up.

First, my "normal" task view, showing everything other than low-priority ("somdayed") tasks which are either undated, or will start no later than one week from now (i.e., currently or soon-to-be active), and which haven’t yet been completed (click to see legible version):

When I’m reviewing "somedayed" tasks and goals, the task view looks essentially the same. However the rules to generate the view are ugly, involving creating a SQL filter since the wizard doesn’t handle "OR" conditions nicely. The easiest way to arrive at the SQL filter shown below is to use the advanced view to set up the filter to be (Complete = No, Folder = Tasks, Categories contain !Goals, Importance = Low), tab over to the SQl view, and add in the pair of parentheses and change the "AND" to an "OR".

Macro Buttons

I mentioned that I have several macros in Outlook to make my life easier. The macro section of my toolbar is shown at the right. In order, those buttons do the following:

• First button: at home — moves item into the Blog folder and categories as @Blog; at work — emails the item to my "for blog" address.
• Second button: essentially the same as the first, except for @Read items
• Third button: converts the currently-selected message to a task. (You can do the same thing by dragging it to the task icon in the lower-left-hand corner of the Outlook window; but I prefer to just click one button.)
• Fourth button: converts the currently-selected message to a calendar item
• Fifth button: moves the item into my "filed" folder
• Last button: like the first two, except for zzReference items.

To customize your toolbar, right click anywhere on your toolbars and select "Customize". If the icons in the above window look familiar, it’s because I swiped them from other buttons’ icons; you can copy/paste a button icon by right clicking it while in Customize mode and making the appropriate selections.

To create a macro, Tools | Macro | Visual Basic editor will do the trick; my code (more correctly, the code I cobbled together from various online source) is on the next page. You’ll also probably want to check out the selfcert.exe utility to curb annoying Outlook warning messages.

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