Outlook 2007 - who moved my action flags
by
Charlie Bess
I've been running Outlook 2007 at home for a while, but last week I moved my work machine over to it. This seems to be a trend this week.
Everything works fine, but it's clear that the way I was using action flags was different than the way Microsoft intended. I used colored action flags to categorize my activities and that's not the way it works anymore.
There are a number of other changes to the way it works as well.
Now I use categories for the types of work. Action flags are focused on timing. I am sure I will get used to it over time, but setting up the display the way I wanted (to group by category and sort by flag) took a little work to figure out. The merging of mail action items with the Task list was nice, but now I have a huge list of things to do that I'm working on cleaning up.
An added benefit from using colors and categories effectively is that I can see what my day is going to be focused on from across the room. I can also do a report that summarizes how I spent my time at the end of the month -- if I can keep the discipline up.
The one thing I wish Microsoft would do is let me group all the unread (regardless of category) together. I guess they expect me to use the search folder display. I use rules to sort mail as it comes it, so sometimes even my incoming mail is already categorized.
Anyone who uses Outlook should be using the Microsoft Desktop Search engine to allow you to search across your .PST files ... it is a godsend to anyone who keeps a great deal of mail archived away for future reference. I've been using it for a long time, but there is a new version that's compatible with office 2007. It surprises me how few people use it.
