From the Desk of Janet Barclay

According to a recent survey conducted by the Creative Group, only 13 percent of executives said they don’t attend to business at all when they are on vacation. One in five check in with the office several times a day! A recent online poll at Monster.ca revealed similar results: 37% of English Canadians and 33% of French Canadians admitted they will be using their cell phone, BlackBerry, or laptop to check in with work periodically while vacationing. Even more shocking is the fact that fewer than two-thirds of Canadian employees take as much vacation time as they are entitled to, in many cases because they don’t feel it’s worth taking time off, only to return to a backlog of work.

I haven’t read any stats about small business owners, but it would seem to me that if people who get paid vacation time are not taking advantage of it, small business owners are even less likely to take a break, especially if they don’t have anyone to keep the business running while they are off.

How about you? Are you taking time off this summer? How much? What arrangements have you made for your business (or your job) during your absence? Will you be checking in? How often? Please leave your answers in a comment.

I stopped writing about all the great new features in Office 2007 because I was afraid I was getting a bit boring, but I haven’t stopped discovering them!

Last week, after struggling with a Publisher file which kept adding a small line to the document upon conversion, I sent it to another VA to try. She had no problem with it, and sent it back to me. When I looked at the properties of the document she sent me back, I saw that she had used Office 2007’s PDF creator.

I had known about this feature, but hadn’t bothered to download it, since I already owned Adobe Acrobat. After this experience, I decided to try it, and sure enough, I was able to convert a similar file without a problem. In addition, Office 2007’s PDF creator is much faster, and it also gives the option of not opening the PDF after it’s created, which saves even more time. Since I typically create several PDFs a day, this helps me to be more productive (and weighs less on my patience). And if I do need to do anything with the document after it’s converted, I still have the option of opening it in Adobe.

At a conference I attended a couple of years ago, one of the speakers, a marketing expert, collected business cards for a draw, which is a common practice. As part of his presentation, he went through the cards he’d collected and shared his comments about those he found to be very good - or very bad. I thought that was very disrespectful to his audience, especially as he did not hesitate to read the names out loud of the people whose cards he criticized. Much to my relief, I was not one of them!

Since that time, I attended another event where the speaker used PowerPoint to show what not to do on your website. Again, I was relieved that none of the sites I’d created were used as examples! There is an entire website dedicated to that topic: Web Pages That Suck. Feeling a little more secure these days, I decided to check it out. The purpose of the site is to show you what doesn’t work by providing examples. There are all kinds of great tips and some really bad websites to illustrate them.

One usability issue that the makers of Web Pages That Suck seem to have overlooked is cross-browser compatibility. When I brought up their site in my preferred browser, Mozilla Firefox, the banner shows up properly at the top of the page, but after that, the entire structure breaks down. As of June 2007, 34% of Internet users are using Firefox, so it is becoming more and more important to make sure that your website displays properly in browsers other than Internet Explorer.

If you haven’t tried Firefox, simply click on the button below to download it to your computer.

After you’ve done that, don’t forget to check out Web Pages That Suck!

There is so much software available, including shareware, freeware, and commercial programs, that it’s very difficult to stay on top of what’s out there, let alone take the time to try them out, so I’m always very grateful when one of my ezine or blog readers takes the time to write and let me know about a good productivity tool. I received the following email after sending out my ezine this month:

Hi Janet!

Thought I would let you know that the article was great.  After reading your bulleted points for perfectionists, and those striving to do things right, two software programs came to mind that can help people with organizing their projects. 

The first one that came to mind is Microsoft Project 2007.  I believe it can work on the XP system.  I finished the online training for it this week, and really feel it will help me at home as well as at the office.  I see how useful and powerful this program is, and that it will greatly help with organization. 

Suggested Uses:  Any project that has a few main tasks, which have a few or several subtasks.  A home renovation project, a moving project, home organizing project, organizing your online files/photos/digital data, or filing cabinets at home. Creating a website, family scrapbook, and unlimited other kinds of projects.

Training site: VTC.com

The other program is OneNote2007, also by Microsoft.  All of your notes for projects, assignments, meetings, etc. can be stored in one digital binder.  You can have handwritten notes, typed notes, audio clips, video clips, links to other documents associated with the project, copy parts of websites or pdf documents, and more.  This way if you are working on a project you have everything associated with it in one location, and you can access it from that “binder” on your desktop, laptop, network, and even while on a trip.  People who use the items in the “project” such as a ppt presentation, are able to update and make changes on the document while the executive or owner of the “binder” are traveling, and when they uplink to the server they will get the latest information and apparently it syncs with the executive’s changes that he may have made on the road.  There are several other things that can be done with the program, but this is pretty much the bulk of it.  It is simple and easy to learn and use. It does not take long to learn it.

I am just dying to get my hands on a copy of the OneNote2007 version.  Just so you know…. the 2003 version does not have all the awesome new capabilities the 2007 version has. 

Suggested Uses: Meetings, Projects, any other stuff.

Training site: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote/HA100325211033.aspx

Feel free to share this with others!!!!

Sincerely,

Evangelica R. Ore
Executive Assistant
Harbor Real Estate Group

If you’ve used either of these programs, or if you’d like to recommend others, please share your comments in the space below this entry. And if you’re interested in reading my article on Perfectionism and Your Productivity, watch for it to be added to OrganizedArticles.com in the near future, or visit my newsletter archives.

I received this message from one of my ezine subscribers, and since it’s Saturday and the middle of the summer, I thought I would share it with you.

With all the VA’s or Assistants out there who work from home, there has got to be some who travel, if even just to “get out of the house.” Ha!   Here are some pretty funny but apparently serious tips on what not to say in 51 countries.