From the Desk of Janet Barclay

I recently decided to invest in a new computer. I decided to stick with Windows XP, since I’d heard absolutely nothing about Vista that made me feel confident that it was something I wanted to have. However, having heard wonderful things about Office 2007, it seemed like a worthwhile investment, especially since it cost less to add it to my purchase than it would have to buy an upgrade in the store - plus this way I get to run Office 2003 on my old (desktop) computer and 2007 on my new (notebook) one.

I’ve been exploring the power of Outlook for many years, and one area I’ve always found lacking is the task manager. When I was using Office XP, I purchased Franklin Covey’s Plan Plus, an add-in that allowed (among many other things) the user to look at the tasks assigned to any given day and prioritize them, not just as high, normal or low priority, but to drag and drop them into the order they should be performed. I loved the program, but my computer didn’t, and when I got tired of all the error messages, I ended up installing it.

When I read Sally McGhee’s Take Back Your Life!: Using Microsoft Outlook to Get Organized and Stay Organized, I learned a number of strategies that helped me make better use of Outlook’s task manager, but it still didn’t work for me as well as I would have liked. One of the major drawbacks was the difficulty in displaying tasks in a way that is effective for me.

It may be too early to say for sure, but I think this has been resolved in the latest version. Outlook 2007 has a new feature called the "To-Do Bar" which appears at the right side of the screen. Below the small view of the current month’s calendar, tasks are displayed - first those due today, then those due tomorrow, followed by those due the rest of the week, the rest of the month, next month, and later. Now when I’ve finished everything on today’s list (yes, it does happen!) I can easily see what else is coming up, and I don’t even have to switch back and forth between my main page and the task manager page. As an added bonus, if an email is flagged with a due date, it automatically comes up in the list, so I no longer need to create a task to remind me to follow up or deal with a particular message.

I’m sure there are many goodies I’ve yet to discover, and I’ll be sure to share them with you here!