Useful tip to manage repetitive tasks in MS Outlook (v2010)

How many emails do you receive in a day? 50? 100? or more?

How many emails do you send out in a day? And how many of these are repetitive emails i.e. emails that you send out on a regular frequency?

I am sure most of us will be heavily reliant on Outlook for carrying out day to day tasks - scheduling meetings, tasks, following up, status reports etc., There may be occasions when you will be sending out the same email with minimal changes on a daily/weekly/fortnightly/monthly basis to the same set of people. The only changes could be on the attachments or the contents in the email body.

Don't you wish that there is something that could perform this repetitive task with minimum effort?

Well, this is something that MS Outlook (v2010) has thought about and has introduced this new feature called Quick Step.

 

Well, what exactly does this do?

 

For starters, this feature will help in doing repetitive tasks that you may be doing in Outlook.

As an ex:, if you have to send a weekly report, then all you have to do is create a new step that will

1. Create a new email.

2. Add the email addresses to the "To" and "Cc" list.

3. Populate the subject line.

4. Mark the email importance.

5. Auto populate the email body with the greeting and static text.

 

All you have to do is just click on this quick step and modify the contents where required. No need to trawl through "Sent Items" folder to search for last week's email, no need to open it, no need to click Action --> Resend this email. All you have to do is just create the quick step the first time and use it every time you want to send the weekly reports.

 

What else can you do with quick step?

 

Well, you can set up meeting requests, send emails to different groups, set up tasks, and so many other repetitive tasks that you may be doing on a regular basis. Do go through the link given above and I am sure you all will have many success stories to share !