Tip-Of-The-Week

November 10, 2006

From the Free Computer Consultant

http://www.FreeComputerConsultant.com

This week it's a tip for all of you Microsoft Outlook users. I have long been on a bandwagon telling people to use Outlook Express if they want to for NEWSGROUP use only, but to use Outlook for email.

Not everyone has Outlook, although even the basic version of MS Office does come with it. Is it the BEST email client in the world, no. But it is much better than Outlook Express.

One of the things you can do with Outlook that I utilize all of the time is modifying the subject line. Suppose you get a real good joke (rare) in an email, and you would like to save it. That's fine, but the subject line is something like:

. . . FW: RE: RE: from JOe (FW: last night) RE: JOKE!! / :)

Not very useful if you pride yourself on any kind of a filing system.

But what if you could CHANGE the subject to something more useful, say:

. . . Joke: 2006 update of Chicken crossed the road

More useful, yes? Obviously this a somewhat lame example, but it applies to almost everyone. I personally am always receiving software licenses in the mail with subjects like:

. . . RE: Order 788890043 [Vendor P.O. 9093-3i883]

and I'm not even the vendor! I then change it to:

. . . 20061110 - CLIENT NAME - MS Windows XP License Qty 25

MUCH more useful to me; then I file it under, you guessed it, "Licenses" folder.

So how do you do that? Easy.

Just open the email, click on the subject (even though it doesn't look like editable text, it is!) and type!

That simple. Then select File | Save, or answer "yes" to the "save changes?" prompt when you close the email another way.

Hope that's of use to you.

That's it for this week.

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