In this micro‑tip video Randy Dean, the "Email Sanity Expert," shows how to speed up repetitive outbound email work in both classic and new Outlook (and briefly in Gmail). He demonstrates three core tricks: (1) turning a recently sent message—especially one with attachments—into a reusable template by moving it from Sent to Drafts and then forwarding it, allowing quick edits and re‑sending without hunting through a crowded Sent folder; (2) creating multiple Outlook signatures that act as ready‑made email bodies, including a full‑signature for new messages, a short reply signature for replies/forwards, and a custom “Standard Info Request” signature that can be dragged into the subject line and edited on the fly; (3) reducing attachment bloat by hosting files on his website and inserting a link in the email instead of an attachment, which improves deliverability. He also encourages viewers to pause, rewind, and practice the steps live in their own Outlook client to master the workflow. The video ends with a call‑to‑action to visit randaldean.com for full‑length training programs.
Chapters
Hi everybody, Randy Dean, Email Sanity Expert here. Hey, um, I wanted to let you know I'm in the process of making a new raft of videos for my YouTube channel, updated video snippets on tech tips for people using the old classic Outlook, uh, new Outlook, and also Gmail. These are snippets that came from some live webinar programs where I wanted to pull little snippets of those programs and turn them into some new content for the channel. If you'd like to learn more about these full-length training programs and maybe see these in context, I'll put the link to my website randaldean.com at the end of this tip video so you can take a look. Go to the website, you can learn more about these full-length programs. So enjoy. Thanks. What did I say I want you to do when it takes a couple of minutes or less? That's right. Do it now. Only handle it once. Get the quick stuff done. Wouldn't it be nice if we could flip that box over so it doesn't just help you with your stuff coming in, but maybe it can help you with your stuff going out too? For instance, how many of you ever been typing a message? You've been typing it for a couple of minutes. You're about ready to hit send. You say to yourself, there's some good writing. That is the most excellent business composition right there. Then you say to yourself, but you know what? I answered this question already in the past. Same thing keeps coming up over and over again. So where do most people go to find it? That's right. They go dive into that sent folder and then they start searching in their sent folder for that item. And they think I am so smart. It's only taken me a few minutes to find it every time. Reasonably smart. But what if when you've sent a message, you just sent one and you know, ooh, that's a good one. That answers that question. That's got what I need. I need that email. What if you then immediately open your Sent folder because it's right at the top, you just sent it and you picked it up and moved out of your Sent folder and put it right back into your Drafts folder. Well, why would you do that? I'm not going to tell you why. I'm going to show you why. Let's go back in here. Let's collapse this so I can see my drafts folder. Notice now, why do I not want it to be in my sent folder? Because there's 800 things in my sent folder. You don't want to find stuff where there's 800 things to look through. 15 is manageable though. Let's open my drafts folder and take a look at this. YouTube bonuses as requested. Now I want to open this email. Now remember, I got that YouTube channel. At the end of a lot of my videos, I go, hey, if you want to get my bonus sheet of tips for my YouTube channel, send me an email, randy@randaldean.com, and I'll be happy to send you my bonus PDF. So I get a few of these emails every week in my inbox from people watching my videos. Notice this email. Let's open this thing up. Here's the email. It's got the attachments. That I want to send. Let's see all the— so it's got 5 attachments. Now that's a big deal. The reason I've set this up this way is because of these attachments. That's why I'm moving the email back to drafts. I don't want to have to go find these attachments every time. But now watch what I can do. I can hit forward. Now when I hit forward, notice that it drops in my attachment and then it brings the header from the previous email. So now remember this. It's in my drafts folder, but it's an email I have already previously sent with attachments that I have now put back into my drafts folder. So if I hit forward, it's gonna give you that signature and that previous message header. But watch what I can do. I can pop into here and quickly edit this by selecting all of that and hitting delete. And then I can come down to hi name, double-click on name. Hi Randy Dean. Look at that. By doing this the way I've done it, I've turned that email, an email I have previously sent with the attachments I need and the text that I need, into a template. And I find it in my drafts folder. Now, if I were to hit send, you're probably going, wait, Randy, once you send a draft message, it's gone. I'm not sending a draft. I'm forwarding an already sent message. I'm just finding it in drafts and forwarding, which means I can use it again and again and again and again and again. And if something changes that requires me to change the copy or change an attachment, well, then I can do that and send it to myself. Delete the old one, keep the newer one, which is now up to date. Put it back in drafts again. And so what this means is over time, I've basically created a template tool using previously sent messages with attachments. Cool. Now you're probably going, but Randy, what if the email doesn't have all these attachments? It just got text, maybe a web link or two, maybe an image or two. Can I do even one better? Why, yes, you can. Let's talk about this. I'm going to close this message. Actually, I'm going to, I'm going to delete this message because I'm not going to actually send it. Yeah, I want to discard that draft. Now notice I discarded the draft. Let's go back into drafts. The original is still there. See, because that's the message I moved back in. The one I was about to send was a draft because I was forwarding. Makes sense. If this all doesn't make sense, rewind a little bit, watch it again until you get it. But in essence, I'm just taking stuff from my Sent folder that I might use again as a template. I'm moving it into Drafts so I can find it faster, especially when it has attachments. But maybe I don't need to use even that option. Watch this. Let's hit New Mail. Now, if I hit New Mail, it of course brings up this new message in new Outlook. But let me show you something here. If I come up inside of this new message and then I go to Insert, under the Insert panel, you have an option for signatures. And this is where you would set up the signature you see right here. I've already done that. Obviously, I'm right there. And so I've got my signature. Interesting thing though. Let's take a look at something here. Notice that it's got that little drop arrow. I could also switch it to my short reply. What's my short reply? Take a look at this. Now notice the difference between the two. My standard signature has my picture, my logo, and quite a bit of shameless self-promotion beyond my general contact information. My shorter one doesn't have my name, doesn't have my logo, and doesn't have all the stuff. And let me show you what I'm doing here. I go into signatures and I come down to the Word signatures. And I open this up. Notice what it has in here. Under here, it says email signature, and it says Randy Dean Short Reply. But if I go down to the bottom of this panel for signatures, new messages is standard. That's the one with the picture and the logo replies and forwards. Randy Dean, which is the one I just showed you, which means for brand new messages, I'm giving them everything. For replies and forwards, I'm giving them a truncated version of that because that assumes we've already been talking. Oh, wait a minute. Did you see this other one in here? Look at this. Let's go to standard info request. Wait, what is This thing, that is more than just a basic signature. What is going on there? Watch this close. I'm going to close this. I'm going to go back up to Signature and I'm going to come in and click on Standard Info Request. That's the one I just showed you. Boom. Wait, that looks like a full email with a full signature. Because that's exactly what it is. You can set up your signatures as automated templates too. And notice that I put this at the top. Watch this. I'm going to take that. I'm going to pick that up. I'm going to drop it in subject. See how I did that? I highlighted it, picked it up, moved it to subject. That simple. And then I can clean this up just a little bit. Dear, double-click on the word name, Randy Dean. That email is ready to go. Few seconds flat. It's got the link to the information they might need. It's got my contact information and my other links in my signature. It's got my picture so they know who they're talking to. Few seconds flat. I hope you see it allows you to create multiple signatures. You can click on the word signature to add new signatures or edit your existing signatures. And get the word signature out of your head. Think of it as your automated response tool, your automated email tool. If there's certain messages you're sending over and over and over again and they don't have attachments, this is how I'd recommend you do it. Why am I recommending you do this for emails without attachments? Well, because signatures as of now doesn't allow you to automatically have attachments. But, uh, that's why I do the one in drafts. But, you know, if you want to be really slick and clever, let me show you something here. Let's page down a little bit. Let's look at this. See right there? What I've done is I've posted that document on my website share file, which means rather than putting an attachment on the email, I could just give them the link. They click the link, they can get to the PDF file. So that's one way to reduce the number of attachments you're sending and make your email smaller, which means they're more likely to be delivered. Loaded. So much stuff here. By the way, speaking of that, this amount of information that I'm sharing in some of these little micro tips, Might want to come back and watch this again and maybe even have your Outlook on screen too while you're watching the video on screen one or the other way around and have your hand on the pause and rewind buttons because that's how you can really master this stuff is by practicing it live. If
