Using Outlook Signatures, Drafts Folder, and Quick Parts for E-mail Efficiency

Hello everyone, welcome to today's video tutorial. Today what I'd like to do is talk about how you can basically speed up sending out your emails by using some cool inside tools inside of Microsoft Outlook, including the Drafts folder, Microsoft Outlook signatures, and Quick Steps. My name is Randy Dean. I am popularly known as the Email Sanity Expert. I go all over the United States, Canada, and even Europe Leading and Teaching programs on how to get your email inbox under control. And so let's get right into this. You may know about some of my work in the past if you've ever followed any of my videos or been to one of my programs where I talk about this little decision tree about how you manage your email. And in that decision tree, I basically say 3 minutes or less, get it done right now. Longer than 3 minutes, it goes on to your task list, your calendar. Once it's done or tasked, you don't need it in your inbox, file it or delete it. If no place to file, make a place to file and put it there. Sort of similar to the strategy I learned almost 25 years ago from David Allen, the author of Getting Things Done. Just sort of making you think about how it is that you manage your incoming items and how you can process those and take it a little bit further when it comes to specifically how to manage those emails intentionally. I'd like to focus in though on this little box right here where it says 3 minutes or less. What I basically share in my programs is that if you get something that comes in, it's only going to take you a couple minutes, handle those ones right away. But wouldn't it be nice if you could make more of your outgoing emails sort of fit that box also? Meaning you could keep more of your outgoing stuff moving faster. For instance, how many of you have ever been typing a message and when you get done typing that message you say to yourself, "That there's some good writing. That is the most excellent business composition right there." But then you also say to yourself, but you know what, I've already answered this question before. I'm going to answer this question again. So instead of retyping it, where do most of you go to find it? I know the answer. Most of you go to your Sent folder. And the problem with your Sent folder is there could be hundreds or even thousands of emails in there. So trying to find something that you've already said before that you want to forward on again tends to be a slow and laborious process. So the first suggestion I'll give you when it comes to speeding up your outgoing emails is very simply this. Don't leave them in your Sent folder if you think you're going to send them again. What I recommend you do as soon as you send an email you're pretty confident you're going to go ahead and forward on and send again, immediately open up your Sent folder and move it from your Drafts folder. And let me show you why that matters. I'm going to pop out of here, go into my Microsoft Outlook. And you know, if I go into my Sent folder, there could be literally hundreds or thousands of emails in here. So good luck finding anything in this mess.. But now if I come over and just click on my Drafts folder, take a look at this. Very little traffic, easy to find stuff. And take a look at this little email I've got inside of here. This is one that I use frequently, and you'll see that it is a formatted style message. It's got different colored fonts, it's got different size fonts, it's got a picture inside of it, it's got an attachment I'd like to use again and again. This is sort of an area— that attachment thing right there— that a lot of people sometimes want to find. How can I send an email with the same attachment over and over again? Here's your answer on how to do that. Just take an email, send it with the attachment, and then move the sent one into your drafts folder. Because once it's in drafts, take a look at this, I can just hit forward. And once I hit forward, it'll give you this goofy little forwarding header which you can quickly erase. But now I'm back down to the formatted style message, and so I can quickly personalize this thing. Dear Let's personalize this, Jane. And now you'll see I've got an active email that's ready to go with the attachment, with the formatting, with the picture. I can do this again and again and again because the original email still stays in my drafts folder because I'm not sending it, I'm forwarding it. Now, since I'm saving a lot of time here, maybe you could come up here, get rid of that little FW or RE thing that'll be in there because that basically tells the other party, you mean nothing to me. So get that out of there, clean it up,, and now you're ready to send this thing as many times as you want again and again. A pretty handy tip when you've got a formatted or template style email in Microsoft Outlook or possibly an attachment that you want to use in an email again and again. But in my programs, I also share this little trick. A lot of people ask me, well, Randy Dean, what if it's not formatted? What if it doesn't have the attachment you want to use over and over again? What if it's just a simple text message? Can I go even one better? And the answer, of course, to that is yes. There's a way you can do this much easier, much more efficiently. It's called using your signatures tool. Now, when I do my live programs, what very often happens is I ask people, how many signatures— you know, how many of you have a signature for your email? Almost everybody's made at least one signature. But what's interesting is then I ask, how many of you have 3 or more? And usually only a couple people in the audience have 3 or more. Now, you'll notice that I came in here into my Outlook. This is the best way to get to your signatures tool in Microsoft Outlook, just open up a new email. Because when you open up a new email under either the Message tab or the Insert tab in either Outlook 2010 or Outlook 2013, you'll see that there is the signature button right at the top. And I can click this to see the signatures that I've already made. And you'll— whoa, quite a few. You'll see quite a few signatures here. But if I go all the way to the bottom of this list, you'll see the Word signatures. Click on that. That opens up your Signatures Wizard. And as your Signatures Wizard opens up, what it does is it gives you the option to be able to create new signatures as necessary or as needed. So, as you can see, here's my Signatures window, and this wizard allows me to basically edit the signatures I've already created as well as create new signatures as I need them. And so you'll see I have quite a few signatures in here. Some say I'm a little bit signature crazy, but I've actually got pretty much the same system that you do. So I'd say I'm crazy like a fox. Let me show you what I mean. I have a signature that's in here called Randy Biz Standard, and take a look at this one. It's got my little picture bug, which you can insert using the little picture option up here in your, in your options at the top. But then underneath that, I just, I'm just basically giving my standard contact information, basic contact information, even a little bit of shameless self-promotion. And if you look here and then you look directly to the left, Notice that the exact same signature is what popped in when I hit New Email in Outlook. When I hit New Email, boom, this one pops in because this is the one I've set up for all new messages. So if I hit New Message, boom, this is going to auto-populate every single time. But of course, this isn't the shortest signature. So I've got my contact info, my little bit of shameless self-promotion, information about my website, information about my book and my social media. Let's say you and I are trading emails back and forth, and if every time I hit reply you get this half novel, you might get a tad bit peeved with me. Let me give you another option here. Take a look at this: Randy Dean Short Reply. This signature is just name, tagline, mobile number, website. This is the one I use for all replies and forwards. And so those two signatures, the much longer one for brand new email composition, the much shorter one for replies and forwards, assuming there's already a conversation taking place, those two signatures basically account for about 95% 95 to 98% of my outgoing emails. And so you're probably wondering, well, what the heck are you doing with all the rest of these? Here's what I'm doing. I very frequently get people that contact me about leading my programs on time management, email management, Outlook usage, Gmail and Google Apps usage, smartphone and tablet usage for their upcoming conference, event, company workshop, company training program. And they just want information about how to get me there. Take a look at the signature up here, Info Request CLL, and look what I've got in here. Quite a bit of stuff. That's a fairly long signature. Some would say too long. It's not a signature, it's an automated sales letter. Let me show you how it works. Cancel out of here. Come back into this new email that I just created. Come up to the Signatures button. Come down to the one I just showed you. Click on that. That overwrites and replaces the signature that was previously there with this new fully fleshed out full form email. And now I can take this top line of information that's right here and do a quick move of the text once it's highlighted. So that way I don't even have to think of subject lines. And once again, let's personalize this. Dear Jane, how long did that take? See, in a matter of a few seconds flat, once I've created the signature, get the word signature out of your head. Think of it as an automated email tool. That's how you can use this thing. And it's a really powerful capability because next time you find yourself in your sent folder looking for an email you're about to forward on again, don't forward it. Open it. Go into your signatures wizard. Open up a new signature. Give it a name and then paste the copy from that other email right into the text box. And you've just made an automated email that's push-button that you can use for the rest of your career. Literally, if you set up these signatures and you use it 3 to 5 times a day, I just gave you like half an hour right there each and every day you use it. So, it's a powerful tool. But now related to that, let me show you something else that they built in starting with Outlook 2010. It's a new tool called Quick Parts. And the way Quick Parts works, it's actually under your Insert tab at the top. If you come over to Quick Parts, what it is, is almost like a miniature version of signatures. Now watch this. I'm going to move my cursor down here into the body copy of the text and let's say I wanted to quickly give Jane my contact information. I can come up here to Quick Parts, pop in, and click on Contact Info. Boom! And it's going to auto-insert a piece of text. So think about a frequently asked question or information that you're sending again and again, directions to and from your office. You could make those almost like micro signatures that you can automatically insert right into an email. And to show you how this works, I've actually set up a second email which has something. I'm doing quite frequently for many of my clients. I speak at events and they always ask me for my AV preferences. What do I need for audiovisual to make my presentation work well? And so notice that I have this little piece of text right here. Now watch what I can do. I can go to Insert, Quick Parts. All right, and now once I have that open, I can highlight this text. Now that it's highlighted, go back up to Quick Parts. Do Save Selection to QuickPart Gallery. Now what that does, which is interesting, is it's going to basically allow me to put this into my QuickParts tool like I did with signatures a moment ago. And so this little box will pop up, and then what I want to do is change the name. AV— I'll cancel that— AV Info Request. Gallery QuickParts Category: General. And I can put in a little description. This is my standard AV response, and then I'm going to save and hit OK. And now that I've done that, now watch what I can do. I can go back to that previous email, which is right here. Let's go back to this previous email, and you'll see that when I go back into this previous email, now what I can do is basically come down in here. I know you also wanted my AV information. Here it is. And then I can come up to Quick Parts, open it up, click on AV Request, and boom, it pops it right in. So this is a way that you can almost make like a micro version of signatures that you can use within existing messages you're already typing. You can become like an email maestro with this stuff. So let's get back in here. Let's finish up this thing. Remember that all this whole goal here is, is to allow you to be able to speed up the processing of your individual emails, both parts of your emails and full-fledged messages, either using Quick Parts for the smaller pieces and signatures and/or the Drafts folder for your full-fledged emails. Thank you again for your time today. To find out a little bit more about me and my programs, including both online streaming and full-length webinar programs on topics like email usage, Microsoft Outlook usage, smartphone/tablet usage, and Google and Gmail, visit my website randaldean.com. And of course, I'd recommend you subscribe to my channel here on YouTube also. I plan to add videos pretty frequently. Thanks again for your time.