Outlook 2007 Fast VCard method

A VCard, or Virtual Card is basically your contact with your information attached to an email so anyone can simply click on it and your contact will go into their Outlook.

In OL2003, you could attach a VCard as a default to any given signature. Not so with subsequent versions.  Outlook 2007 wants to put their business card into your email.  I don’t like that idea because it’s a graphic and cannot be autospawned into an Outlook contact with such programs as copy2contact.com and egrabber.com.

However, here’s how I set it up to shorten the steps of adding a VCard to an email. First, create a _Vcard (include underline) by right-clicking on Personal Folders (or Mailbox if you’re an Exchange user).

Next, copy your contact (with your marketing material in the notes area!) to this folder by right-click-dragging the contact.

Then when you want to add a VCard to an email, click on the Insert tab and Attach Item. Click on the _VCard folder and double-click on your contact.  It’s done.

Fast, smooth, and simple.

How to Block Email in Outlook (International SPAM)

I noticed that I’ve begun getting more international email.

Now, I don’t speak any foreign languages (well maybe a little French)
so I don’t have any use for emails in a different tongue.

Heck, I wouldn’t even know if I was begin spammed or not (well, I would
guess that it ALL is mail spam technically speaking (Self Promoting Advertising Message). But international email is the worst because even your virus checkers might skip virus spam.

In any case. I simply don’t want it, and have instructed Outlook to ignore all international email and therefore all international mail spam.

Here’s how.

First, I’m assuming you use Outlook 2007 now (if not, there’s
great deals out there for entire Office 2007 suites at about $120)

From Outlook go to Tools,  Options,  Junk E-mail, then click the International tab there on the right.

You have 2 choices here:

1. Blocked Top-Level Domain List.

This is simply every country with a check box. Select All and then uncheck to get email from your sister who now lives in Brazil and sends you email in Portuguese.

OR

2. Block encodings list.

These are the language encodings and you can Select All and then uncheck US-ASCII.

Click OK 3 times.

You are now insulated from email sent in other languages.

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Make it Easy for a Prospect to Find You in Their Contacts List

Your contact list is composed of more than just prospects and clients.  You hold onto contact information in case you need someone’s services or goods at a later date.  You may need a local plumber you met or referred to.  You may need print services when you are ready to send direct mail for your marketing campaigns. In all these cases you probably won’t even remember that individual’s name, but you certainly know what keywords will find him (like “plumber”).

Type plumber in your Search address books text box (to get plumbers that have the word plumber in their name or job description), or you click on the Contacts Navbar button and type plumber into the Search all Contact Items (to get plumbers that have the word plumber anywhere in the contact including the notes area).  You’ll get a list of names if more than one qualifies, and you can call any of them.

But won’t you be calling the one for which you have found has the best rates or exact service required, or even the person that you just liked and were comfortable with?  If that plumber had all that information in the notes area (and you would have already known that when they sent you their VCard), they made it easy for you to select them from among others.

So let’s turn that around. Likewise, you should complete YOUR VCard for inclusion with your email so that the plumber will find YOU based on keywords that you supplied best suiting what is you do.  Thus, be specific and give as much information as you can on your VCard to cover all the bases.

And here’s another strategy: Don’t just include your information in the notes area—polish your Notes area and let your marketing material shine.  Stir it up with colored fonts, pictures, tables, even your jpg signature (sign your name, scan it, crop it, and include it (Insert tab, Picture Icon).

Now there is a caveat here but not an insurmountable one.  When you send a VCard using your contact with the information and layout above, Outlook does something peculiar but predictable—it strips all those wonderful fonts out and just sends plain text.  It does this to keep VCards compliant with the Internet Mail Consortium which recommends keeping things simple for ease of general use.  That way, even if you send your VCard to another user who is NOT using Outlook, they can still get the same information.

However, if you know your recipient is using Outlook, there is a short and powerful way around this.

1. First, right-click on the Personal Folders and select New folder
2. Type _VCard in the Name field (don’t forget the underscore), and select Contact Items in the Folder contains box
3. 

Right-click drag your contact into this folder (select Copy).  Here’s how this will look when you select Folder List view:

1. Now, when you create a new email, Click on the Insert tab, then Attach Item
2. 
3. Select the _VCard folder and double-click on your single Contact.  Your VCard is now in the Attachments and when your recipient double-clicks on it, they will get into their Outlook all your wonderful formatting.

Pretty cool.

What Happened to the Contact Linking Text Box in Outlook 2007?

Outlook 2003 would automatically link an email to a contact so that you could see all emails, both sent and received, in the Activities tab of that contact. In fact, this feature was not limited to just emails. Outlook can link all new items that you created in the lower left-hand corner of new item forms, a contact field that would link that contact to the item–an appointment, task, journal entry…whatever. By being diligent in adding this contact for all new items you would have a running log of all transactions about that contact…and you could even group, sort and view all of those records in the same Activities tab for that contact. That way, you had a valuable running history of all activities between you and that contact.But now, in Outlook 2007, when you open a contact in you’ll notice something is missing–The Contact Links text box on the item screens–an Appointment, Meeting, Task, Journal and Contact form–all show WITHOUT that link.Well Microsoft did not really leave it out, they just turned it off, by default (I know not why).

Here’s how to turn it back on.

From the menu go to Tools, Options, then Contact Options. Check the box called “Show Contact Linking on all Forms”.

Now when you go to create a new item you’ll find the Contact link text box at the bottom.

Here’s a couple other things you should know to help you:

You only need to type part of the name in that text box and press Control-S (for Save). If Outlook found the contact it will fill the full name in for you and underline it signaling that it found the contact in the database. If it finds ambiguities it will prompt you with a Choose Contact box–and you can select from that.

Here’s another great use of contact linking. If you know multiple people at one company you could create a contact by that company’s name and then link all the contacts to it. Then, since those contacts are linked to their transactions, ALL of the transactions for all of those individuals for that company are now linked in as well. You can group, sort and change views of all of those transactions—say, sorted by date, or grouped by person and then sorted by date. These views are extremely flexible.

One final note about using names in the contact link box. To keep the list smaller and if you are not sure of the spelling, type only a few letters of the person’s LAST name rather than the first.

Windows 7 Screensavers – Psychedelics are Back

From Eweek. Make sure you read the text on the right as you.

http://www.tinyurl.com/m953xk

Wild,  just wild.

The Hidden Jewels of Outlook: Notes

If you’ve never known what Outlook Notes are for, you’re in for a very pleasant surprise.

Notes are one of the biggest hidden treasures Outlook holds. Most people have never even clicked on Notes Mode in the Navigation Bar–likely because they’ve never thought about what Notes can do for them.

And Notes may or may NOT be associated with a contact (most of the time they are not).

First of all, a Note is just that, a sticky colored note that holds flat text. No big deal.

But, the possibilities are endless of how to use them,and the more imaginative you are, the more important they are going to become.

Not only can you create a note: you can create multiple folders, each with their own set of associated notes. Here’s some examples of folders that I’ve created over the years:

1) Books to Read: I lose track of what someone recommended–and I forgot who recommended it. But a folder with a note with those books make it easy to re-access that information.

2) BSO’s: Bright Shiny Objects (coined by Melanie Benson-Strick of successconnections.com), these are those brilliant ideas that you don’t want to lose but you know you should not be “chasing” yet. Each Note keeps your torrents of ideas neatly categorized.

3) Business Lessons: Some of those Golden Nuggets that you’ve learned that are just too priceless to let go by the wayside (and you forgot who taught them to you).

4) Classroom: This may just be for me but I find this folder invaluable for keeping the links to all the material of my classes, from product links to videos to books and more–you COULD keep these in a Word document…somewhere (did you remember where?)

5) Excel: Ok, maybe this is just me too, but I keep some really powerful snippets and how-to’s here…that I forget how-to…and don’t seem to fit anywhere else.

6) Ezine Topics: When one hits me on the road, I’ll call my home and leave a message, then put the topic and other notes I don’t want to forget into a new note by that name.

7) Family: This includes directions to my house and anything Family.

Hardware Support: Links for all sorts of hardware related issues, model and serial numbers, support phone lines, place of purchase, order numbers, etc.

9) Jokes: Just for those grand ticklers that are too good to be lost in the sands of time.

10) Licenses & Software: License Numbers of your software, the manufacturer, date purchased, order number, etc.  It’s probably a good idea to  print these out and keep them as hard-copy printout should your machine belly-up someday.

11) Logins:  If you are part of a membership group or software group that requires a login, this is a good place because it keeps them all together.

12) Marketing: Your marketing treasures–Surveys, References, Ideas not quite yet ready for Tasking, but close.

13) New Technologies: I tend to lose track of software and hardware I’d like to keep my eye on over time.  You can keep both links and ideas

14) Op Sys: Your Operating System Notes notes like this great DOS command: “sfc /scannow” to fix an operating system

15) Outlook: Tons of background information about Outlook that I’ll probably turn into a book someday.

16) Places: Places I’d like to go someday whose name I’d forget if not here.

17)  Recipes: I’m getting quite a good collection–I love to cook.

18) Testimonials: You certainly don’t want to lose these and you’ll forget who gave them to you if you put them into the Notes area of the contact.

19) Website Material: When I find out how to do something in HTML for putting it onto a landing page or sales page, I don’t want to try to find it again by digging through my website folders–I just want that snippet now.

20) Websites Hosted: I have several websites.  Each one has their own note in this folder complete with who is hosting it, the Registrar, the Date of Expiry, the FTP configuration, the DNS settings and, well, you get the idea.

And on another good note (pun intended). The first line of the note becomes the title of the note.

And a foot-note (ahem): If you’re in Outlook when the phone rings and you don’t have a piece of paper, just use Ctrl-Shift-N and you’ll have a place to type instantly.

Happy Noting!