The days of spending the entire workday in one room at the office are long gone. The workforce has become increasingly mobile, and the cloud has made that possible. Microsoft 365 is ubiquitous for millions of users, connecting them 24/7 with real-time communications, collaboration, and content creation. Many of us have just scratched the surface of the features in Microsoft 365 that can make us more productive and creative. Bookmark Microsoft’s training page and visit when you need to learn a new feature.
ProSearch director of information technology Michael Gamelin shares some of his favorite tips and tricks that will help you be more organized and productive in Microsoft 365.
Where in the world are you?
As the world opens back up, we are getting back to business as usual. That means travel across time zones and continents.
Never miss a meeting or call while on the go. At any time, you can change the time zone in Outlook so that it matches your current geographic location. The change is reflected in the time displays in all other Microsoft Windows-based programs. Check this page to learn about managing employee/vendors in different time zones.
Clean up your conversations
Outlook Conversation is another name for the familiar email thread. A conversation is the complete set of email messages from the first message through all responses having the same subject. When many people are involved, a conversation can include redundant messages. Use Conversation Clean Up to delete all repeated messages except the last one. Within that message is a copy of all the previous messages. Thread messages within Outlook so you only have to review the longest thread.
Find what you need quickly using Search Folders
Organize your mailbox upfront, and life will be easier. Create folders by topic, project, or source to quickly filter your mailbox on search criteria. A Search Folder is a virtual folder that provides a view of all email items that match specific search criteria. Learn more about Search Folders.
Wrangle MS Excel searches with XLOOKUP
This trick is great for finding things in a table or in a range by row. With XLOOKUP, you can look in one column for a search term and return a result from the same row in another column, regardless of which side the return column is on. XLOOKUP solves many of the pain points of using VLOOKUP.
Be a better dictator
Talk and watch your words appear on the screen. Improvements in Microsoft dictation in Word for Microsoft 365 and Word for the web make dictation so easy to use. Turn on your microphone and talk your next blog post. Get started with dictation in Word.
Who’s on your Team?
Get a quick win with MS Teams Group Contacts. You can view your Team and see immediately who is online, away, in meetings, or out of office. Your Team will be visible on every device you use. Set up Teams groups for your work group, project teams, or other groups.
Visual Learners: Get answers from video pros
There are amazing features in Teams that many of us don’t know about or take advantage of. In addition to the excellent content on Microsoft’s support website, there is a great resource site that does a very good tutorial for new an often overlooked features.
Office Productivity expert Leila Gharani produces weekly videos on short, concise topics that will help you become a power user in Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, VBA, OneNote, and other Office products.
Watch this space for future tips and tricks!
