An Executive Assistant

I use Google Docs and Google Calendar to do most of my personal work. But if you are an Executive Assistant or Admin Assistant chances are that you use MS Office for office work. Since I am on Outlook all the time at work, I thought it would be easier to view my Google Calendar in Outlook as well. If you’d like to add your Google Calendar try what I did. I am currently using Outlook 2010.

Click Settings>Calendar after you log in to your Google Calendar. At this point you should see all the calendars you have on your Gmail account. 

Click on the calendar you would like to add to MS Outlook. I have highlighted it below.

Scroll down to the Private Address section and click on the iCAL button. 

Copy the calendar address you see on your page. 

Now that I am done with the Google Calendar, I open MS Outlook 2010. I click on File>Home tab>Open Calendar and scroll to From Internet.  

Paste the link/address you copied from your Google Calendar and click OK. 

Click Yes. 

You should see another dialog box open up asking you to add a name to the calendar. But that is pretty much it. Voila! You can now see your Google Calendar in your MS Outlook Calendar. :)

If you work as an Executive Assistant or Administrative Assistant, knowing how to export contacts from Outlook to a Excel spreadsheet is very important. It is extremely easy and as always I try to include as many screenshots as possible to make it that more easier.  

• Open outlook click file and then click on import and export.
• Click the option export to a file when the dialog box opens ant then click next.
• Select Microsoft Excel 97-2003 option and then click next.
• Select the contacts folder you wish to export and then save where you generally like to save stuff.
• After you type in the name of the excel sheet, click save and then hit finish! 

Do you have to type the same text in different emails many times a day? For example, “I would like to schedule a 15 minute call”, “Thank you for the flexibility”, “You can reach me at this number 000-000-0000”. You can use the Auto Correction feature in Outlook for this. This feature allows you to create shortcuts for repeated text. For example, whenever I write, 4f (a shortcut I created), Outlook replaces it with the actual text. “Thank you for the flexibility”.

Go to Tools>Options

Spelling>Spelling and AutoCorrection

As an Executive Assistant being organized is ever so important. Rules & Alerts are one of the most useful tools in Office 2007. It helps increase email efficiency by managing incoming and outgoing messages. Here are some examples of what I do:

• Move messages from certain person or company to a specific folder
• Reroute messages based on subject line, key phrases and or catch words
• Have a sound play when an important message arrives
• Assign a category based on the content of a message
• Filter junk messages and send them to the junk or any other folder

Microsoft Office will apply the rule to the message as soon as it arrives in the Inbox. I worked on a very massive event sometime back, for which I sent out close to 2000 email invites. Yes, you read right! So, the subject line in the response was pretty much the same in all emails. I set a rule, any email that has “Re: Invitation to XYZ event” in the subject line, move to Event Response folder. This way, my Inbox was not flooded with these emails. The emails automatically moved to the assigned folder.

Alerts well… they alert you! J This is good for notification. Not everyone will sit and stare at the computer screen all day. But of course if you are secretly watching your favorite program on Hulu, that is an entirely different story. So, this comes in handy when you’d like some kind of sound to play as soon an email arrives in your Inbox from an assigned person, say your boss. My mailbox is very organized because of the Rules & Alerts feature.

Navigation Pane>Tools>Rules and Alerts 

New Rule>Move Messages from someone to a Folder

As an Executive Assistant being organized is ever so important. Organizing emails using color categories is a very useful tool in Outlook 2007.  I use this feature to group emails and then later pulling them by color.

Go to Color>All Categories. A new box will open up, label the colors. For example, each time you make a purchase, assign the yellow color.

Then create a search folder for the yellow color. Next time when you need to search for expenses incurred for the year, click on the search folder and all the messages assigned the expense category will show up! No more printing and filing receipts!

Let’s face it we all procrastinate when it comes to organizing emails! I know for a fact that each time I would have a new Outlook account I would leave all the organizing, filing, color coding, and rule setting for the last minute. MS Office plays a major role in our lives as Executive or Administrative Assistants and things can go so much easier if we use all the cool shortcuts there are! Granted many a time when Outlook refuses to cooperate and keeps sending error messages, I have felt like throwing my computer out the window and blaming it on someone else, when HR comes running to inquire. ;) But hey!  I keep saying, let us start the day with a few drinks and then all will be fine! Ha!
 
I hope these tips help you in organizing your mailbox. I will divide this on four sections: a) Color Codes, b) Color Category c) Flags, and d) Rules and Alerts. This is a great way to organize emails if you handle multiple mailboxes

Tools>Organize

Choose Using Colors>Color Messages>Type in the name>Click Apply Color

Last step