Get Everything Done

One of the disadvantages of the otherwise excellent Evernote note-taking software is that it does not have an alarm function. However you can work around this because it does produce an individual hyperlink for each of its notes. This link can then be dragged or copied to a variety of programs which do have alarms. The most obvious of these is Microsoft Outlook. I've already described here and here some of the ways in which links can be used in Outlook Tasks. This is another.

If you are an Evernote user, try dragging a note heading into the Task icon in the Outlook left-hand margin. What happens?

You will see that a Task box opens up with the link to the Evernote note shown as an icon. Click on the icon and you will be taken directly to the note (it will be the last note shown on the Evernote page).

You can now use the alarm function on the task box to bring the note link up whenever you wish.

In my last posting on the subject, I described how emails can be dragged into the text box on an Outlook Task. However it's not just emails that can be dragged into the text box. You can also drag website links and any sort of file that Windows Explorer lists. You can even drag tasks into the text box. So you can assemble in one place all the documents concerning a particular task or project. Be careful though if you intend to make changes to any of these documents because they are not links to the original documents but are stored as copies attached to the task box.

So far I have described what happens if you drag an email or other document into the text box on a Task. But what happens if you drag the document directly into the Task folder icon in the Outlook margin? You might like to try it now with an email.

What you get is a Task box with the text of the email.

Now try it with a Word document - drag one into the Tasks icon in the Outlook margin. Again you get a Task box with the file showing as an icon. But there is one big difference here - this is a live link to the original document. Any changes you make will be saved directly to the original.

How can you use this? Say for instance that you are writing a report or a book. You can drag the file into Tasks, and set the alarm to bring it up for you regularly each morning at a certain time. You can also attach to the Task any reference material in the form of web links or files that you might need. What more could you want? Get writing!

More on this subject soon.

I don't use the Tasks in MS Outlook much myself since I prefer paper, pencil and a page-a-day diary. But I'm always amazed how little people who do use Outlook to manage their tasks know about the many things one can do with it. So I'm going to write an occasional series of postings on the subject.

So here's my first tip.

Go to New/Task in Outlook, which will open a task box. Notice the large space for notes which makes up the major part of the note box. Now select any email you like in your Inbox, and drag it into the note space on the task box. You will see that the email is represented by an icon. Double click on it and the email will open.

This is very useful because you can use the alarm function on the Outlook Task to bring the email forward at a set time or a set day.

You don't have to restrict yourself to one email either. You can drag as many as you like into the task box. So you could use it for bringing forward a batch of emails for action. Or for grouping all the emails to do with a particular subject.

In fact you can drag an entire email folder into the task box. So you could use it to remind yourself to review a whole subject.

An alternative to dragging is to highlight the email and use CTRL-C and CTRL-V to paste into the task box. It produces exactly the same result.

There are many other things you can do with the task box, and I'll be dealing with some of them over the next few weeks.