Saturday, May 31, 2003

 

Non-Technical Wisdom


But what the heck...it's Saturday. In my recent move from one house and office to another, I uncovered a collection of quotes I'd lost long ago. Just general real-life wisdom, spanning a couple of centuries. If you feel so moved, take a look by clicking here: Discoveries. I'll get back to my regularly scheduled blogging as soon as life rightens itself a bit. In the meantime, have a good weekend! :) k

Sunday, May 11, 2003

 

Something for Mom: Office XP Projects


Well, it’s Mother’s Day (Happy Mother’s Day to you, btw) and I probably shouldn’t be in my office working, but hey, I’m supposed to be able to do what I want to do today, right? Actually I was in here entering Cameron’s baseball schedule into Outlook so I could rely on the prompts (yes, I’m still annoyed by the reminder chime and one day I’ll record my own version, but for now it serves its purpose) to pull me away from my writing at the appropriate times next week. As I thought about a more efficient way to create and highlight kid activities on my Outlook calendar, I remembered something else I wanted to ask about on the list. Many of you responded to my post, “Do You IM?” last month and sent along your own insights and opinions about the developing phenomenon of instant messaging. As I was working in Outlook a little while ago, I was thinking about creating a collection of Office projects to help us get things done faster and easier...so we can get on with the things that really matter, like tying bow ties and putting in cufflinks (my teenage son went to his first prom last night).

What kinds of things do you use Office to do on a daily basis? Would you rather see specific projects related to Word, Excel, Access, Outlook, PowerPoint, or Publisher? Are there certain kinds of templates or tools that would make your life-with-Office-XP infinitely easier?

If you have thoughts, I’d love to hear them as I begin to develop this idea. And even if you don’t, Happy Mother’s Day!

:) Kathy

Thursday, May 08, 2003

 

Email Newsletter Tips


I ran across an interesting article on the Microsoft Office site this morning...it's about preparing and sending email newsletters. Of course, I do this regularly for various clients and am a firm believer in staying in touch with everybody possible. :) You can simply create your newsletter in Word and then use File > Send To to send it to everyone on your distribution list; or you can follow the instructions in this article (Create an E-mail Newsletter in Word) and do it from scratch. Just a couple of communication tips, though: (1) Have something worthwhile to offer your readers. We all get too much email to want a newsletter stuffed with jokes or pithy sayings that don't offer anything concrete. Maybe it's just me, but I don't want people to to solicit my business by hiding their requests inside funny stories. Just ask me, straight out, and I'll answer you honestly. Direct communication is always the fastest, cleanest route, imo. (2) Always give your readers an opt-out clause. At the end of the newsletter, add a direct link so that resistant readers can click it to get themselves off your distribution list. Giving people the chance to opt out is the best way to ensure they opt in.

One more note: Bloglet seems to be dead these days. I've been posting to my various blogs but I haven't been receiving the distributed notes. Have any of you? I can't seem to raise anyone at Bloglet to answer my questions or find out when this might be fixed. I'll probably need to email each of you directly and let you know about the distribution melt-down. Hopefully things will be fixed soon. I love Bloglet and have been using it for all my blogs.

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