© Elusive Creations 2002


Do you use those little yellow sticky notes? The answer is most likely, “Of course, who doesn’t” Great little invention, don’t you think? BUT, hmmmmmm well where did I put that darn sticky note?

Outlook has the perfect solution to your organization problem. If you haven’t used Outlook’s Notes, you’ve missed an opportunity to bring Sticky Notes into your digital world. You never need to worry about where you put that “darn” note again, because all of them are stored in one convenient place in Outlook.

You can use notes for all of the little odd pieces of information that you don’t know what to do with but don’t want to lose. Things like directions on how to do something, a phone number you need to call, a URL that you want to look at later, a Excel trick you read about but don’t have time to try right now, etc.
I’m sure you can think of a hundred more ways to use them.

Discipline is the key to managing your notes. Unfortunately, Outlook does not allow you to set a flag (or provide a reminder feature) to alert you at a certain date or time. It’s up to you to review your notes regularly and to act on them. It’s sort of like that growing pile of papers you have in the corner. You know those things you want to look at “when you have the time.“

Think of notes as a temporary place to keep information until you have time to deal with it. Remember that address you jotted down in a note, convert it to a contact item and remove the note. Put that email address into your address book and remove the note. Oh yea, that note about taking the red dress to the cleaners … you did that a week ago and picked it up already, delete the note. As soon as you have acted on the note, delete it. Otherwise, you will have a clean-up nightmare instead of an effective tool.

When you become a note fanatic, you may need to find a way to keep them organized. Certainly you can sort by date, but you have some other options to help keep your sanity. Use different colored notes to group like notes together. For example, all my Outlook tips are on Green notes, my Excel tips are on Blue, etc. Outlook allows you to choose from Yellow, White, Green, Blue, and Pink.

You can also use categories in notes. Following my previous example, I can set up a category for Excel, Outlook, Word, Visio, etc. and assign a category to each note. I can then sort by category and group them together. Another benefit of using categories, is when you convert your note into a permanent Outlook item such as a task, an email or a calendar item, the category converts along with the note.

Set up multiple Notes folders to store your notes according to topics. For example, Work Notes, Garden Club Notes, Family Notes, Grocery Notes etc.

OK so that now solves the organization problem but still, I need to find my note on a neat trick I learned for adding a series to my Excel chart. I have hundreds of Excel notes, how will I ever find it. Not a problem, I can use the Find feature to look through all the notes to find a key word (i.e., Charts).

Here is another I idea that you might want to try. First, I should tell you, you can drag a note from Outlook onto your desktop. Great idea, until you fill up your desktop with lots of little sticky notes. Instead, I created a folder on my desktop called Notes. When I make a note, I drag it into the folder on my desktop. Using this technique allows me to get to my notes conveniently without having to “fire-up” Outlook.

Make a note of it right now … Learn How to Use Outlook Notes!

Stay tuned for:
How to Work with Notes
(Create, Open, Edit, Delete, Print)
Notes Views
Managing your Notes
(color, assigning a category, moving to another type of folder, copying to desktop, copying to another office program)
About Outlook Categories

Please contact your host with any questions. Please also feel free to make any suggestions or contribute a “Unique Technique” Suggestions should be accompanied by your name and title so that I may give the contributor credit.

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Looking for a good Outlook Reference Manual, check this out at Amazon
Special Edition Using Microsoft Outlook 2000 (Special Edition Using)

Using Microsoft Outlook 2000


I personally own this book and have found it to be a terrific reference tool. Whether you're using it for personal information, e-mail, collaborative networking, or some combination of these, Microsoft Outlook is a subtle, powerful application. If you want to make the most of using it, take a look at Special Edition: Using Microsoft Outlook 2000, a gigantic reference written specifically for intermediate to advanced users.