Word
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Avoid sending big files back and forth with your boss—try Dropbox, a virtual hard drive … Hold a web conference free and invite up to 20 guests, with DimDim, which Inc. magazine calls the best in its class … Print less by taking advantage of the less-popular settings in your Print dialogue box …
Imagine typing only about half of what you do now. With typing-expansion software, you can turn words you type often into abbreviations. For example, type “t” for “the,” and “ty” for “thank you.” What shorthand did for handwritten note-taking, this software can do for typing.
At Progress Energy’s quarterly “compliments and concerns” meeting, senior administrative assistant Amy Finelli uses a template for minute taking. As a result, she can quickly send out notes after the meeting “because I don’t have to figure out how to organize the topics,” she says. Here are a few more of Finelli’s power tools for meetings:
One person’s everyday computer shortcut may be another person’s “Cool! I didn’t know you could do that!” David Pogue, who writes a technology column for The New York Times, recently penned a long list of “Tech Tips for the Basic Computer User.” Here are a few suited for the efficiency-minded.
One free application and one online tool can help simplify your work: KallOut (www.kallout.com) and TinyURL (http://tinyurl.com).
To do your job well, you probably need to remember a gazillion things —and the same goes for the others on your team. Wouldn’t you love to share all that knowledge and expertise? One idea: an e-mail newsletter just for your admin team.
Turn feedback into behavioral change … Save paper by using “Shrink to Fit” and rid yourself of those few lines of text that spill over to the next page … Don’t give short shrift to complex e-mail messages.
Here are three productivity tools from Google that are worth trying.
Use your laptop to squeeze more productivity out of meetings: Share data; brainstorm better; take and distribute meeting notes digitally.
Bring yourself out of a bad mood by jotting down your bad feelings, advises Darlene Minnini, Ph.D., author of
The Emotional Toolkit
.
Use this shortcut to move Word text, without losing track of what you’re doing.
Stop important phrases from breaking over two lines.
