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Our series on Outlook training continues with a lesson about archiving and AutoArchiving. This Microsoft Outlook feature works on the "out with the old, in with the new" principle and helps maintain tidy folders.

What are the best products and services in e-commerce, e-hardware and at-home tech? Fortune magazine puts together a wide-ranging and handy guide.

Straightforward explanation of how to use the CHOOSE and VLOOKUP functions in Excel to convert codes (numeric or text) into meaningful descriptions.

Online software lets smaller businesses cope with floods of information (vendors discussed include: Correlate Technologies, HotOffice Technologies, iHarvest, NetDocuments, and Webforia).

David Allen says work in the knowledge economy requires a new kind of mental calisthenics. Information management is not a science but an art -- a martial art -- and it's time to start training.

Article (and especially the discussion forums attached to it) talks about how to count the number of times an item occurs in a column (using the example of customers per zip code).

Spreadsheets are loaded with options that only experienced users know about. Schoun Regan shows you a button option that will save time and make your life easier. (Note: requires free registration to view)

MS Excel Data tables can take a lot of up-front setup work before they can be used for what-if analysis, so many are naturally reluctant to go through all that trouble if the results have no meaning for them. This short lesson in one-variable data tables may make this technique more relevant to you.

Intel averages 3 million email messages per day. That's enough to choke even the fastest-moving company. Here's a short course on how the Silicon Valley giant gets the most out of those messages.

And seven steps to salvation. Tools, techniques, and technologies to make your meetings less painful, more productive -- even heavenly.

Here is a booklet compiled to highlight those tasks and proceedings that are necessary to ensure productive and effective meetings. Written for Scouts but of general use for anyone conducting meetings.

This article takes a look at the historical move from the use of and adverbial embellishment in communicating thought to the use of "pictorial metaphors" and numbers.

Editor's Note: the article is o.k. but the meat is in the bullet point list of tips for presenting numbers found at the end of the article.

Who knew that an entire universe of Portable Document Format (PDF) information was right at your fingertips? After creating your first PDF document, you will have pesky questions about bookmarks, thumbnails and link formatting. You'll find the answers here in a neatly categorized tip list.

Advanced PDFers will benefit from the community of PDF experts who share information and resources on document management, document level JavaScript, server side (dynamic) PDFs, forms and other fancy tricks. Special sections are devoted to PDFs online versus PDFs in print. If you need software, a consultant, or tutorials and reference works, you'll find them here, as well as 550+ PDF tools and plug-ins available for download.

Is there anything you can do to rescue ordinary meetings from disaster? The answer is, "Yes!" With a little work, any organization can start conducting meetings that are shorter, more productive and a lot more fun. The road to more effective meetings begins with four "F" words - focus, facilitation, fellowship and feedback.

Editor's Note: This article is part of an archived newsletter so you will have to scroll about 1/3 of the way down the page to get to it (but it's wortht the effort).

When you accidentally delete a file, having a backup ready can significantly minimize downtime and frustration. Check out this simple batch file that can make daily document backups a snap.

Editor's Note: The article fails to mention that you should save the batch file with a .bat extension. Also, note that you can test out the functionality of the batch file by calling it from the MS-DOS window.

Data continuously flows into the modern business, but many managers fail to effectively communicate to the troops what quarterly updates, analyses, and division reports really mean to their work.

Here's a crash course on the value of a table of contents (TOC) and how to use Microsoft Word's TOC feature.

An Excel spreadsheet is a wonderful tool for "what if" analysis because you can change results throughout the workbook by editing a single cell. A disadvantage to this process, however, is that it isn't always easy or convenient to restore the original values, especially when you're changing multiple cells.

Fortunately, Excel offers the Scenario Manager, which allows you to substitute values in a number of cells and save that condition under a unique name. By invoking a number of scenarios, you can easily demonstrate to customers and managers the impact of different events or possibilities.

This is a fantastic little directory of links to tutorials for computer software. Includes FrontPage, GroupWise (e-mail and calendaring), Microsoft Office (Access, Excel, PowerPoint, Word), Windows and Macintosh operating systems, Microsoft Publisher, statistical software, Dreamweaver, Lotus 1-2-3, PageMaker, PalmPilot, Pegasus (e-mail), Photoshop, UNIX, and WordPerfect. There are also links to a few other directories and sources of tutorials. From the Department of Training and Documentation at Indiana State University.

There's been a lot of discussion here and elsewhere about building good PowerPoint presentations. These discussions miss the point. The difference between a good presentation and a lousy one has nothing to do with slides.

Editor's Note: see a rebuttal of this opinion at
http://www.marketingprofs.com/3/atkinson7.asp

Robert's Rules of Order is a fine way to run a formal meeting or a town hall vote, but much too stuffy for a business meeting where the agenda is to build consensus behind decisions. This is a freely available excerpt from the 1999 book, The Consensus Building Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Reaching Agreement, by Lawrence Susskind, Sarah McKearnan, and Jennifer Thomas-Larmer, and posted by the Public Disputes Program at Harvard Law School. This chapter, "Short Guide to Consensus Building," provides a no-frills, step-by-step approach to running a creative, productive meeting, down to the level of how to invite participants who might be assuming a legal liability by attending. [HBS Working Knowledge]

With a few short changes in strategy, your meetings can become meaningful encounters in which people work hard, produce outcomes, and leave with a sense of accomplishment.

It's time for another soul-sapping, oxygen-depriving, time-wasting, mind-numbing company meeting. Or is it? We offer 15 clever solutions to the problems with most meetings.

Microsoft Excel allows users to create their own user-defined functions. These functions can be used just like any built-in function already available in Excel. Here's how you create one.

Edwin C. Bliss' book was first published in 1976, and was updated in 1993. His ABCs are 'right on' and provide ways to better manage our precious time. By using the tools in this book, they will help improve performance and get the right things done.

This compilation of 75 practical, time-saving tech tips will help you make quick work of many common and not-so-common Excel tasks. From data entry and cell formatting to currency conversion and workbook sharing, users of all levels can improve their Excel skills with these valuable tech tips. The latest version covers techniques for Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Design your own mini-program, or macro, within Excel and run it with a shortcut key.

There are 7 aspects people must deal with when preparing and delivering presentations. An effective speaker learns to deal with all 7 aspects at the same time. Failure to pay attention to all of these aspects can result in an inneffective presentation. Failure to pay attention to too many of these can result in disaster.
1. Speaker
2. Message
3. Audience
4. Channel
5. Feedback
6. Noise
7. Setting

This article demonstrates the advantages of using Excel's outline feature to summarize data without having to hide the detail data.

Instead of sifting through data-filled spreadsheets, turn on a filter and let the spreadsheet program search for the information you require.