In this latest installment of the O365 Productivity Tips series, Tom Duff (@duffbert) and Christian Buckley (@buckleyplanet) return with another head-to-head battle of the Microsoft Office and Office 365 productivity hints and tips, recorded July 30th, 2019 with viewers voting on each round.
Follow us on Twitter for future webinars and sessions where we'll share more great tips, and be sure to follow the CollabTalk YouTube channel at https://youtube.com/c/collabtalk
1. Office 365 Productivity Tips
“July Jostle"
Christian Buckley
CollabTalk LLC
Thomas Duff
Cambia Health
2. Christian Buckley
Founder & CEO of CollabTalk LLC
cbuck@CollabTalk.com
@buckleyplanet
http://www.buckleyplanet.com
Please remember to subscribe on YouTube!
3. Thomas Duff
Software Engineer at Cambia Health
Thomas.Duff@CambiaHealth.com
@Duffbert
http://oneminuteofficemagic.com
4. Rules of Engagement
1. Each opponent will take turns
2. No duplicates
3. Audience votes after each round
4. No hitting below the belt
5. Winner based on overall voting
7. Customize recent Word Documents using Pin
A simple but powerful tip for
working within any of the Microsoft
Office applications is the new
“pinning” capability, which we’ve
highlighted a few times within other
tips, but never focused on.
8. Customize recent Word Documents using Pin
A simple but powerful tip for
working within any of the Microsoft
Office applications is the new
“pinning” capability, which we’ve
highlighted a few times within other
tips, but never focused on.
This is another AI-powered feature
that helps you get organized by
showing you the most recent
documents or files that you’ve
worked on and then allows you to
pin them to your navigation, making
them readily available each time you
open the application.
9. Customize recent Word Documents using Pin
A simple but powerful tip for
working within any of the Microsoft
Office applications is the new
“pinning” capability, which we’ve
highlighted a few times within other
tips, but never focused on.
This is another AI-powered feature
that helps you get organized by
showing you the most recent
documents or files that you’ve
worked on and then allows you to
pin them to your navigation, making
them readily available each time you
open the application.
You can also pin the most active
folders that you access.
10. Customize recent Word Documents using Pin
A simple but powerful tip for
working within any of the Microsoft
Office applications is the new
“pinning” capability, which we’ve
highlighted a few times within other
tips, but never focused on.
This is another AI-powered feature
that helps you get organized by
showing you the most recent
documents or files that you’ve
worked on and then allows you to
pin them to your navigation, making
them readily available each time you
open the application.
You can also pin the most active
folders that you access.
And this feature works across all
of the Office apps.
11. Decluttering your Microsoft Teams list of workspaces
After you've been using Microsoft Teams for a bit, there's a good chance you'll "collect" a large
number of Teams that you're part of. That can make your list of Your Teams long and unwieldly.
Fortunately, there's a new feature that will keep that list under control and hide the Teams that you
don't use as much (or at all). Here's how that works.
When I started my Teams client
today, I saw a message saying
that my Personal Random Work-
related Tasks Test Team had been
moved to my Hidden Teams
area on the left-side navigation:
12. Decluttering your Microsoft Teams list of workspaces
When I expand out the Hidden Teams area, I can see that Team along with other ones that have
been hidden since I don't use them much any longer:
13. Decluttering your Microsoft Teams list of workspaces
However, I don't have to leave that Team in the Hidden area. If I click on the Ellipses icon for that
Team, I can use the Show option to put it back in my active Teams area:
14. Decluttering your Microsoft Teams list of workspaces
And there it will remain until I don't use it again for a period of time… :)
17. Giving people Praise in Microsoft Teams
When you're in Microsoft Teams, collaborating with all your coworkers, you might feel the need to
call out someone for the excellent work they've done or the help they've given you. You can do that
now with the Praise feature. Here's how that works…
When you're in a workspace conversation or a chat, click on the Ellipsis icon in the new message
area. That gives you the option to create a Praise:
18. Giving people Praise in Microsoft Teams
Select a badge that is applicable to the Praise you're creating:
19. Giving people Praise in Microsoft Teams
Using the To field, enter one or more names of people who the Praise is intended for. Click on
Preview to see what the Praise looks like:
21. Giving people Praise in Microsoft Teams
Your Praise now shows up in your conversation!
22. Create Parent-Child Documents within Word
When working on large
documents, there is a way to
break up that massive Word
doc into consumable
segments using the Outline
feature which you can find
within View
https://www.addictivetips.com/micro
soft-office/how-to-create-a-master-
document-and-subdocuments-in-
ms-word-2016/
23. Create Parent-Child Documents within Word
Within the Views section,
select Outline
This assumes your content is
utilizing Word’s Headings to
organize your content. If not,
don’t worry -- from the
Outline view you can still
select paragraphs and create
sections and child documents
on the fly, without Headings.
24. Create Parent-Child Documents within Word
Within the Outline view, select
Show Document to view the
various sub-components of
your content.
25. Create Parent-Child Documents within Word
From this view, you can
select a section (which rolls
up under each Header) and
move them within your
document (for quick
reorganization), delete them
entirely, or insert additional
content from other sources
(another Word document,
text file, PDF, or the web).
To add existing content from
another source, select Insert
and select your source to
insert content and
formatting.
26. Create Parent-Child Documents within Word
The existing content is
inserted within the selected
section, and rolls up under
the relevant Heading.
You can collapse these
sections and reorganize your
content using drag-and-drop,
as needed.
29. Delay Sending Outlook Responses
Sometimes we send emails in the heat of
the moment and wish we had waited
longer before sending. Or maybe we send
a message late in the day or over the
weekend, only to have our messages
become buried within someone’s inbox.
If you’re like me, I often want to add or
edit an email….as soon as I click Send,
and when it’s too late.
To avoid this email sending regret, a great
policy is to create a rule for Outlook that
delays any sent messages, giving you
time to make final changes.
To set this Outlook rule, go into File and
select Manage Rules & Alerts
https://www.addictivetips.com/microsoft-office/how-to-
delay-sending-emails-in-outlook-with-a-rule-so-you-can-
undo-send/#more-181367
30. Delay Sending Outlook Responses
Within the Email Rules dialog box,
select New Rule
31. Delay Sending Outlook Responses
Within the Rules Wizard, look at the
section Start from a blank rule and
select Apply rule on messages I send
followed by Next
32. Delay Sending Outlook Responses
For this example, and to keep this rule
broad across all sent emails, leave the
Step 1 options blank and click Next.
The dialog may prompt you to confirm
this step. Click Yes.
33. Delay Sending Outlook Responses
In this second screen for Step 1, select the
final option: Defer delivery by a number
of minutes and click Next
34. Delay Sending Outlook Responses
In the final dialog, set your time
parameter, and click Ok, followed by
Finish to set your new rule.
35. Getting notified when you do a "mass deletion" in
SharePoint Online or OneDrive
It's a nightmare of mine… someone pings me and says that hundreds of files are missing from a
document library, and they're not in the recycle bin either. If you're lucky, you figure out who deleted
the files, and often they didn't realize they did that. Now in SharePoint Online and OneDrive,
Microsoft will notify you via email if you've done a "mass deletion" of data. Here's what happens…
Here I have a document library in SharePoint Online, and I have a folder with 427 files in it:
36. Getting notified when you do a "mass deletion" in
SharePoint Online or OneDrive
I delete the folder, and I get a chance to confirm I want to do that. But let's pretend I didn't read it
carefully or I clicked Delete without meaning to… Hey, I've seen it happen…
37. Getting notified when you do a "mass deletion" in
SharePoint Online or OneDrive
In about 15 minutes, I get the following email from Microsoft letting me know it detected the mass
deletion, and giving me one more chance to make things right if I shouldn't have done that…
38. Getting notified when you do a "mass deletion" in
SharePoint Online or OneDrive
I know the first question will be "so how many documents need to be deleted to trigger this feature."
The answer is "we don't know, and it depends." As Sarah Haase states:
The tricky part is determining how many files must be deleted before these automated notifications
take place. According to Microsoft, “Notifications are sent to users when a higher than usual number of
files are deleted per hour.” No additional information has been provided on how the ratio of file
deletions is measured or what percentage increase in file deletions is enough to meet the notification
threshold. As Microsoft calls out, “This is not to be considered a fail-safe file recovery solution – it is a
continuation of best efforts we are making to protect your files from accidental loss.”
So… this isn't a hard-and-fast feature that you can count on every time. My threshold may well be
different than yours. But it's nice to know that the days of deleting large amounts of data
unknowingly will be fewer and farther between now.
41. Proper case names in Excel
I recently had a question from someone asking if there was a way to take a column of names in Excel
that were in all upper-case and convert them to proper case. In Word, it's just a menu option, but that
feature doesn't exist in Excel. However, you can get there with an Excel formula. Here's how…
Here's my list of names in Excel:
42. Proper case names in Excel
I place my cursor in cell B1, and type in =PROPER(A1). This means that it will take the contents of cell
A1 and convert the text to proper case:
43. Proper case names in Excel
Once that's done, I can click in another cell, and I see that cell B1 has the proper case version of cell A1:
44. Proper case names in Excel
To easily apply that to all the other cells in column B, just click the Fill Handle in the lower right
corner of the cell, and drag it down as far as necessary. Now all the values in column A will show with
proper case in column B:
45. Adding an Email as a Task in Outlook and To-Do
To-Do is quickly becoming
“the” default task management
solution within Office. Within
Outlook, did you know that you
can drag-and-drop an email into
To-Do via the Tasks icon?
Most of us are used to dragging
and dropping emails into
Calendar to set up reminders
and schedule meetings, but you
can follow the same process to
define tasks.
Just grab an email and drag it
down to the Tasks icon at the
bottom left of Outlook.
https://todosupport.helpshift.com/a/microsoft-to-
do/?s=tips-tricks&f=adding-an-email-as-a-task-in-
outlook-on-windows&l=en&p=web
46. Adding an Email as a Task in Outlook and To-Do
A task dialog will open up, with
task details at the top and the
body of the email below. From
here you can set due dates,
reminders, assign it to
someone on your team, push it
to OneNote, and more.
47. Adding an Email as a Task in Outlook and To-Do
Click on the calendar icons to
pick your start and due dates.
Change the status and priority,
as appropriate.
48. Adding an Email as a Task in Outlook and To-Do
Once you have defined the
start and due dates, it is always
wise to set a reminder, IMO.
49. Adding an Email as a Task in Outlook and To-Do
Within the Tasks view of
Outlook, you can quickly view
all of the tasks created within
Outlook – as well as task lists
created in the To-Do app
(Windows or mobile)
For additional productivity,
there is much more than you
can do with To-Do integration
to your mobile device and
other smart speakers, and
automate using Microsoft Flow.
We’ll cover more of those
examples in future tips…
52. Send attachments as links in Outlook
https://support.microsoft.com/en-
in/help/4011261/how-to-set-attachment-
preference-for-attaching-a-cloud-file-in-outlook
Send links, not files!
When working with cloud files
(SharePoint, OneDrive) you can set
the default attachment state to a
link rather than always attaching a
copy of a file.
To get started, in your Outlook
desktop app go into Files, and then
Options, and look within the
General section for Attachment
Options.
Select Always share them as links
and click Ok.
53. Send attachments as links in Outlook
Next, open a new email
message and select Attach
File. Navigate to the relevant
cloud-based file and attach.
The file will attach with the
cloud icon, and by default,
will say Anyone can edit. As
your recipients open this file,
they will be viewing and/or
editing the document from
within your cloud
environment.
54. Send attachments as links in Outlook
Click on the right arrow on
your file to see additional
options, such as removing
the attachment, or changing
the permissions.
For local files that are not in
the cloud, you can attach
them to your email per
normal steps, then select the
right arrow on the file to
save it to the cloud (you’ll
see all of your available
options), allowing you to
manually change an
attachment to a link.
55. Copying a plan in Planner
Planner is a great lightweight planning tool that comes as part of Office 365. They’ve recently
released a new feature that I've had people request quite often… you can now create a new plan
from an existing one. This means you can create a standard plan "template" that has all the items
you normally want for a new project, and then use that for each new plan you create (as opposed to
adding all the tasks manually). Here's how that works…
Here in Planner, I
have a plan called,
creatively enough,
To-Do:
56. Copying a plan in Planner
I'd like the contents of To-Do to be the starting point for a new plan in Planner. To create the new
plan based on To-Do, I click the ellipsis after the Schedule option and select Copy plan from the
drop-down menu:
57. Copying a plan in Planner
The Copy plan dialog panel appears, where you can name your new plan, set the Privacy
options, and provide a description. After you do that, click Copy plan at the bottom of the screen:
58. Copying a plan in Planner
In your left-side navigation, you'll see a pop-up message saying your new plan is being created:
59. Copying a plan in Planner
After a few seconds, that pop-up message will change to say that your new plan is ready, and you
can find it listed in the Recent plans area. You also get a link to go directly to the new plan:
60. Copying a plan in Planner
Here you see my new Copy of To-Do plan in the Recent plans area. I can go out to the new plan and
mark it as a favorite so that it will show up in the Favorites area:
62. Christian!
Overall winner?
0 5 10 15 20
WHO WON ROUND 5?
WHO WON ROUND 4?
WHO WON ROUND 3?
WHO WON ROUND 2?
WHO WON ROUND 1?
July Jostle
Christian Tom
63. Current Leaderboard
Most Rounds Won
Christian (42-38)
Most Events Won
Christian (8-7)
Most Overall Votes
Christian (1399-1371)
Event Date Location Rounds Won Votes Won Rounds Won Votes Won
9/12/2017 Online 3 31 2 29
10/28/2017 SPSTC 1 74 4 96
11/28/2017 Online 2 11 3 15
1/16/2018 Online 4 167 1 104
2 54 3 53
3 152 2 122
3 141 2 136
2 87 3 104
3 63 2 33
4 178 1 137
0 37 5 183
1 31 4 64
4 168 6 200
4 108 1 59
2 69 3 64
TOTAL 38 1371 42 1399
7/30/2019 Online
Tom Christian
1/15/2019 Online
7/25/2018 Online
2/3/2018 SPSUTAH
8/28/2018 Online
11/17/2018 SPSTC
12/19/2018 Online
2/7/2019 Online
4/19/2019 Online
5/22/2019 SPC19
6/20/2019 Online
64. Our next bout:
Monday, August 26th, 2019
“August Altercation”
Register at http://bit.ly/O365altercation