If you use a free fax-to-email service or just get loads of PDF attachments from, say, HR each week, you probably put off printing each one the moment it arrives. A good friend of tech blog The How-To Geek offers up a customisable Virtual Basic script solution for Outlook that moves PDFs from a certain source into a “Batch Print” folder and lets you run a macro to print the attachments and then delete the messages. Those using something other than Acrobat to open PDFs, such as Sumatra or FoxIt Reader might have to change a line or two in the script, but it’s otherwise a simple paste-and-save Outlook tweak.
Batch Print PDF Attachments in Outlook [The How-To Geek]Tutorial website Tech-Recipes has posted a handy guide for non-Outlook-ninjas to delete duplicate contact entries created by device syncing, importing, or other situations. The main tip involves getting Outlook (seemingly Outlook 2007, but perhaps other versions as well) to sort your contacts by creation date, which is not quite as easy as it would seem. While not quite a simple hack, it’s definitely a time-saver compared with individually deleting contacts one by one. How do you prevent Outlook (or any email app/organiser) from creating duplicate entries? Share your tips in the comments.
Outlook: How To Delete Duplicated Contacts [Tech-Recipes.com]The How-To Geek blog highlights a feature in Outlook 2007 that’s tucked away but can eliminate the hassle of having to forward email replies to bosses or interested parties later. The tweak:Compose a new message, click the “Options” tab and choose “Direct Replies To.” Check the box for “Have Replies sent to.” Add additional reply-to addresses, separating with semi-colons and remembering to keep yourself in the list. Hit “Close.”
While the person replying can obviously edit the reply addresses, it saves those recipients at least one unnecessary email.
Send Email Replies To Another Recipient In Outlook 2007 [The How-To Geek]Outlook users: Instantly turn your Outlook 2007 tasks into appointments by dragging and dropping tasks to your To-Do Bar calendar. Doing so creates a new appointment with most of the important information—including date—already filled out. You’ve been able to generate new appointments by dragging and dropping emails or tasks to the Outlook calendar for quite some time (an extremely handy shortcut if you weren’t already aware of it), but the new To-Do Bar streamlines the process even more by allowing users to drag the appointment straight to a day. It’s not much of a change from the norm, but we’ve never highlighted drag and drop appointment creation in Outlook, and for those of you hooked (or chained, as it may be) to Outlook, it’s one of the program’s most convenient features.
Quickly Create Appointments from Tasks with Outlook 2007′s To-Do Bar [the How-To Geek]Microsoft Outlook 2007 offers one-click access to a map of your contact’s location. Fill in a contact address and click the “Map this” button on the contact tab to launch MSN Maps in your default browser, where you can get directions to and from the location. The question is, how do you change the map service to something other than MSN? First person to post how in the comments gets a cookie.
Get Maps and Directions to Your Contacts in Outlook 2007 [the How-To Geek]Tech site the How-To Geek puts Microsoft Outlook 2007′s To-Do Bar through the paces, demonstrating how to create, categorise, complete, organise, and flag tasks using it. I haven’t used Outlook on a daily basis since my escape to the freelance life, but most people with office jobs live in it. Are you using Outlook’s To-Do manager to GTD? What do you love or hate about it? Let us know in the comments.
Using the Outlook 2007 To-Do Bar [the How-To Geek]Pixar’s latest movie, Ratatouille, opens in Australia today. To celebrate Pixar in all its geeky goodness, we interviewed expat Aussie and Pixar Image Mastering Engineer Dominic Glynn on his job at Pixar, the tech tools he uses at work and play, and of course how he landed a job with probably the most cutting edge animation studio in the world.
Read on for the full interview including Dominic’s tips for working with images, and why his car doubles as a UFO. :)
Oh, and don’t forget to enter our Ratatouille competition – it closes tomorrow!
If you’ve always wanted to ride your bike to work, but the list of excuses was just too daunting, then this list of commute-by-bike FAQs from the Sietch should get you going. Too dangerous? Too far to ride? Too cold? Nah. Not only will riding your bike to work help you feel better, you will be saving a bit of the environment as well—not a shabby arrangement. If you ride your bike to work, please share in the comments how you got started and what has kept you going.
How To Ride Your Bike To Work [The Sietch Blog]
