Improve your Outlook and free up 2-3 working weeks a year

Yes, you read the title correctly. This article will help you free up 2-3 working weeks a year if you receive a lot of email. If you have responsibility for generating income - these tips can help you sell more, as well as improve communication and work flow.

Working in Outlook probably gobbles up several hours of your day and is a major pain point. Right? Unfortunately you can't ignore it. It's where you receive work requests. Where you communicate with staff, clients, family. Where you get news. Where you set your appointments and meetings.

If that's not enough, the change to the ribbon format in 2007 and 2010 changed everything that was familiar.

Here are five out of hundreds of tips from my new book Conquer Your Email Overload. They'll help you work more effectively both easing your pain and enhancing your gain.

I've taken my ten years of learning, and put it into a very easy to read book.

It's in a problem/solution format that focuses on where you'd like to improve most; in communication, sales, workflow, response management, customer service. Imagine accomplishing this by simply making a few simple tweaks to the way you work.

Why not begin with these five tips?

1. Forget typing details: Drag and Drop

You'll love this tip! Used creatively drag and drop can replace cut and paste and typing from scratch.

Take incoming email and drag, then drop into contacts, calendar, or task folders to transform that email into a new item. An email dropped into Contacts creates a new contact for the sender. Take their signature, drag and drop the information into the respective contact fields. Even better, you can highlight text within an email and drag and drop that instead of the entire email.

Where: Anywhere within Outlook

2. Your personal inbox secretary: Rules

This function used cleverly can save you at least 15 minutes a day - 2 weeks a year. It can automatically read your incoming or outgoing emails, then perform the tasks you set.

Use Rules to bundle CC's and BCC's; Put emails in a folder, forward, answer, delete. Perform routine responses; Sort through irrelevant emails; Focus on important ones.

Where: 2003-7: Tools>Rules; 2010: Home Ribbon > Move> Rules.

3. Be a Sales/Customer Service Superstar: Tasks.

Instead of a simple current to-do list, use Tasks to grow sales by reminding yourself to follow up on outstanding proposals. Build relationships using recurring tasks to prompt you to telephone quarterly; to follow up after a certain period of time for customer service. Assign meeting action points to individuals and prompt them. Remind staff of items due like expense or sales reports.

Where: Icon under your Sent items folder

4. Be gracious and save thousands of seconds: Reply Signature

Instead of signing off (or not!) each email you forward or reply to, have it done automatically.

Add your normal salutation. Set once, then forget.

Where: 2003-7:Tools>Mail Format > Signatures >Replies and Forwards 2010: Open a new message > Message tab > Include group,> Signature. Then  click Signatures. Click New, and assign it to the Forward & Replies.

5. CRM Tool: People Pane

New to 2010. Microsoft has replicated the information you would normally find in a Contact's Activity tab (2003/2007) and placed it in a new pane at the bottom of an email when viewed in the Reading Pane.

You see all the activity you have had with that person, including Emails, Tasks, Calendar items and attachments.

Where: On the View tab, in the People Pane group, click People Pane and then click Bottom (you must have your Reading Pane turned on).

Written by international speaker, productivity authority and bestselling author Debbie Mayo-Smith  For more success tips or to purchase Conquer Your Email Overload, visit her website or sign up for her monthly newsletter here.