Outlook 2010 Quick Steps not really useful for MYN

Jan 4, 2012

[Feb 17, 2012 Update: I’ve changed my mind on some of these conclusions and now think there are lots of potential for Quick Steps in MYN, particularly when used from within an open e-mail. See my Feb 17  2012 blog on this]

Funny, I’ve gotten a number of e-mails in the last month or so saying (effectively) “I’ve discovered this new feature in Outlook 2010 called Quick Steps, and I am surprised you don’t know about it!”

Well, actually we wrote about Quick Steps some time ago, and we feature it in our Outlook 2010 article that is listed in the “Important Articles” section of our blog:

http://www.michaellinenberger.com/Outlook2010Introduction.htm#QuickSteps

We even made a You Tube video about Quick Steps (linked in that article) and mentioned that a few times in our newsletters too.

So, yes, we do know about Outlook 2010 Quick Steps, thanks!

But the thing is, over time I have changed my mind about how useful they are for most of the MYN processes. After trying them a bit I just haven’t seen that much (if any) time savings in using Quick Steps for MYN. If you create a Quick Step to file mail to the Processed Mail folder, the Quick Step requires 2 clicks (select mail item, then click button up in Quick Step section), while dragging only requires one click (click and drag in one motion).

If you are converting an email to a task it’s the same number of clicks (though I admit, for creating the task as an attachment you save one click). My opinion is that, in general, Quick Steps are fun to use but offer no significant time savings for most MYN processes.

That said, key savings can be had when you are combining two or three steps into one. The demonstration of Quick Steps in the article above is a good example of that. And if you find other multi-step operations, go for it. It’s just that we do not have many applicable multi-step processes in our standard MYN teachings. Which is why we did not cover Quick Steps in our 3rd edition of the Outlook book.

That said, if you have a killer Quick Step for MYN that actually saves a lot of time, let me know—I am willing to stand corrected!

Michael

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