IT Tips - June 2012

It Tips – June 2012

                                                                             

Summer is almost here! Grab some Powder-Me SPF, a cool beverage and relax outside with this month’s tip!   

What’s Inside:

Tech Section

·         Check Availability of Meeting Attendees

·         Windows 7 Explorer Favorites

Check the Availability of Meeting Attendees

Have you been playing phone tag trying to verify someone’s availability for a meeting request? Do you not want to bother a co-worker just to see if your meeting invitation will conflict with her schedule? Never fear, IT Tips are here!

Outlook 2007 has built-in functionality that will show you if your potential meeting attendees are busy. Best of all, it’s quick and painless to see their availability. The best part: if you keep reading you’ll find out how!

Open Outlook and navigate to your calendar. Then click the little triangle to the right of ‘New’ (on the top left) and choose ‘Meeting Request’.

  
Next, add all of your desired attendees to the ‘To:’ field

Now that you have your attendees listed, you can check their availability. Simply click on the ‘Scheduling’ button.

Here you can get an idea of your attendees’ availability. There is also a little visual aid that shows the time window of your proposed meeting:

There you have it; you now know how to quickly figure out if your meeting conflicts with your attendees’ schedules.

A couple things to note:

1. You won't be able to see the details of an attendees' calendar unless they have explicitly shared it with you. The purpose of this is to simply see their availability, and not the details of their calendar.
2. Obviously, it's important for everyone to keep their calendar tidy and accurate for this feature to have it's full worth. For example: it will be helpful to others if you keep track of your vacations on your calendar. They will not necessarily know what you're up to, but they'll know that you're unavailable.

Windows 7 Explorer Favorites

Do you have folders that you frequently access? Is it cumbersome to constantly navigate to the same folder every time you save a file? Well, boo-hoo. Deal with it! I’m kidding; there is an easier way!

Windows 7 has a very handy feature that allows you to set favorites within Windows Explorer.

What the heck is “Windows Explorer”?

Anytime you navigate your folders (such as My Documents) or really any folder within Window 7, you’re using Windows Explorer. Simply clicking the Start bubble and opening ‘Computer’, ‘Documents’ or ‘Pictures’ will open Windows Explorer. If you want to launch Windows explorer from the taskbar you can click the icon pictured below:

A Windows Explorer window looks like this:

OK, I get it now. How do I add, and more importantly, USE favorites in Windows Explorer?

By default, Windows has three locations pre-loaded in your Windows Explorer favorites: Desktop, Downloads and Recent Places. However, you can add virtually any folder you wish.

First, navigate to the folder you want to add to your favorites.

GREAT folder name, right?!

You can tell by the address bar that I’ve chosen to go to my folder, ‘I USE THIS FOLDER A LOT’. Now that we’re in the folder we want, right click on ‘Favorites’ on the top left and choose ‘Add current location to Favorites’.

That’s all you need to do! You will now see the folder in your Windows Explorer favorites. It makes it much quicker to access those pesky sub-folders that you always find yourself in.

I added the wrong folder to my favorites, how can I remove it?

Don’t panic! Stay calm! It’s easy to remove folders that you’ve added to your Windows Explorer favorites. Simply right click on the folder and select ‘Remove’.

Note: This tip only applies to users running Windows 7.

Have a great month, everyone!

-Keith

Please don’t hesitate to shoot me an email if you have a something that you think will make a good tip. You’ll get credit on the blog for your contribution and I might give you a high-five!