Who would have thought that, even five years ago, we would be so connected and dependent on our computer, email, voicemail, the Internet, Blackberries, PDAs, cell phones, and pagers...the list goes on and on. Today's workplace requires knowledge workers to be technologically savvy. Technology can undoubtedly improve your productivity by helping you perform many of your tasks more efficiently. This article presents some neat tips and tricks on using technology to your advantage.

Learn Shortcuts. If you find yourself opening the same computer file over and over again from the Start menu, why not create a shortcut on your desktop to that file? You could also use shortcut keys to replace any point and click feature, speed up the process by using the keyboard instead. I often need to change the case of my text from sentence case to capitals, and I find it tedious to use the menu system. Instead, use a shortcut. With the cursor on the word to capitalize, hold shift and press F3, once to capitalize the first letter, twice to capitalize the entire word, and a third time to lower case. If the word is already capitalized the sequence works anyway: "Capital" becomes "CAPITAL," becomes "capital" in that order (for MS Word). Most are a combination of two or three keys that you will need to hold down simultaneously to trigger the command. While they may seem a little awkward at first, they will become second nature once you start using them regularly. Here are my favorites:

Microsoft Office:

Copy	CTRL+C
Delete a word	CTRL+BACKSPACE
File Open	CTRL+O
File Save	CTRL+S
Find a word/phrase	CTRL+F
Paste	CTRL+V
Print	CTRL+P
Select all	CTRL+A
Undo last action	CTRL+Z

Microsoft Outlook:

Open the address book	CTRL+SHIFT+B
Check for new mail	F5 or CTRL+M
Create a new mail message	CTRL+N
Delete an e-mail message, contact, calendar item, or task	CTRL+D
Mark an e-mail message as read	CTRL+Q
Open an e-mail message	CTRL+SHIFT+M
Open a task	CTRL+SHIFT+K
Open a contact	CTRL+SHIFT+C
Reply to current message	CTRL+R
Switch to Inbox	CTRL+SHIFT+I
Switch to Outbox	CTRL+SHIFT+O

To find shortcuts, look at the menus - the shortcut will be across from the menu option.

Create rules to automatically move email. Once you create personal folders, you can create rules to automatically move certain types of email, such as weekly reports and newsletters. Any time you can avoid moving an email manually, you save time. However, only use this feature for "reference" items, not emails requiring a response. You don't want to be checking multiple folders to see if anything new came in. Check under "Help" for "filters" or "organize."

Use the subject field to indicate contents and priority. Use the subject field to give a quick summary of the contents and the priority. Don't just say, "Hi!" or "From Laura." Agree on acronyms to use that quickly identify actions. For example, your team could use <AR> to mean "Action Required" or <MSR> for the Monthly Status Report. It's also a good practice to include the word "Long" in the subject header so the recipient knows the message will take time to read. A message over 100 lines is generally considered long. Instead of sending a one-line text message to a Blackberry, send the message in the subject line, using <EOM> to signal the End of Message. The recipient doesn't have to even open the email to get the message. Here are some common codes that will help your reader quickly determine the purpose and urgency of your message:

<AR> Action Required
<EOM> End of Message
<LONG> Long, read later
<FYI> Information only
<NRN> No response needed
<TYVM> Thank you very much
<EMSG> Email message
<OT> Off topic
<TIA> Thanks in advance
<F2F> Face to face
<MSR> Monthly status report, etc.

Control scrolling speed. Often when you need to highlight a lot of text in Word or rows in Excel, the screen starts scrolling so fast you can't stop it until it's way past what you wanted to highlight. The simplest way to highlight more than what's on your screen is to use the Shift key in combination with cursor movement keys. For example, hold down the Shift key and the down arrow. Much less frustrating.

Use a signature with a website link. Make things easy for the recipient. To ensure that people know who you are, include a line or two at the end of your message with your contact information. Always include your complete mailing address, website, and phone numbers. Don't make it obnoxiously long with a page of information for people to wade through; put most of that on your website. You can create this file ahead of time and add it to the end of your messages as a signature line (some programs do this automatically).

Use signatures as templates. In addition to providing contact information at the end of an email message, signatures are helpful for storing text you type frequently. For example, if you sell products on your website, you could use a signature called "Thank you template" to insert in an email to the purchaser. I frequently reply to media inquiries, so I have a signature called "PR leads response" I can quickly insert into a message to a reporter. Here is a signature I use called "Evaluation form return" that I send when people complete my seminar evaluations in class:

Thank you for completing the Program Evaluation Form at Laura Stack's last presentation. To show our appreciation, here is the free e-Book "111 Ways to Improve Your Personal Productivity." Please feel free to pass it along to interested colleagues and friends. It was a pleasure meeting you! Productively yours, Laura Laura Stack, MBA, CSP The Productivity Pro, Inc. (r) 303-471-7401 www.TheProductivityPro.com Laura@TheProductivityPro.com

Make notes in an email message. When you call someone in response to an email message, you have no way of seeing you've responded to the message. If you try to type in the message, you can't. But there IS a way to type right into the message itself. Just open the email message, click on the Edit menu, and then select "Edit Message." Make your notes and then click on the File menu, then select save. The next tine you open that email message, your notes will be right at the top!!!

View files in a convenient format. When you click on File, Open in Microsoft Office (as well as Windows Explorer, My Documents, and many other Windows programs), you can view the list of files in different ways. Click on the View button in the top right of the window (there should be a little down arrow, too). There are different view options - thumbnails, previews, properties, icons, list, details, etc. (depends on your version).

Create separate calendars to track leave requests or appointments for others that don't impact your schedule. If others need to use it, create a new calendar in the Shared folders.

Remove the attachment from the message before moving to a folder, calendar or tasks. You may now save the original message while saving room in Outlook.

NOTE: This works exactly the same for messages sent as well as received.

Use the auto responder when you're unable to respond within 24 hours. It's not necessary to respond to messages the minute you receive them. In fact, this is a huge distraction and productivity drain. It is, however, customary to expect people to check their email at least once a day and respond to messages. Set aside regular times to check and respond to email. If you think the importance of a message justifies it, immediately reply briefly to an email message to let the sender know you got it, even if you will send a longer reply later. If you will be gone, set your out-of-office message to specify when you'll return and who is covering for you in your absence.

Save a tree. The File, Print dialog box often has some options you've needed and didn't know existed. For example, if you just want to print a few paragraphs in Word, slides in PowerPoint, or cells in a spreadsheet, highlight them first. Then, when you click on File, Print, select the option to print "Selection."

Customize your toolbars. Show icons for features you use most often. For example, I like to use Title Case in Word. Click on View, Toolbars, Customize. On the left side you'll see menu titles. On the right side are the items in that menu. If you see an icon you want to have on your toolbar, just click and drag it to where you want it to appear. With that dialog box open, you can move icons around, too. And, to get rid of an icon, with that dialog box open, just click on the icon in the toolbar and drag it down off the toolbar and let go.

Keep documents to one page. The leaders at Proctor & Gamble once decided that paper or electronic documents could not exceed one page. Even their multi-million dollar proposals are summarized on one page. Support materials are available and provided if requested, but this practice ensures the tedium of reading and reviewing the document is gone (and it saves lots of trees, too).

From the Print Preview screen, click on the Fit to Page button.

High-tech devices and software mean speed and availability. Technology should save time, increase efficiency, and make life easier. Many times, however, we feel like technology is the master and we are the servants. Technology can waste time and decrease productivity if not used correctly. Hopefully this article gave you a few new ideas on how to take advantage of the features and capabilities you already have.