After a longer-than-planned hiatus, I’m back. And hopefully I have some new stuff that will make your teaching life easier!

Last May I explained in a post how to use MS Word and Excel to create grade reports. As I was walking across campus this week, I ran into my colleague in Engineering, Rich Bankhead. He had a great idea.

He gives his Engineering students a take-home final that includes solving mathematical problems. This quarter, he gave each student their own data. Students aren’t supposed to work with each other on this assignment, but if they do, they at least have to work the problems separately for each person.

I’m guessing that Rich’s problems are more difficult than this, but for the purpose of this post, I’ll keep it simple.

In Word, create the assignment.

In Excel, you need one column of names, one column of email addresses (if you plan on emailing the assignments to students), and finally a column for each variable. Save the file and close it.

Let’s merge!

In your Word file, on the Mailings tab, click the down arrow next to ‘Select Recipients.’ Select ‘Use Existing List.’ Locate and open your Excel spreadsheet, and select the worksheet within that spreadsheet that you want. It will look like nothing’s happened, but these two Word and Excel files are now linked.

Now let’s tell Word which Excel fields we want and where we want to put them. Let’s start with names. In your Word document, put your cursor where you want to put the student’s name. On the Mailings tab, click the down arrow under ‘Insert Merge Field.’ Notice that all of the column names from your Excel file are here.

Select ‘First.’ This is added where your cursor was: <<First>>. You can treat this like any other text. I’m going to type a space, then add ‘Last’ using the same process, then I’m going to make the type a little bigger and bold, and add a space under the name.

Let’s add the data. I’ll select my first data field (MMM1), add a comma and a space after it, then my second data field (MMM2), then another comma and a space and so on.

Merge and print (or email).

Click ‘Preview Results’ to see how the assignment will look to students. If you click the arrows to the right of ‘Preview Results’ you can flip through the rest of the students in your class. If don’t like how something looks, you can edit your document here or you can click ‘Preview Results’ to go back to field view you were working with before.

When your document is how you want it to look, click ‘Finish & Merge.’ If you select ‘Print Documents,’ you’ll print a separate page for each student in your spreadsheet. If you choose ‘Send E-mail Messages’, you’ll get this pop-up window:

If you have a column labeled ’email’ Excel is smart enough to default to that. If what it chooses is incorrect, click the arrow to the right to select a different column from your spreadsheet. Type in something appropriate for the subject line. When you hit OK, Word will use email program to send an email to each of your students.

Tips for creating individualized data in Excel.

Let Excel do the work. Use the RANDBETWEEN command to generate your data. For example, if you wanted to generate a number between 1 and 30, in an Excel field, type =randbetween(1,30). Notice the solid border around cell D2? If you mouse over the little box in the bottom right corner of that cell, your pointer will turn into a plus sign.

Left click and drag it to the right. This will copy your formula in every cell you highlight.

Now highlight all of the cells in that row you’d like to copy, mouse over the box in the bottom right corner of your selected cells, left click, and drag down.

IMPORTANT: Notice that each time you do something with a cell, such as copy a formula from one cell to the next, the number in all of the RANDBETWEEN cells changed. Each time you enter something into a cell in this spreadsheet, all of your randomly generated numbers will change.

Convert formulas to values. If you’d like your randomly generated numbers to stick so they’re not changing every time you do something in this spreadsheet, highlight the cells that contain the formula, click ‘copy’ (or CTRL-C), then click the down arrow under ‘paste,’ and select ‘Paste Values’ (or ALT-H,V,V).

What else do you need?

Are you looking for easier ways to do things in Word, Excel, or Outlook? Leave your questions in the comments below, and I’ll see if I can find some shortcuts for you.

One of the most common complaints I hear about PowerPoint is that it is linear; when you run your PowerPoint, you’re locked into running it in the order in which you created it. This is simply not true. “Presenter view” must be the most underused of the most useful PowerPoint features. All you need is a computer that can give you an ‘extended desktop,’ which is almost all laptops and most desktop computers made in the last few years.

This is what is displayed through the projector.

But this is what I see on my computer monitor:

PowerPoint treats the projector as an ‘extended desktop.’ In essence, the presentation is presented on the projector’s ‘monitor’ while the presenter view is presented on your computer’s monitor.

Getting an ‘extended desktop.’

Check your computer’s documentation. For most Window’s computers, in Control Panel, open Display, and go to the Settings tab. Look for something that reads “extend the desktop.” (Mac and Linux can also extended desktop, but you’re really on your own in learning how to do it. Sorry!)

I have the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator Driver, so this is how I got the extended desktop.

I right clicked on my laptop’s desktop.  I selected “Graphics Properties” and checked “Extended Desktop”.  I made the primary device my notebook and the secondary device the monitor.

(Notice the blue boxes labeled 1 and 2? This puts the notebook screen on the left and the projector screen on the right. You can grab and move those boxes if you want the notebook screen on the other side. I explain why shortly.)

I clicked “Scheme Options” and then gave it a name, like Presentation Mode, and saved it.  When I plug into my classroom’s laptop cable, I right click on the desktop, “Select Scheme,” and choose Presentation Mode. In the classroom, I know it’s working when the classroom monitor displays my desktop’s background image with nothing else on it.

In PowerPoint.

In PowerPoint, when you save your PowerPoint file, on the Slide Show tab, check “Use Presenter View” and make sure “Show Presentation On:” is set to Monitor 2.

That’s it.

The show will run as it normally does through the projector, but now you have some very nifty functionality on your computer screen. If you added notes to your slides when you built your slide presentation, you can see your notes on the right side of the screen. With the filmstrip of all your slides at the bottom of the screen, if you want to jump ahead or go back, just click on the slide you want.

If you want to write on the slides with the ‘pen’, when you build your slide presentation, make sure you turn off “advance slide on mouse click” (under the Animations tab).  If you are changing an existing presentation, click on one slide, then CTRL-A to select them all, and then turn off “advance slide on mouse click.”  If you don’t turn it off, every click on the slide with the pen will advance it.  “Advance slide on mouse click” isn’t really necessary anyway with this setup since you have the arrow controls in front of you. I use a presentation remote, and that advances the slides just fine, as well.

If you want to show something else on the classroom screen, like a webpage or video, just drag the window off your computer ‘over’ to the classroom screen.  After all, it’s just an extended desktop.  If your computer monitor is on the left (see the note above about the numbered blue boxes), then drag the program window off the screen to the right to see it appear on the projector’s ‘desktop.’ The first few times you use this setup, you may lose your mouse pointer. If you can’t see the pointer on your computer monitor, it’s probably over on the projector’s ‘desktop.’ If you’ve said that your computer monitor is on the left, then move your mouse to the left to get it back on your computer screen.

This will change your relationship with Powerpoint – for the better.

Give it a try and let me know how it goes!

A few days ago I was visiting with a colleague in his office.  He was trying to find the most recent version of a particular file.  He had one copy on his computer and one copy on his flashdrive, but he wasn’t sure which was the most recent.  And he didn’t seem convinced that those were the only two copies.  Did he have another copy on a different flashdrive?  Did he have yet another copy on his laptop?

Dropbox lets you get rid of your flashdrive and keep all of your files synched.  Make a change to a Word document, and it’s changed everywhere else you have installed Dropbox.

Dropbox adds a folder to your ‘My Documents’ folder called ‘My Dropbox’.  Install it on your work computer, your home computer, your laptop.  Anything you put in that folder (documents, spreadsheets, slide presentations, video, images, etc.) will be copied to the Dropbox server, and then copied and downloaded to your other Dropbox-installed computers.

As well as being stored locally, your files are stored (think ‘backed-up’) on the Dropbox servers.  Visit the Dropbox website from any computer and log in to access your files.  This means you can access your slide presentation from your classroom’s internet-connected computer.  No more worrying about whether you’ve moved your most recent slide presentation to your flashdrive.  No more worrying about losing your flashdrive.

Want to go back to an earlier version of a document?  Visit your files on the Dropbox website.  Previous versions are kept for 28 days.

If you’re not sold yet, this next feature should do it.  You can share your folders with other people.  Add or change a file in that folder, and it changes for everyone else.  It acts like a shared drive, except the files are stored locally as well.

To share a folder, navigate to your ‘My Dropbox’ folder. Right click on the folder you want to share, mouse over ‘Dropbox’, then select ‘Share This Folder’.

Your browser will open a page on the Dropbox website. Just type in the email addresses of the people with whom you would like to share the folder (comma separated), and click ‘Share folder’. Your recipients will receive an invitation to install Dropbox, which they’ll need to do to share your folder. Once done, any files they add to the folder or any changes they make to an existing file will be uploaded to the Dropbox server and pushed out to everyone who’s sharing the folder, updating on all of their Dropbox-installed computers as well.

Want to know what’s been happening inside of your ‘My Dropbox’ folder? Visit the Dropbox website. Click on ‘Recent Events.’ You get to see what files you edited or added or deleted. You get to see what files others you share folders with have edited or added or deleted. Don’t want to keep visiting this ‘Recent Events’ page to see what’s new? At the bottom of the page, click ‘Subscribe to this feed’ to get new events sent to your RSS feed reader. (Don’t have an RSS feed reader? See this earlier blog post.)

Cost? You can store up to 2GB in your ‘My Dropbox’ folder for free. You can store up to 50GB for $9.99/month and up to 100GB for $19.99/month.

Installation? You can install it in less than 2 minutes.

What are you waiting for? Dropbox.

Last month I wrote about electronic grading. With regard to saving the assignment files from students I said, “The papers themselves are saved to a ‘Student papers’ folder in ‘My Documents.’ Each file I save is renamed with standard nomenclature: Student last name, assignment, and whether the assignment was turned in late.” Of course what that means is saving each incoming file individually.

I now have a better option. EZDetach, a TechHit product. With two mouse clicks, all of the files attached to email messages in a given folder are saved to a My Documents subfolder, and they even have helpful filenames.

As I wrote in that earlier blog post, as assignment emails come in from students, I move the files into a “grade these” folder in Outlook. Using EZDetach, when I’m ready, I can detach all of the files at once.

EZDetach adds an unobtrusive icon to your Outlook toolbar. Go to the file folder where you’ve saved your student assignment email. Select the messages that contain the files you want to detach by holding down the CTRL key and clicking on each message. If you want to detach them all, there’s no need to select any.

Click the EZDetach icon, and the EZDetach pop-up window appears. (See the screenshot below.) Clicking the option button gives you the options menu.

Process Attachments in. Choose whether you want to save the attachments from just the email that you have selected or if you want to do it for all of the email in that folder.

Destination Folder. Browse to the folder where you want to save your files. If you have already used EZDetach, it will remember the last folder you chose. Clicking the down arrow will give you a list of the folders you’ve chosen in the past.

Options. Click the options button to expand the options menu. Now you can decide how you would like to name your files and how you’d like to your subfolder if you’d like the files to be moved to a subfolder.

For example, in the screenshot below, I’ve asked EZDetach to add the name of the sender and the sender’s email address to the filename, and to not create a separate subfolder to house the files.

Let’s say that I received these email messages with these files attached:

Wonder Woman (Wonder.Woman@marvel.com) Assignment1.docx
Spiderman (spidey@marvel.com) Homework.wps
Captain America (CaptAmer@marvel.com) psychhw.doc

I click the EZDetach icon, and when the popup window appears, I click Save Now. EZDetach will do the rest. With the settings I have chosen in the screenshot, EZDetach will save the files to my Student Papers folder in My Documents. The files will be named:

Wonder Woman – Wonder.Woman@marvel.com – Assignment1.docx
Spiderman – spidey@marvel.com – Homework.wps
Captain America – CaptAmer@marvel.com – psychhw.doc

EZDetach truly is easy to use. Try it 30 days for free. If it’s a big time saver for you, it’s $39.95 to purchase.

As another academic year gets off the ground I’m shuttling more files around than I did all summer. I have folders, subfolders, and sub-subfolders on my C:\ drive and my college’s M:\ drive. I used to use the M:\ drive both as backup and to hold files not currently in use, like PowerPoints and handouts for courses I hadn’t taught in awhile. About a year ago I copied onto my new laptop my flash drive files that I carried around with me. I put them all in a folder called ‘flash drive files’ with the anticipation that I would sort it out later. I’ve found myself using the electronic equivalent of the ‘archeological dig’ filing system. You know the one I mean. Papers pile up on your desk, and you can find what you’re looking for, roughly, by date. “That was a long time ago, so that paper’s near the bottom.” My electronic files have begun to take on some of those same characteristics.

Managing folder trees to find the right folder to either locate a document or to save a new document has become an adventure. Sometimes even when I know exactly where something is, it may take several mouse clicks to get there.

Enter QuickJump, the latest product from TechHit, the company that brought us SimplyFile, the email filer I blogged about last month. (QuickJump only works with Windows products, sorry Mac users.)

QuickJump allows you fast and easy navigation of your folders. When you first run it, it only indexes the folders in “My Documents.” If you’d like it to index additional folders or folders on other drives, like network drives, just let it know. In my case, I added the network M:\ drive.

With a keyboard shortcut (CTRL-SHIFT-J is the default, but you can make it whatever you’d like) you get this pop-up:

An alphabetical listing of the first 100 of my 1134 folders is nice, but QuickJump’s power is in its searching ability.

When I type ‘assessment’ into the search box, I get the 85 folders that contain the word assessment. (I have 85 folders that contain the word assessment?!)

If I keep typing I can narrow it down even further. When I add “psych” I get it down to 7 folders. Much better! Partial words are fine. In fact, QuickJump revises the list of results as you type. After I had typed “assessment ps” I had already identified the folder I needed. Word order doesn’t matter, either. If the words or partial words you type appear in the folder tree anywhere, QuickJump returns the folder.

QuickJump works any time you want to find a folder. No programs open and you’re looking for a folder? CTRL-SHIFT-J. You’re in MS Word, and you’re ready to save your document? Hit save, then CTRL-SHIFT-J. You’re in your email program and are saving a file, like all of those emailed student assignments? As soon as the “save as” box appears, CTRL-SHIFT-J.

I did a little test. I timed how long it took me to get to a given subfolder buried 4 layers deep. With QuickJump, it took me 6 seconds to get there. Using standard navigation, by double-clicking on My Documents and double-clicking through layers of folders, it took me 9 seconds. QuickJump was 1/3 faster even when I knew exactly where to find the folder using standard navigation. That makes it exponentially faster when I’m not sure where a particular folder is!

QuickJump made my life run just a little more smoothly. Now if I can just find a similar product to help me manage all of those papers on my desk.

This product is $29.95 and comes with a 30-day free trial. Readers of this blog can purchase QuickJump for $23.95 (20% off). Just use this link before September 22^nd, 2009.

I joined Twitter some months ago, and then quickly became one of 60% U.S. Twitterers that Nielsen found didn’t return a month after joining. But now I have to do some rethinking.

I’m a member of a social networking group called College 2.0: Higher Education, Online Learning, and Web 2.0. Here is a recent post to a discussion forum where the topic was Twitter (reproduced here with permission of the author).

For a long time, I’ve been a big fan of Facebook, and I’ve been thinking about ways I might somehow incorporate Facebook into my classroom (given that I know many of my students use it, and it seems like it might be something that could engage them and get them excited about learning statistics). I still haven’t figured out a way to use Facebook in my classes, but I did think about something I could do with Twitter. This summer, I asked my students to “tweet” about things they were finding in the news or online that related to statistics (e.g., news reports that included statistical information, uses or misuses of statistics, interesting graphs, cartoons, data sets, websites that teach statistics, survey or poll results, YouTube videos, etc.). I thought this would be a great way to emphasize statistical literacy in my course and to help my students become more savvy consumers of statistical information they are presented with in the “real world” on a daily basis. These are definitely learning goals in my courses. I presented this as an extra credit opportunity to my students (they would get a point for each “tweet” they posted, and they could post up to five “tweets”) and I provided them with information about how to set up Twitter accounts if they did not already have one. I had 20 students in my summer course, and 15 of them signed up for Twitter and participated in my “experiment.”

I’ve been so excited about how this went and how involved my students got in this “experiment” that I plan to continue doing this in future classes. It got my students looking for how statistics is used (or sometimes misused) in the “real world,” and I can’t tell you how many discussions I overheard my students having before and after class about things they were finding that they wanted to “Twitter” about. One of my students–who is also a teacher–actually e-mailed me yesterday to tell me that this Twitter experiment gave him many ideas for how he might incorporate this technology into the courses he teaches. Plus, I found this exercise was a great way for ME to make announcements to my students about things I was also noticing in the news. I don’t always have the time to go over these things in class, but using Twitter allowed me to get the word out and to model the kinds of questions I hoped my students would ask as they came across different information presented in news reports, polls, and journal articles.

If you want to learn more about what I did and see some examples of the kinds of posts my students and I put up on Twitter, you can follow me and my class on Twitter. You can follow me at www.twitter.com/MGEverson, and, if you enter #epsy5261 as a search term, you’ll see things that we all posted.

I realize I am very biased here, but I think this could have some potential in many classrooms, and that’s why I wanted to share it here. It’s a way you can incorporate more technology in your course if you want to, and I also feel it’s a good way to get students thinking about how what they are learning about applies to their everyday lives. For me, teaching statistics is sometimes a challenge because many of my students are taking the course because they HAVE to, and some are not very motivated to learn the material (or are very anxious about it because they assume it’s just a math class). For those students who come to our courses with little motivation or interest in the subject, this might engage them a bit more, especially if they are interested in social networking. I’ve learned through doing this (and talking to others–like you–about Twitter) that there are so MANY other ways in which Twitter can be used in the classroom, and to me, this is exciting. I can’t wait to experiment more!

One thing I must admit, however, is that my course is a graduate-level course. I would hope this would work in a similar way with undergraduates, but I haven’t tried it yet with my undergraduate course. Hopefully, the next time I teach that course, I can try it.

Michelle Everson

Department of Educational Psychology

University of Minnesota

When classes begin this fall, I’ll ask my (undergraduate) students if they Twitter. Whether they do or not, I’ll ask if they would be interested in the sort of experiment that Michelle Everson tried.

Has anybody else used Twitter in a course? What did you do, and how did it work?

If you’re concerned about the flu virus and you haven’t moved to electronic grading, now might be a good opportunity to start.

Managing email. As soon as I get an assignment, I hit reply, type “Got it,” then hit send. This eliminates follow-up emails from students asking, “Did you get my assignment?” In my email program, I keep a folder called “Grade these.” All student assignment emails are moved there so they don’t get lost in my inbox. (SimplyFile makes this easy to do with the click of one button. See this post for more information about SimplyFile.) After I’ve emailed students their graded assignments, I move their emails into the “Graded” folder.

Outlook folders:

Managing the documents. The papers themselves are saved to a “Student papers” folder in “My Documents.” Each file I save is renamed with standard nomenclature: Student last name, assignment, and whether the assignment was turned in late. For instance, if Alan Ladd turned in his second reaction paper on time, I would name the file LaddRP1. If he turned in his experimental design assignment late, I would name it LaddXD-Late. After grading the assignments, I move them into the “Graded” folder located in the “Student papers” folder. (UPDATE 10/10/09: See a more recent blog post on EZDetach for an easier way to save files from email messages.)

My Documents:

Once I’ve sent a graded assignment back to a student, I move the file into a “Sent” folder.

Attaching files to Outlook email: A tip. You can drag and drop files into open emails to attach them. (You can also drag attachments out of emails that have been sent to you into folders or onto your desktop.) See this video:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxrpGIPvAJI&hl=en&fs=1]

Using MS Word 2007 to grade assignments. Select the “Review” tab. Click “Track Changes.” Any change you make shows up in red. Deletions are struck-through; additions are underlined.

To add a comment, with your mouse highlight the text on which you’d like to comment. Click “New Comment,” then type your comment.

When you’re done, save your file, record the grade, and send the file back to the student. That’s it!

TabletPC users. On the Review tab, select “Start Inking.”

That produces the “Pens” toolbar. Just write like you normally do.

Xobni allows me to quickly find email messages, attached files, and contact information for anyone who has ever emailed me. With the large number of students each term as well as various committee responsibilities and other collaborative projects, Xobni has made managing the onslaught of email much easier! For example, when I agree to write a letter of recommendation for a student, I turn to Xobni to call up all previous emails and files exchanged with that student. Within those I often find specific examples I can use in writing the letter.

Most of Xobni‘s functionality can be found in its free version. For a one-time $29.95 fee, you can upgrade to Xobni Plus which gives you a bit more power. Everything in this post, I believe, is included in the free version. Click here to see a comparison between Xobni and Xobni Plus. (If you tried Xobni before, you may have found that it slowed Outlook down when starting. With improvements, Xobni doesn’t slow it down as much. It’s worth trying again.)

This is what my Outlook inbox looks like. Xobni occupies the fourth column. Whatever message is selected, Xobni displays the information for that sender. In this case, I’ve emailed myself and have that message selected, so my information is displayed. This is my Xobni profile as it appears in my Outlook.

Xobni gives me all sorts of information about the sender, e.g., contact information such as email addresses and phone numbers. I have the Facebook icon selected so I get the sender’s most recent status update (assuming the sender and I are Facebook ‘friends’ or the sender’s Facebook profile is public).

Selecting the other icons in the center of the image above produces a wealth of information.

Analytics. This graphic shows how many emails I’ve sent and received and when I’ve received them. If I had someone else selected in Xobni, I would see how many emails I have sent them, how many they have sent me, and when they have sent them.

Actions. Clicking the orange ‘actions’ icon allows me to email the person. (Remember, Xobni displays the information for any person whose email you have selected in your inbox.) If I click “Email Sue,” a new message pops up with the email address already filled in. If I click “Schedule a time with Sue,” Xobni not only opens a new email message, but it also accesses my Outlook calendar, automatically enters my free times for the next 5 working days, enters my standard sign off and signature information. Very handy!

LinkedIn. Click the LinkedIn icon to call up information from the person’s LinkedIn profile.

Hoovers. Hoovers.com provides public information about companies. If the person works for a company in the Hoovers database, the Hoovers button gives me a snapshot of the organization. When I receive email from someone who works at APA, this is what Xobni gives me. Clicking “view more” at the bottom takes me to the Hoovers page for APA.

Further down. In the bottom half of the Xobni column, I get a list of people associated with the email sender in the “Network” area. When I send or receive email from a particular person, this box identifies who has been cc’ed on those various emails. Selecting one of them replaces the current Xobni profile with the profile of the person I have selected.

In the “Conversations” box, I get a list of all of the emails, clumped by subject line, I have exchanged with the person whose profile is displayed. Each threaded conversation is dated with the most recent first. Mousing over a conversation thread, like I’ve done here, produces a pop up window with a preview of the messages in the thread.

If I select the thread, the Xobni person profile is replaced with more detailed information.

Then if I select a message within the thread, I can choose to open the message in Outlook or reply to the message directly from Xobni. Any time I want to go back, I just hit the “Back” button. If I want to go all the way back to the beginning, to the original profile where I started, I click “Start Over.”

There’s a very similar process for “Files Exchanged.” Here I get a list of the files I’ve exchanged with that person, both ones I’ve sent and received. Mousing over the file name gives me information from the email the file came with as well as information about the file itself. Double clicking the file name will open the file.

In the “Appointments” area I can see what upcoming appointments I have scheduled for the person whose Xobni profile I’m viewing. (Remember, to view a Xobni profile, just select the person’s email in Outlook.)

Search. With all of that said, the Xobni feature I cannot live without is search. In the search box, enter your search term, and Xobni will search people, email messages, appointments, and tasks. (In the free version, for messages, Xobni will only search subject lines and will search your current Outlook messages plus one archive file. Xobni Plus will search the message body in both your current Outlook messages and in an unlimited number of archive files.)

Download Xobni. Try it out. It’s free!

UPDATE (5/7/2010). Xobni released version 1.9 on April 14, 2010.  The functionality is pretty much the same, but the user interface looks a little different.  Xobni also now collects URLs exchanged between you and the person whose information you are looking at.

Even with a whole host of new technologies out there, for communicating with people at a distance, email remains my lifeline. For work email, I use MS Outlook, as I have for years. I always wished it would work how I wanted it to work. TechHit’s SimplyFile gets me closer.

I can file an email message in its appropriate folder with a click of a button (or keyboard shortcut). I can create a task from an email message. I can turn an email message into an appointment in my calendar. I can make a message disappear from my inbox for a designated period of time, and then have it reappear on its own later.

SimplyFile is an Outlook addin. (Try it free for 30 days. After that, it’s $39.95.) I tried it for 30 days, but I wasn’t sure it was worth the price. I uninstalled it. After not having it for an hour, I pulled out my credit card. It made my email time so much more efficient, I couldn’t go back to my pre-SimplyFile way of doing things. The software is so easy to use, there’s really nothing to learn. Truly.

The toolbar. There are two ways to access the SimplyFile toolbar. If I’m viewing messages in the main Outlook window, I can use the bottom-most toolbar in this image.

If I’ve opened a message, the toolbar appears here:

Filing messages. When I have a message selected in Outlook, SimplyFile takes a guess at which folder I’d like to move it based on where I’ve put similar messages in the past. If I want to put the selected message in the ‘OTRP’ folder, all I need to do is click ‘File Message’ or use the keyboard shortcut Alt+M. If that isn’t the right folder, clicking the drop down arrow in the folder box gives you SimplyFile’s next best guesses.

The first ones are SimplyFile’s top 5 guesses. The next 20 are good choices. If I don’t like any of those options, I click ‘<Select/Create folder>’ to select/create a new folder.

Did you accidentally file the message in the wrong folder? Click ‘Undo File’ to pull the message back into your main inbox. Just like using undo in Word, you can undo the filing of several messages. (I don’t know how many can be undone; I have only had occasion to undo 5 or so in a row.)

This list shows all main folders and their subfolders listed together. If you’d like to see the folder paths, you can change that setting in SimplyFile’s options menu.

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Task it. When I get an email that requires some action on my part, I ‘task it.’ This not only calls up Outlook tasks, but it embeds the message in the task. For example, let’s say I open the following message.

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All I need to do is click ‘Task It,’ and SimplyFile opens a new Outlook task. The subject line from the original email is the subject line for the task. Change it if you’d like. The body of the email is reproduced in the body of the task. Also feel free to edit this space at will. Double clicking the envelope at the bottom of the body will open the original email message.

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Schedule it. Open an email. Click ‘Schedule It.’ Outlook opens a new Outlook appointment. Like a task, the email’s subject line becomes the appointment’s subject line. The email’s body is copied into the appointment’s body. Double-clicking the envelope at the bottom opens the original email. You will need to change the date and time. SimplyFile isn’t smart enough (yet?) to pull the date and time out of the body of the message.

If there were other recipients of this message, they all would be included when I click ‘Scheduling.’

If moving your mouse to click ‘Schedule It’ isn’t fast enough for you, in SimplyFile’s options, you can create a hotkey that will allow you to turn an email into an appointment without your fingers leaving your keyboard.

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Snooze it. Have a message in your inbox that you don’t need to deal with right now? But you want to get it out of your way? Hit the snooze button.

For any message, when you click ‘Snooze It’ this dialog box appears. The default is 7 days, but change the days/hours/minutes to whenever you’d like. The message will disappear, then like magic it will reappear in your inbox at the time you designated.

To do this, SimplyFile creates a ‘SimplyFile’ folder in your inbox with a ‘Snooze’ subfolder where it holds your snoozed email messages until the time expires.

If you’d like to see what’s snoozing, just open that folder. If you’d like to de-snooze a message, just drag it back into your main inbox folder.

Try it.
Download SimplyFile and try it out for 30 days for free. If you uninstall it and go back to your current way of handling email, let me know how you managed it!

Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone to read to you? Like, that article you’ve been meaning to get to? Or student papers? What if you not only had someone to read it to you, but you could take the recording with you to listen to while you work out or on your daily commute?

Check out Read The Words.

Give it any text, either by typing it in, uploading a file, giving it a URL or the address of an RSS feed. The file will be converted to audio. There are several different avatars (voices) you can choose from including a British accent and an Indian accent. You can adjust the reading speed of the avatar to match your listening speed.

For students who are learning English, they can have the written English text in front of them while they listen to the audio for practice with pronunciation. For students who are learning Spanish or French, they can have Spanish or French text read by a Spanish or French speaking avatar.

Once the file has been created, you can download it as an MP3, send it as part of an email, or embed the file in a webpage like I have done here.

The free version of the service allows you to have 3 recordings saved on their server with up to 30 seconds of speaking time per file. For $19.99 a year you get 25 recordings saved on their server of up to an hour of reading time per recording. For $34.99 per year, you get 100 recordings saved and the recording time is upped to 8 hours per file.  If you download the file, you can delete it from your library on their server to free up more space for more files.

If you try it out, let me know how it works for you!