Take advantage of this "secret" pane
I betcha didn't know that Outlook had any "secret" panes, did you? Well, strictly speaking, it isn't secret -- but few people seem to know about or use this pane. That's a shame, since it can come in very handy.

I'm talking about the Shortcuts pane. This is a place to store shortcuts to almost anything on your computer or on your network. That's right. The Shortcuts pane isn't limited to Outlook folders. It can hold shortcuts to files on your computer, folders on the network, even Web pages.

You can also create groups to help you organize your shortcuts. How much time could you save in a day if shortcuts to all your most important files, folders, applications, and web pages were right there in Outlook, only a few clicks and keystrokes away?

You open the Shortcuts pane with the Ctrl+7 keyboard shortcut (a useful keyboard shortcut to learn). When you do this, the Shortcuts pane replaces whatever is in the Navigation pane, as shown in Figure C. But it doesn't change anything else. This allows you to create or use a shortcut without totally disrupting whatever else you are doing.

FIGURE C

Create and store shortcuts to virtually anything using this "secret" pane. Click picture for a larger image.

When the pane is visible, you can create new groups of shortcuts or add new shortcuts to the default group using the Add New Group and Add New Shortcut links. Add a new shortcut to any group by dragging and dropping into the group.

That's the basics for Shortcuts. If you want more information, search the Outlook help system for the phrase, "shortcut groups".

Conclusion
Outlook is so big and complex that there are lots of ways to do things, and lots of features that most folks never even discover. As we've seen here, there are ways to do things that save you time.

And because you spend so much time in Outlook, often doing the same thing dozens of times a day, even small improvements can add up to big time savings. The five techniques we've talked about here may not save you exactly an hour a day, but if you put them to use, you will definitely save time in Outlook. They sure save me plenty.