In this edition of Shortcut Sunday I want to touch on one of the most used programs in the GTD-sphere (I think): Microsoft Outlook. Because of the tight integration of email, calendar, contacts and tasks, Outlook provides a good solid ground to at least start a digital GTD-system. I use Outlook purely in a business environment. for personal email I have no desktop emailclient, I only use Gmail. With Outlook, I also had the GTD addin installed. But we are moving to a new webbased projectmanagement/CRM system, which makes using my GTD addin pretty obsolete. But I can still recommend it. Outlook also has some nice keyboard shortcuts so you can change swiftly from email to calendar etc. Here they are…
All panes in Outlook come with their own (non-configurable) shortcuts
- Ctrl-1: Email
- Ctrl-2: Calendar
- Ctrl-3: Contacts
- Ctrl-4: Tasks
- Ctrl-5: Notes (who uses these things?)
- Ctrl-6: Folder List
Now, to navigate between items (like your mail) you use
- Ctrl-,: Next item
- Ctrl-.: Previous item
- To go to your inbox, use Ctrl-Shift-I
Other shortcuts I use a lot
- Ctrl-D: Delete an item
- Ctrl-Q: Mark as read
- Ctrl-R: Reply
- Ctrl-F: Forward
- Ctrl-Shift-A: Make a new calendar item
- Ctrl-Shift-Q: Make a new meeting request
- Ctrl-Shift-M: Make a new message
You can find all the keyboard shortcuts (even the silly ones you will never use) over at Microsoft’s website.
Which shortcut do you use the most in Outlook?
