tips

Rarely do we take advantage of all of the software that is installed on our computers. Take Microsoft Office, for example. This suite of applications has so many powerful and handy features for your club management team, but if they don’t know these features are available, they can’t take advantage of them. Listed below are some Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint tips so take advantage of of these handy tools.

Outlook
Outlook has several features that are useful in the Club business world. Here are a few of my favorites.

• Calendar
  • Events: Create events for items that you want to place on your calendar but don’t want to block off time for. For example, create an event for a wedding or golf tournament so you can see that they are taking place although you may not actually be actively “working” the event.
  • Drag E-mails to the Calendar or Tasks folder: Turn e-mail messages into what they really are – tasks and appointments – by dragging them from the Inbox into the Calendar or Tasks folder. If you have Outlook 2007 or 2010 you can even drag them to a specific day. Once you have dragged the message, the appointment form will open and you can set the date (if necessary), the time and change the subject. You can change the appointment then to an event (by clicking the Event check box) or a meeting (by inviting attendees).
• Contacts
  • Activities: Each contact in your Contacts folder has an Activities view, regardless of the version of Outlook you are using. Open a contact in the Outlook Contacts folder and then click the Activities tab in Outlook 2007 or prior or the Activities button on the Contact Ribbon (in the Show group) if you are using Outlook 2010.
  • Photos: When you double-click to open a contact in your Contacts folder, a picture placeholder is displayed in the form. Click the placeholder icon and then point to a photo of the contact that you have stored on your hard drive or network location. This is great tool to help remember member names/faces. If you have an Exchange Server as your mail server at the Club, you can create a Member Contacts folder to share with your team that stores photos, names, spouse names, birthdates, food allergies, etc.

Read on to the next page…