Office Handy Hints - Outlook, Distribution lists

Distribution lists in Outlook will allow you to send the same email to multiple people at the same time.

In Outlook 2010 and 2013 a distribution list is referred to as a Contact group.

Click the Contact link (or People link in Outlook 2013) and click New Contact Group at the top of the screen.

 

 

Click into the name field and type a name for the group and then click the Add Members button and choose where you want to add the names from e.g. Outlook address book.

 

Select the names that you want to add by double clicking on each of them, when all names have been selected click OK.

 

To send an email to all members in the group, click the To, Cc or Bcc field and choose the name of the group – you should be able to find the group in the Contacts list in Outlook.

 

 

Office Handy Hints - Outlook, Create a new email from the clipboard

If you want to create a quick email from existing text in a document, copy the text to the clipboard as normal.

Open Outlook and press CTRL+V on your keyboard. A new email will be created with the text pasted into it.

This method saves you having to create an email and then copy and paste text separately.

Office Handy Hints - Outlook, Create email templates

If you regularly type the same text into an email, why not create an email template and save yourself some time.

Create the email as normal, enter all the text that you want to appear each time you create an email – you can even add the subject line if this is going to be the same on every email but don’t enter any individual information such as email addresses.

Click File, Save As and select Outlook Template from the Save As Type drop down menu.

To create an email based on the template, click New Items on the Home ribbon. Click Choose Form (this may be under More Items depending on the version of Outlook you’re using).

 

 

 

 

From the Look In drop down select ‘User Templates in File System’.

 

**If you have an email signature set up for new emails remember to delete this from the template before you save it otherwise the signature will be displayed twice when you create a new email from the template**

 

 

MatterSphere - Time Recording

Time recording ensures that Clients are billed correctly for any work that has been done.
 
When creating new documents or emails or adding received documents and emails to MatterSphere the Time Entry dialog box will be displayed.

Enter a meaningful description in the Time Desc field. The Fee Earner field should be populated with either your name or the name of the Fee Earner that you work for but if the details are incorrect you can click the drop down and select the correct name.

The Time Activity field will also usually be populated based on the type of document (or email) that you’re creating but is this is incorrect, select the correct value from the drop down list. The Time Units field should be populated based on the type of document you’re creating but if this wrong enter the correct number of units.

The Charge field will be populated with the amount relating to the Fee Earner selected in the Fee Earner field and cannot be changed. If this amount is incorrect you will need to ask for this to be changed in the Admin kit.

If you want to record time but don’t need to charge for it, select the Non Chargeable option from the Time Activity drop down.

 

A warning message will be displayed advising that the Charge is set to zero as a prompt, if you don’t want to charge for this time you can ignore this message.

If you don’t want time to appear on the Time Recording tab at all, tick the Skip Time box at the bottom right of the page.

When the Time Recording screen has been completed, click Next or if you want to record additional time click Create & New at the top of the dialog box.

If you’re attaching an email to a Matter that has been received and replied to a number of times you can total the number of Email Out activities (the number of times the email was replied to) and the number of Email In activities (the number of times an email was received) and add the Time Units in a group e.g. 3 units for Email In and 2 units for Email Out.

The Time Recording tab will list all Activities where time has been recorded and the Value column will show the Charge details.
 

 
 

The Balance area on the left hand side of the screen will also show the current Work in Progress amount and the available account balance.

There may also be occasions when you need to record manual time e.g. when doing Research that is not related to any documents or emails.

Click the New Time Entry icon on the Matter Centre toolbar or if you’re already looking at a Matter, click Create Time on the Time Recording tab.

The Select a Client and Matter screen will be displayed, where you can select the correct Client. After choosing the Client, click Proceed and complete the fields with the relevant details.

The Manual Time entry screen does not contain the Skip Time option.

MatterSphere - Document versioning

If you 've made changes to a document in MatterSphere you can save the amended copy as a version of the original when you save it back to MatterSphere. This will enable you to revert back to an earlier version of the document if you need to.

Open an existing document from MatterSphere and make the required changes. When you're ready to add the document back into MatterSphere, click the Save icon to launch the Document Save wizard.

When you see the following screen, you can choose whether you want to overwrite the existing document, create a revised version of the existing document or create a new major version (Overwrite will be selected by default - remember to change this if you need to save a version of this document).

If you've only made minor changes to the document, save it as a Revision of the original document and if you've made major changes, save it as a New Major version. The optional version related comment section is useful for adding any comments about the changes that you've made.

You can use the Status drop down to indicate that this is a Draft or Final version of the document. Always leave the Flag as Latest Version ticked - this means that the latest version of the document will be the one that's displayed on the Documents tab in MatterSphere (all earlier versions can be seen when you choose to open or email the document). The version column (on the Documents tab) will show the latest version number of the document.

MatterSphere handy hints - Checking Documents In and Out

On the Documents tab there is an option to Check Out a document. The means that the document is locked for editing, other users will be able to open the document as normal but will not be able to make any changes to it.

Check out a document

Select the document that you want to check out and click the Check Out icon.

 

The person who checked the document out will see a red tick on the document icon on the Documents tab. When other users look at the documents tab, they will see an icon with a person on it which indicates that another user has checked a document out.

 

If you try and open a document that has already been checked out by another user a message will be displayed informing you that the document is already checked out.

 

If you try and check out a document that has already been checked out a message will be displayed informing you that another user has already checked the document out.

 

Undo a Check Out

If you have checked out a document by mistake, click the Undo Checkout icon, the following message will be displayed.

 

Click Yes to undo the check out (you will lose any changes that you made) or No to carry on editing the document.

Check In a document
When you have finished making changes to a document you will need to check the document back in by clicking the Check In icon. The Document Save wizard will be displayed - after completing all steps in the document save wizard a message will be displayed advising that the document has been checked in successfully.

NB: If you have checked out a document instead of clicking the Check In icon it will be checked in automatically.

Handy hints - a really quick way to lock your PC

Most of us use the standard CTRL+ALT+DELETE to lock our PC when we leave our desk but did you know there's an even quicker method - press the Window button on your keyboard + l (lowercase L).

Legal handy hints - AutoText

If you regularly type the same text into documents you could set this up as an AutoText entry, this means that you can enter the text really quickly by type a single word (or even letter) and pressing Enter.

The easiest way to enter AutoText is to type the text into a document and select it and then save the entry to a shortcut key for later use.

After typing the text, select it, click the arrow beneath Quick Parts on the Insert tab and click AutoText.

Click the option 'Save Selection to AutoText Gallery'.

Enter a name for the entry (something that isn't too long and can be remembered easily), you can also enter some information about the entry in the Description field if needed and click OK.

To enter the text into any Word document, type the name of the entry (you should see a tooltip that displays the first part of the text after you start typing) and press Enter.

Legal handy hints - how to sort data in a Word table

Excel has always coped really well with sorting data and has been the preferred choice for a number of people but sometimes you may need to present the data differently and Word might be the best option. Data in Word can still be sorted, especially if it's been entered in a table.

To sort the data in a table you will need to select the entire table by clicking the four-headed that appears in the top left corner of the table when you hover over it.

Click the Home tab and click the Sort icon in the Paragraph section.

The Sort dialog box will be displayed. If your table contains headings, ensure that 'Header row' is selected in the My list has section - this will then populate each of the Sort by fields with the column headings.

Choose how you want each of the columns to be sorted e.g. Ascending or Descending and click OK.