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About this lesson

This is possibly the BEST trick inside Outlook! Stop typing everything - just drag and drop it!

Exercise files

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1.05, Drag and Drop - Exercise File.docx
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Quick reference

Drag and Drop Magic

An amazing quick tip to move the details of an email into a contact or calendar appointment.

When to use

To save time when re-typing details into Contacts, Calendar, or Tasks, simply drag and drop an email into those sections.

Instructions

Viewing the Inbox, click-and-drag the line item email to the left Navigation pane.

Notice the mouse gets a new symbol on it, called a "lasso" which means something is attached to the mouse.

Move the mouse to the left Navigation pane, and drop the lasso onto the Calendar, Contacts (People icon), or Tasks.

A new window with that selection now appears for you to finish any other details.

Hints & tips

  • Copy/Paste is a handy feature inside the new Calendar appointment so you won't have to type web addresses or phone #'s. 
  • Simply copy text (Ctrl C) from the email and paste (Ctrl V) into the form field.
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  • 00:04 The title of this lesson is the drag and drop magic, and is wonderful,
  • 00:09 I've been using this for years, literally over a decade inside Outlook.
  • 00:14 So I just received an email, it's someone who wants to set up a meeting with me, and
  • 00:19 they included their entire signature line, which will help me.
  • 00:23 The first thing I'm going to do is make a contact file out of this email.
  • 00:27 I'm not going to type anything, it is magic.
  • 00:30 Here's a trick.
  • 00:31 You simply put your mouse on top of the email and literally drag and
  • 00:35 drop over to the left-hand navigation pane.
  • 00:38 You can see the shadow of the email in the background, and
  • 00:41 you can see that my mouse has now a little square attached.
  • 00:44 That square is called a lasso.
  • 00:46 When you see the lasso, you know you're dragging something along.
  • 00:49 So go ahead and let go on top of the little people button, and
  • 00:53 there we have it.
  • 00:54 Now it says a full name is their email address.
  • 00:56 Well, that's not quite right.
  • 00:58 So I'm going to come into the email which landed in the notes section, so
  • 01:02 future reference.
  • 01:03 If I'm ever wondering how I met this person, I've got a date and
  • 01:07 time stamp of our original correspondence.
  • 01:09 So I'm going to copy their name, right click, Copy, and
  • 01:13 pop that into the full name section, right click Paste.
  • 01:18 Their email address dropped right in, so that's fine,
  • 01:21 but their company name didn't.
  • 01:23 Here's the company name.
  • 01:25 Select it, right click, Copy, go to the company field, right-click, Paste.
  • 01:32 Let's do more of this.
  • 01:33 The website, select it, right click, copy it,
  • 01:37 go to the web address field, right click, Paste.
  • 01:42 And they included their phone number, that's wonderful.
  • 01:44 Select it, right click, copy it, go to the phone number field, right click, Paste.
  • 01:50 If they would have included their mailing address,
  • 01:53 I could have popped that in here as well.
  • 01:55 But right now, I have a brand new contact, and
  • 01:58 I'm going to come over here to my people pane and check.
  • 02:01 Sure enough, there it is.
  • 02:03 So I don't have to do this every time I get an email from them,
  • 02:06 I only do it the first time, so I know how I met them.
  • 02:09 All right, now the email says they want an appointment with me.
  • 02:12 So let's go back to my inbox.
  • 02:14 I'm going to create an appointment, literally again, same thing, drag and
  • 02:18 drop onto the calendar.
  • 02:20 Clicking and dragging this email,
  • 02:21 you can see the shadow of the email following my mouse.
  • 02:24 When it gets to the calendar, that lasso was there, I'm going to let go.
  • 02:28 There it is.
  • 02:29 A brand new appointment comes up, now I can hit the calendar and
  • 02:34 change it to the 19th at a different time.
  • 02:37 The original email shows up in the calendar message,
  • 02:44 I've typed a little message for them, I could go ahead and hit Save and
  • 02:49 Close, but how about I just include a Teams meeting link?
  • 02:53 I am logged into my Office 365, Teams is all part of that.
  • 02:57 Now the moment I click on the Teams Meeting, it becomes a brand new email.
  • 03:01 So I'm not just making an appointment on my calendar,
  • 03:03 I'm going to include that person as well.
  • 03:05 For their email address, I'm going to copy it, come up here and paste it.
  • 03:11 Have I typed anything?
  • 03:13 Yes, that one line right there, that is all I've typed.
  • 03:16 I'm going to go ahead and send this.
  • 03:18 One more drag and drop, I'm going to click and drag it on to tasks.
  • 03:24 When I let go, I have an brand new to do.
  • 03:28 When I hit Save & Close and go to my tasks, there it is.
  • 03:31 Let's set up an appointment.
  • 03:33 Well, I've actually already done that, so I can mark this one as done.
  • 03:40 Let's do check our contacts.
  • 03:42 There's the contact.
  • 03:43 Let's check our calendar.
  • 03:44 On the 19th, there's the appointment.
  • 03:47 Let's check our emails.
  • 03:49 Hanging out right there, we're done, and
  • 03:51 I basically only typed one little line of a message.
  • 03:55 That's it.
  • 03:55 It's great stuff, practice it, you'll love it.

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