Did you know that you can schedule appointments or create new contacts simply by dragging an Outlook item from on location to another? A couple of little tricks are easy to do, but it can save you a lots of time. Now because we're going to be dragging items from one area in Outlook to another, I'd like to open the Folder list, which I can do by clicking the Folder List icon on the bottom of my Navigation bar. This allows me to see all the different portions of Outlook. The first thing I'm going to do is schedule an appointment with one of my contacts. So I do that by going to my Contacts area and selecting the contact.

I'm going to take Sharon, because I want to schedule an appointment with her, and I'm going to drag her over to the Calendar. When I do, a New Appointment window opens up that already has Sharon's information in it. I can simply add my Subject, set the Location and change any of the other options that I want, and send this message on its way to Sharon, so both of us will be aware of this appointment. Another thing I'd like to do is to e-mail one of my contacts.

And I can do that quite easily by taking one of the contact records, dragging it to my Inbox and letting go. At that point my e-mail message opens, I can fill in the information and send that message on its way. Sometimes I receive a message, and I want to make sure that I follow up on it by scheduling something in my Calendar. So in this case if I receive an e-mail message, I can simply drag it to my Calendar, fill in the appropriate information and save that appointment, so I don't forget to schedule something that might have been covered in a body of an e-mail.

One of my favorite things to do is to quickly create a new contact record based on an incoming e-mail. For example, I might have received an e-mail from Ken, and I want to set up a new contact record from him. I could simply drag him over to the Contacts area, and I'm rewarded with a new contact record that's already been filled out with Ken's name and his e-mail address. I could fill in any other information I might have, and you notice that even the incoming e-mail from Ken has already been included in the Notes area.

I can click Save & Close, and I've very quickly been able to add a new contact record. Sometimes I wanted to send a task to one of my coworkers, and again, it's an easy thing to do. I can simply find a task, drag it to my Inbox, and now I can pass that workload on to somebody else with the click of a button. Sometimes I find something really interesting in one of my RSS Feeds, and I want to make sure that I can go back to it later and act on it.

So what I'm going to do now is go to my RSS Feeds; for example, I'm going to take this RSS Feed and drag it over to my Notes. When I do, a new note opens, and I can type in a subject and save the note, so that later I'll be able to go back to it again and make sure I do the appropriate actions. When people say that Outlook is a drag, that's a good thing, because it means that they've discovered the numerous ways there are to create new items with the flick of a wrist.