July 2007 Efficiency Newsletter

Technology does not create productive people. We do.

As always, these are busy times at SET: we're excited to be designing and automating many more Microsoft Word proposals, and we've also added some Outlook integration. If you're curious, we'd be happy to demo the whole process for you—feel free to get in touch and we'll show you how to save some time, win more projects, and look better in the process.

I hope you enjoy the tip and tool this month—these two are especially worth your time.

Tip of the Month

Set your Default Font and Margins in Word

Sick of Times New Roman 12pt font?  Not a fan of the 1.25" left and right margins that most versions of Word suggest?  Change your defaults so that you won't have to reformat every document you create—it takes less than two minutes.  Here's how (these instructions apply to all versions of Word)...

1. Close all instances of Microsoft Word and Outlook
2. Open Microsoft Word. You should find yourself in a blank document
3. Press Ctrl+D. The Font window will appear
4. Select the font options you'd like to set as your default.  For instance, you might choose Arial 10pt (see below image)
5. Click the Default... button on the bottom left of the Font window



6. Click Yes when prompted to change your default settings
7. In versions of Word prior to 2007, select File-->Page Setup.  In Word 2007, choose the Page Layout tab, and in the Page Setup group, click the dialog launcher (see image below). The Page Setup dialog window will appear

Image from Word 2007:




8. Click the Margins tab and set the margins you'd like for your default Microsoft Word document
9. Click the Default... button on the bottom left of the <b>Page Setup</b> window
10. Click Yes when prompted to change your default settings
11. Close Microsoft Word.  You don't need to save the document on which you're working.  If prompted to save changes to your Normal template, click OK or Yes

The next time you open Microsoft Word you'll find your settings applied.  It's that easy!

Tool of the Month

Jott.com - Never Lose an Idea Again

Ever had a good idea, but didn’t have somewhere to write it down?  Find yourself needing to record that hour spent working at a client’s or that errand you just remembered you have to do?  Or maybe you had a task you wanted to delegate to an employee, but it wasn’t an appropriate time to call.  With jott.com, you can call a phone number to have your idea transcribed and emailed to you or a peer—for free!

Once you’ve taken just a few minutes to create an account, you can dial their toll free number and have a message of up to 30 seconds transcribed and emailed to you (or to other contacts that you specify).  It’s not perfect (it is a voice recognition transcription, after all) but it does a great job.  It saves the audio version as well, so you can return to the message if and when you need a clarification.

Never worry about searching for a pen again!  Try it at www.jott.com