How to Declare E-mail Bankruptcy

"Why is my email broken?" was the title of a blog post today by my friend, Ernie the Attorney. He begins, "Almost everyone I know who uses email extensively for work is overwhelmed by email....Some people declare 'email bankruptcy,' which means that they delete all the emails in their inbox and then start from scratch.  And these are the optimists!"

Today, I'm going to give you the step by step instructions on how to declare e-mail bankruptcy in a more positive and less drastic way. Let's call it an E-mail Chapter 13 Reorganization instead of a "straight bankruptcy."

Let's restate the problem first. It is important for all of us to recognize that we are essentially powerless over e-mail. Yes, for most lawyers, it is and will remain a problem. The reason is simple. We could probably deal with processing the e-mail we receive if all we had to do was read it and then delete it or file it. But much e-mail comes with a task-- an assignment, even if the only task is replying to the e-mail. People e-mail us trying to get us to do all sorts of things from important work assignments to watch funny YouTube videos to meeting after work for a beer. You cannot do it all! You have to triage.

But today we will discuss how to do a reasonable e-mail bankruptcy. This isn't for those of you who are a little behind in your reading. This is for those of you who have over10,000 e-mails in your inbox, those who are receiving threats from the IT Department that they will delete them for you if you cannot handle it and those who are being blamed by everyone in the office when Outlook crashes or the system is just slow.

This is not a good system for filing e-mails. But it will clear out your inbox and it is something lawyers can live with because we all have the fear of deleting that critically important e-mail. The solution requires either Adobe Acrobat (not the free Reader) or Nuance's PDF Converter Pro. The details below are for Microsoft Outlook.

Depending on your backlog and personal level of paranoia, this could take a hour hour or two.

1. Note the number of e-mails in your inbox, so you can feel good about your accomplishment when you stop. Look at the oldest e-mail to see the month and year.
2. Right click on Mailbox at the top of your Mail Folders. Select New Folder and name if for the month and year of your oldest e-mails (e.g. 2007 February or February 2007)
3. Go to the bottom of your inbox and select that oldest e-mail. Then scroll up until the last e-mail of that month. While holding down the Shift key, click on that e-mail. You should now have selected all of the e-mails in the oldest month of e-mail in your inbox.
4. Move these e-mails to your new February 2007 folder. You can either drag and drop and right click on the selected list and move all of the e-mails there.
5. Now that all of your February 2007 e-mails are in one folder, here is your chance to scroll through and see if there are any important client e-mails that need to be filed elsewhere. Note: Be careful with your time here or you will kill the whole project. You can find them later if you need to do so.
6. Now create a New folder on your network somewhere on a drive that is backed up regularly. Call it Archived E-mail.
7. Here's the good part. Now click on the Adobe icon at the top of your e-mail client and create one single PDF from all of the e-mails in that folder in one easy step. This may take a while to process, but this one step can combine hundreds (or thousands) of e-mails into one single PDF file. You can glance at this PDF to see how nicely organized they are within this file.
8. Now delete your February 2007 folder.
9. Create a March 2007 folder and repeat the process. You can decide how far to take this. But your inbox will certainly have a lot less in it as you do this and the IT department will be happy.
10. If it happens that you actually do need to see or print an e-mail that you have archived through this process and you know the date you can open the correct folder and look for it. Otherwise you can use Adobe's search function or some other desktop search tool to do full text searches of your Archived E-mail folder to locate e-mails.

The next step is the hardest. You need to come up with an improved plan to review, delete and file e-mails so you don't have to file bankruptcy again. But if not, you now know how to mass-archive.

More on E-mail Management Tips for Lawyers

A lot of people seem to be considering e-mail management issues. Could it be because we are all looking at crowded inboxes? Here is a post by Allison Shields with her E-mail Management Tips for Lawyers.

Microsoft Word 2007 - Great Shortcut for Pasting Text into Documents

If you ever use Paste Special in Microsoft Word 2007, you may really love this tip.

We lawyers tend to use the “Paste Special–Unformatted Text” option often. When you copy text from Westlaw or some other online legal research tool, you use paste special to paste just the text into your document and avoid have different fonts or inadvertently hypertexted case names.

One of the improvements of Microsoft Office 2007 was to have a big Paste Button under the Office Button with a downward pointing arrow under it that lets you access Paste Special easily. Even better is to add Paste Special to the Quick Access Toolbar or use the Keyboard combination Alt + Ctrl + V to launch it.

But then you still need to go through the dialog box to click Unformatted Text and OK. Today you will learn to set up a new keystroke combination to paste unformatted text from your clipboard into a document in one action. And, since this is over 90% of my usage of Paste Special, I assigned the keystroke Alt + Ctrl + V to do this. I’ll just click the button on the Quick Access Toolbar if I need to paste special some other way.

I found these instructions in Smart Computing magazine. Even without the editors granting me free reprint rights, I’m happy to note that I love Smart Computing magazine. The September 2009 Edition where I found this tip focused on mastering your browser with lots of great info, but it also included how to set up Windows Home Server by yourself, performance enhancements for the Mac, home decoration websites and many other features. Subscribers get access to online archives of past issues of the magazine together with some sister publications.

The following is © 2009 Smart Computing and reprinted here with permission. All other rights reserved.

Paste Using A Macro

By creating a macro, you can paste unformatted text using a simple key combination instead of going through a dialog box. Although this requires opening the Visual Basic Editor, you don’t need to know Visual Basic to perform this task. We will give you the simple code to do it.

Go to the View tab and click the Macros button (not the arrow) in the Macro group. In the Name box in the Macros dialog box, type PasteSpecial (do not put a space between the words Paste and Special) and press ENTER. The Microsoft Visual Basic editor opens. Delete all of the text in the code editor and paste or type the text included between the blue lines below. (If copy/paste doesn’t work, try typing it instead.)

 ________________

Sub PasteSpecial ()

Selection. PasteSpecial DataType:=wdPasteText

End Sub

_________________

(Blogger’s note: An image of the macro text accompanies this article, but you cannot copy from it.)

Once you’ve added that text to Visual Basic Editor, click File and Save Normal and close the Editor. You now have a macro that will paste unformatted text into a Word document. Next, you need to assign that macro to a key combination.

Click the Office button and choose Word Options. Click Customize on the left and then click the Customize button next to the words Keyboard Shortcuts. In the Categories area on the left, choose Macros. Select the PasteSpecial macro on the right. Click in the Press New Shortcut Key area. Choose a combination, such as ALT-CTRL-P. (Make sure not to choose a key combination that you already use often.) Simply press those keys to create the new command. Click Assign, Close, and OK.

Try the macro by copying some formatted text. Click in the Word document where you want to insert the text and press the key combination you assigned (such as ALT-CTRL-P). The unformatted text is copied into the document.

Having the option to quickly paste unformatted text into a document makes performing a fundamental operation in Word that much easier.

Tips on Using Outlook Tasks to Clear Your Inbox

I returned from the ABA Annual Meeting resolved to try to make better use of Outlook Tasks to improve my life. A tip about Task due dates from Michael Linenberger, author of Total Workday Control Using Microsoft Outlook, is a part of that strategy. So far the results are mixed, but I haven't bought the book yet.

I have a hard time writing about e-mail management because I don't feel I have a handle on it, but most people tell me they don't either. I should note I use Outlook 2007, which is much improved over Outlook 2003. With Outlook 2003 you have to customize the view to see your task list when you view your inbox.

As Mr. Linenberger noted, your Outlook inbox should be like the inbox on your desk in the pre-digital world. It is where people send you memos, requests and assignments. You wouldn't let that one fill up several hundred deep as you might miss something important. So why do our inboxes get so clogged? Simple. Many e-mails require your action. It may be you need to respond. Or it may be a project, an assignment, a great opportunity, a or any number of things. But if it was just reading or deleting e-mail, we could probably keep up with that. But, no, it is stuff to do! To wit, it is a task.

So if an e-mail only needs a short reply or if you can forward it to someone else who then has to do the task, it is easy to do right then. But so many of these require time for research, reflection, contemplation, a decision or other "processing" that you cannot do right now. So the natural tendancy is to leave it in your inbox, so you do not forget about it.

Well, of course that is totally bogus, right? If your e-mail is anything like mine it will take anywhere from a few minutes to an hour or so for the new incoming e-mails to shove that one down so it is no longer visible on your monitor. Then it becomes part of the "out of sight, out of mind" group. Hopefully you will remember or scroll down and be reminded, but who knows?

So if an e-mail is being retained because it is really a task, save it as a task! Drag it from the inbox to Tasks on the lower left hand corner of display in Outlook 2007. A new Task appears with the subject line and contents of the e-mail. Then do three quick things: edit the subject line to whatever it is you need to do, give it today's date and determine what the due date should be. It there is a hard due date, add it here. It you need to start on it several days in advance, then give that date as the due date and chance the task(subject) line to "do X by Y date."

But Mr. Linenberger states that for most of these e-mails dragged into tasks, set no due date! Now I recognize that goes against the way we lawyers work. If we don't docket, it we might drop the ball. But, here is what may be a liberating thought for you. We get more requests to do stuff in our inbox than we can possibily do. Most of us could spend all day responding to the requests that people toss into our inboxes and never get them all done. Surely you have noticed how many people can write a few short sentences in an e-mail with tasks that would take you hours to fully complete.

If the e-mail is an important assignment from a supervisor or on a client file, give it a due date on your task list. If it is an old classmate wanting you to search your records for contact info for these 20 people so she can contact them about the reunion, that's a "No Due Date" task. Bear with me.

The next step is to get that e-mail out of your inbox. If you made it a task, usually you can delete it. All of the text in that e-mail is now stored in your Tasks so it is fine to delete it from your inbox. Sometimes you have to file it, as when it is e-mail on a client file. If you aren't using another e-mail filing method (like practice management software) then drag it to an Outlook folder. You should have lots of these folders set up, including one for very major project you are working on. But you should also have general folders just so you can clear your inbox, like Friends, Recreation, Hold, Unsure, 2009 Junk or WhenBored. The point is to move everything out of your inbox, either to a task or file it in a folder.

OK, back to those No Due Date Tasks. You want to collapse the view so they are not in the way for your day-to-day work and then at least weekly check them to see if any now should be assigned a due date or now have passed and can be deleted. A good review time would be Monday, Friday or anytime you seem to be getting caught up on your tasks. The No Due Tasks serves as your triage system. You just hope no salvagable patients die. But it may be that you can't save them all.

So let's end this discussion with a couple of time management clichés.

OHIO- Only Handle it Once. After you open an e-mail, either delete it, file it, handle it quickly or make it a task. But don't just close it and leave it in the inbox to be handled later. Again you should feel free to make a folder that is named DontKnow or Unsure if you are having trouble filing all e-mails in folders.

The pros refer to the Four D's: Do, Delete, Delegate or Defer. But you cannot defer by leaving it to get buried in your inbox. So you Defer by either making it a task (which you will likely get to) or filing it in a folder, which you might get to at some time, but probably won't.

E-mail Management: Unsubscribing Works

I hate spam e-mail. It fills my inbox and wastes my time. I saw a report from a bar association this week that 94% of its incoming e-mail was spam. Of course, they filter most of that out.

But today I want to make sure you understand that some of the advice you received in the old days is not good advice anymore.

While there are many kinds of spammers, for today's discussion, let's assume there are two kinds: lawbreakers and legitimate businesses.

For lawbreakers and those who operate in the gray areas, we need help from the FBI, IT people, spam filters and the like. We can't do much on our own.

But many otherwise legitmate businesses use "e-mail marketing." Surely, I am not the only one who has noticed that when I toss business cards into fishbowls, trying to win a nicer iPod or some other great prize, what I always seems to win is being added to the company's e-mail marketing list. Other companies seem to add me just because they ran across my blog and found my e-mail address.

But, In the old days we were told never to click on "Unsubscribe" links at the bottom of spam e-mail as it just confirmed your identity and generated more spam. But since the federal CAN SPAM Act is being enforced, that is no longer true. So I regularly click on unsubscribe links to reduce the inflow of unwanted commercial e-mail. If I get spam e-mail that doesn't have an unsubscrobe option at the bottom, I will reply with a warning of legal consequences and a link to the FTC's page on requirements for commercial e-mailers. Often I get a quick apology by return e-mail. A person who built illegal spamming tools even got a jail sentence earlier this summer. Try it. It even makes you feel good.

Kick your Gmail Account into High Gear

For those of you using Gmail from Google, you will want to check out 90 Tools And Tips To Make You A Gmail Pro. I haven't tried any of the add-ons, but the list comes highly recommended.

Site of The Week: LawProse's Educational Video Clips

This week's Website of the Week is the collection of educational video clips from LawProse. These contain some great two- or three-minute lessons on legal writing. In particular, I suggest you view the interviews with U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas. You will find both videos thought-provoking. Scroll down to the archives for a lot of additional material. (I didn't see the button to make the video display full-screen, so you can use right click and Zoom to do that.)

This site was suggested by William Bernhardt in a recent OBA seminar on improving your legal writing skills. Bernhardt is New York Times-bestselling author of over twenty mystery-thrillers that have sold more than ten million copies worldwide. He is also a member of the Oklahoma Bar Association. As someone who has spent a good deal of time following the cases and adventures of fictional Oklahoma lawyer Ben Kincaid, it was great to get some writing tips from his creator.

"I cannot open that document you sent me."

"I cannot open that document you sent me." We used to hear that a lot on the early days of law office computing as several word processors competed for market share. Well, we are starting to hear it a lot more this year.

As many of you know the primary programs in Microsoft Office (Word, PowerPoint and Excel) now have a new and improved file format, which is XML compliant. This can be noticed from the different file name extension; .docx instead of .doc and .pptx instead of .ppt. It can also be noticed when you try to open one of these "new" documents with the older version of the same software and they will not open. Luckily the "fix" for this is pretty simple, just go and download the Microsoft Compatability Pack to allow your Office 2003 version to read Office 2007 files.

When I got Office 2007 at the first of the year, I would try to remember to use "Save as" to save in the old format when I was sending something out by e-mail to make sure I didn't hear back with the "couldn't open" problem. That is surprisingly hard to rememebr. After about the third "can't open" message back, I gave up and set my default to save as the older format. I figured a year from now everyone will have either upgraded or installed the patch. Then I'll change to the new format and, meanwhile, if I need some power hidden in the new format I can always "save as" for that file.

Well, that worked for me and a few days later I was speaking to the Cleveland County Bar in Norman, Oklahoma, and mentioned that as an idea or tips of sorts.

Afterwards I was approached by Hank Ryan, a Norman lawyer and legal technology consultant. Hank smiled and made the comment that I had told them wrong about e-mail the Word files. "Oh?" I said and, since Hank is a high level tech guy, I assumed he was going to inform me about the numerous benefits of the XML file format.

"You're supposed to tell them not to e-mail Word files out at all, not teach them how!" he said. Hank and I shared a chuckle over that one, of course. He's correct. Due to metadata concerns, most lawyers would be much better served by sending files out in PDF format rather than Word. I'd been sending documents that were being jointly drafted to a co-author and had no choice.

But remember Hank's advice, not mine. Avoid e-mailing Word documents out when PDF will do. And have a metadata scrubber to use first when you have to e-mail out Word documents.

But if you are going to stick with the 2003 version of MS Office for a while, go ahead and download the Compatability pack and install it--because other people will be sending you Word documents.

Paste Special (Unformatted): The Next Generation

Copying text from one document to another without also capturing unwanted formatting is something most of us do daily. As a veteran presenter of many "50 Tips" or "60 Tips" programs, I have often discussed with my colleagues that using Edit-Paste Special-Unformatted text to paste into a document has been sort of the "Ultimate Tip" for lawyers. No matter how many times we publicized this technique, there were always two or three people who lighted up in the back of the room when they heard this tip. It was not uncommon to get an e-mail after a seminar that said "Thank you. Learning about paste special was worth the entire price of the seminar."

Well I got that same feeling today when I read a Lifehacker post about removing the formatting in Word documents. The problem with using Paste Special is that it involves clicking on several pull down menus with the mouse, which slows things down. Even if you put a "Paste Special" button on your toolbar, you still have to click on it and then click "unformatted text." You can also use the right click.

But, try this one today. When you have copied some text to your clipboard and want to paste it without formatting into a blank document, use these three keystroke combinations in quick succession: Ctrl + V, Ctrl + A and Ctrl + Spacebar. All done before you can reach for a mouse!

Ctrl + V inserts the copied text (as you all know.) Ctrl + A highlights all text on a page. Ctrl + Spacebar removes all formatting from selected text. Zoom, zoom, zoom.

Now if you are pasting into a document with formatting you don't want to destroy, you cannot use Ctrl + A and have to select the text to be "unformatted" another way. But there's a keyboard shortcut to do this too. Paste the text. Then, while holding down the Shift and Ctrl keys, (conveniently located next to each other) use the Up arrow key to select the text you have just pasted in paragraph by paragraph. So if you just pasted in three paragraphs, you will hit it three times. Then hit Ctrl + Spacebar.

Try this a few times. It is easier to do than to explain. Finally, if you want to know more go to the Lifehacker post. Read the comments. One person says holding down the Alt Key and pressing E, S, U and Enter is even quicker. Another has posted a macro to do this in one keystroke. These tips truly are "the next generation" of Paste Special. We probably all need to create the macro and assign it to a key combination. But for today, I'm just happy to do this more quickly than I did it yesterday.

Note: I follow Lifehacker, but will note that I got this today because Technolawyer dropped it into my inbox with its free Thursday Answers to Questions e-mail. 

2008 Summer Reading List: The Lawyer's Guide to Microsoft® Outlook 2007

I just got my copy of Ben Schorr's new book, The Lawyer's Guide to Microsoft® Outlook 2007, and have only spent a few moments with it. I'm excited about this book personally. I trust Ben's judgment. I was a co-presenter with him on a couple of law practice management panels at the ABA meeting in his home state of Hawaii a couple of years ago. (Yeah, tough duty, I know.) Ben's a law office technology consultant and IT guy who has a talent for explaining things where everyone can understand them. As much as I hate Vista, I think there are a lot of positive things about Microsoft Office 2007. I really like Outlook 2007. We all use e-mail every day now and there are so many Outlook features that most lawyers ignore like flags, tasks and mail merges. If you upgrade to Outlook 2007, someone in your office needs to read this book.

Since I have not read the book yet, I will defer to Laura Calloway's detailed review here. But after reading her review, I'm sure you will want to take a look at this publication if you are an Outlook 2007 user. Oklahoma Bar members who are not ABA Law Practice Management section members can contact my assistant, Sharon Dotson, for discounted pricing on this book.