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easy to remove them. Go to View and uncheck choose More Commands. Choose Quick Access
Gridlines. Toolbar if it is not already selected. Under Choose
commands from:, choose All Commands. Then
9. Have Excel read the contents of the cells: You choose Speak Cells from the menu that appears be-
can have Excel read to you the contents of the cells low. Click Add, and click OK. Now place your cursor
for accessibility purposes or just convenience. First, wherever you would like Excel to start reading.
access the Quick Access Toolbar at the top left of You can access a video demonstration of these
your screen. By default, the Quick Access Toolbar quick Excel tips with the version of this article at
includes an icon to Save, Undo, and Redo. Click the journalofaccountancy.com.
dropdown arrow to the right of the Redo icon and — By Kelly L. Williams, CPA, Ph.D.

MICROSOFT OUTLOOK

Outlook flags and rules

Q. My email is A. We can all agree that email has become our Click Filter at the top of your email list and
a disaster. With primary tool for communicating with clients, select Flagged. Now you can focus on just
junk mail from but over the years our inbox gets messages those emails that require more thought-out
websites and from all over the place. To help manage this, responses or research. If there is an email you
receipts from I want to talk about two simple tools that are cannot address at that moment, then leave it
purchases, available in Outlook desktop and Outlook flagged for when you are able to address it (see
it’s difficult to online. The screenshots reference the online the screenshot at bottom left).
find the client version of Outlook using Office 365 as an A flagged email will stay there as a re-
communication email provider. minder. Once you have addressed the email,
I need; I spend First is the simple act of flagging an email click the flag again to unflag it.
too much time for follow-up. Hover over the email you want Before moving on to our next tip for
clearing that to flag and click the flag icon (see the top managing your inbox, here is another sugges-
unread number. screenshot below). tion: Try closing your email for one hour a day
What are some I treat the flag as a reminder of something to focus on any other work. In our connected
tips I can use that I need to do but want to do later. When world, sometimes it is best to disconnect from
to manage my you are ready to tackle those emails that communication and focus on other tasks.
inbox? require more thought, just apply a quick filter. After you have completed the task in that one
hour, open your email. You will get a flood of
email, but with this newly arrived email, focus
on managing the recent arrivals to your inbox
and make decisions on each message.
If an email is junk, trash it. If you can
respond to the email with just a sentence or
two or something you can delegate, then reply/
delegate and move on. If it takes more work
and thought, flag it for later in the day.
Now for something more advanced. Let’s
set up some rules in Outlook to automatically
manage part of our inbox. Just like using rules
in QuickBooks to categorize transactions, I
use rules to help manage the simple decisions
of my inbox such as deleting junk mail from
companies or forwarding purchase receipts
from vendors to the bookkeeper. This makes
me more efficient when I do open Outlook to
go through emails. Start by finding an email
from a domain that you want to delete. From

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