10 Minute Guide to Outlook 97 - 16 - Using the Journal In this lesson, you learn to create journal entries manually and automatically and to change views in the Journal. Creating a Journal Entry You can create a record of various items and documents so you can track your work, communications, reports, and so on. In the journal, you can manually record any activities, items, or tasks you want. You also can automatically record e-mail messages, faxes, meeting requests, meeting responses, task requests, and task responses. Additionally, you can automatically record documents created in the other Office applications: Access, Excel, Office Binder, PowerPoint, and Word. Plain English: Journal A folder within Outlook that you can use to record interactions, phone calls, message responses, and other activities important to your work. Item An article or object in Outlook, such as a task, appointment, or contact. You can automatically or manually record items in your journal. You can, for example, choose to automatically record your e-mail messages, meeting requests, task responses, and so on. When you automatically record items in the journal, Outlook records all items you receive. However, if you don't want to record all items, you can have Outlook record only those items you choose by manually adding them to your journal. For example, you might add only the e-mail relating to one account or one client instead of all e-mail you receive. Manually Recording an Entry To manually record a journal entry, follow these steps: 1. In the Inbox folder (or any other folder in Outlook), select the item you want to record in the journal and choose Tools, Record in Journal. The Journal Entry dialog box appears (see Figure 16.1). Figure 16.1 Record any Outlook item in the Journal. 2. The Subject, Entry Type, Contact, and Company boxes and other information is entered for you from the selected task, contact, or other selected item. However, you can change any of the statistics you want by entering new information in the following text boxes: Subject Displays the title or name of the item. Entry Type Describes the item based on its point of origin, such as a Word document, Meeting or Appoint-ment, and so on. Contact Lists the name(s) of any attendees, contacts, or other people involved with the selected item. Company Lists the company or companies associated with the contacts. Start Time Displays the date and time of the meeting, appointment, or other item. Start Time Like a stop watch, the timer records the time that passes until you click the Pause Timer button. Pause Time Stops the timer. Duration The amount of time for completing the item. Text box Displays shortcuts to any text, documents, details, or other information related to the item. Categories Enter or select a category in which to place the item. 3. Click Save and Close to complete the entry. Timesaver Tip: Time Your Calls When making phone calls or meeting with clients, create a journal entry to record the event, and use the Start Timer and Pause Timer buttons to record billable time. If you want to create a new journal entry, but you don't have a contact, task, e-mail, or other related item for the entry, you can manually record a journal entry by following these steps: 1. Change to the Journal folder. 2. Choose Journal, New Journal Entry or click the New Journal Entry button on the Standard toolbar. The Journal Entry dialog box appears. 3. Enter the subject, entry type, contact, time, and any other information you want to record. 4. When you finish, click Save and Close. Automatically Recording Entries You can set options to automatically record items and their related contacts and/or statistics about Microsoft Office documents you create. Suppose you want to keep a record, for example, of all memos you send to your boss. You can record it in your journal. To set the options to automatically record journal entries, follow these steps: 1. In the Journal folder, choose Tools, Options. The Options dialog box appears with the Journal tab displayed, as shown in Figure 16.2. Figure 16.2 Set options for automatically recording items. 2. In the Automatically Record These Items list, check those items you want Outlook to automatically record in your journal. (The items recorded correspond with those people selected in the list of contacts in step 3.) 3. In the For These Contacts list, check any contacts you want automatically recorded in the Journal. Outlook records any items checked in step 2 that apply to the selected contacts. 4. In the Also Record Files From list, check the applications for which you want to record journal entries. Outlook records the date and time you create or modify files in the selected program. Timesaver Tip: Automatic and Easy When you're creating a new contact in Outlook, you can set items to be automatically recorded in the journal by choosing the Journal tab in the Contact dialog box and checking the Automatically Record Journal Entries for This Contact check box. Viewing Journal Entries By default, the Journal folder displays information in the Timeline view and By Type, as shown in Figure 16.3. However, you can display the entries in any of the views described in the following list. By Type In Timeline view, this option groups journal entries by type, such as e-mail messages, meetings, Word documents, and so on. Double-click a type to display its contents, and then position the mouse pointer over an entry to view its contents or name. By Contact In Timeline view, this displays the name of each contact that you selected in the Options dialog box. Double-click any contact's name to view recorded entries. By Category If you've assigned categories to your journal entries and other items, you can display your journal entries by category in the timeline view. Entry List Displays entries in a table with columns labeled Entry Type, Subject, Start, Duration, Contact, and Categories. Last Seven Days Displays entries in an entry list, but includes only those entries dated within the last seven days. Phone Calls Lists all entries that are phone calls. Figure 16.3 View the journal entries by type. Panic Button: Save Settings? As in other views, Outlook might display the Save View Settings dialog box to ask if you want to save the view settings before you switch to a different view. You're probably getting used to this dialog box by now. Timesaver Tip: Sort Journal Entries You can click the heading bar--Subject, Start, or Duration--in any Entry list view to sort the items in that column in ascending or descending order. In this lesson, you learned to manually and automatically create journal entries and to change views in the Journal. In the next lesson, you'll learn to create notes.

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