Month: December 2015

Continued from Monday.

So you’ve got all your account pointed to the right Cloud accounts, you’ve got your mail coming in on your smartphone, but you still have Outlook open and mail coming in.

The next step I took was to start to wean myself off Outlook. First, I wanted to leave Outlook connected so I did not miss mail, but I needed to force myself to transition.

This is what I did to cut the cord to Outlook.

I have one browser that I use for calendar and mail only. That for me is Edge. I have three or four tabs open there at any one time. One is my Google Calendar which currently still syncs to Outlook and my smartphone. One is Gmail and one is Outlook.com. Sometimes I will have a tab open to my Yahoo email. Through out the day this browser is open and all tabs opened.

I use Chrome, Firefox and IE for work, but only Edge for my Cloud mail when I am actively working. I may have open at anyone time two or three browsers with multiple screens.

Now, I review all mail online and make any calendar changes online. No cheating! I have to say that the first week I was my own worst enemy. It is hard, hard, hard to keep out of Outlook.  Old patterns are hard to break. The benefits as you start to use the Cloud for your work flow are excellent. I’ll chat about those later.

Mid week  I was starting to feel more proficient at all this Cloud stuff. I read at night how to use stars and labels in Gmail and started to like the archive and search function. Actually there are some really nice things about Gmail and you can get started pretty fast in organizing mail without much preparation. Just remember labels are like Outlook folders.

I started to remove mail accounts from Outlook as I started to make the transition. I just did not need to get mail two places. This change is all about making things easier and better not redundant.

As of today nearly two weeks into my transition to the Cloud. I only open Outlook to review a previously saved message. I have not email being actively sent to the application. In fact I have not opened Outlook in over one week as of today.

On Friday, I’ll talk about the benefits to work flow that I have seen with this change away from Outlook.

I have had several clients and colleagues ask me to share with them how I cut the cord to Outlook and moved all my mail to the Cloud. It is not complicated, but here are the steps I personally used to move all my mail online.

First, understand that I am/was an avid Outlook user and have over 15 email accounts feeding into Outlook. I lived by my Outlook calendar ; if it was not there I did not do it. I have used Outlook for years and leaned heavily on it for work productivity and work flow. However, I hated to travel as when I got back the email level was so high. To alleviate this I even bought a subscription for GoToMyPC so I could use Outlook while away from the office. And I even bought CompanionLink to sync my Google calendar to Outlook. I did not want to use Google Apps or Office 365 as I simply did not want to pay the subscription charges or let Google or Microsoft get their “hooks” into my work processes and domain name records.

To get ready for the move I really looked carefully at my existing email accounts. What was important and what was not. I still wanted to see all the emails but needed greater Cloud control so my inbox would not be stacked. Then I used accounts I already had created. Here’s what I did.

My most important email accounts, I had three, I forwarded in my hosting control panel to my Gmail account. Then I set up Gmail to send mail as my primary email account nancy@mccordweb.com. This email account is all business. I do not have any personal accounts pointing to this account.

I then set up an Outlook.com email account. To this account I forwarded all email accounts that were important but not as important. I have about 6 accounts feeding into this one email address. I set up rules in Outlook.com to send the messages I receive from one address that are crucial, but create a ton of traffic into one folder. I have an MSN account, a Verizon account and a number of mccordweb.com email accounts all forwarding to this account.  However nearly all my daily email actively arriving in this account is personally related. This is also the email that I use for family and my bank. I set this account up to allow me to send email from a personal Verizon address or my Outlook.com address.

I then set up a Yahoo.com email account. To this account I fowarded all email accounts that were not important, but necessary. I have many smaller less frequent emails sent here but I only check this account once or twice a week.

On my smartphone I have an app for each one of these different mail platforms on my home screen; Gmail, Outlook.com, and Yahoo Mail. I have set up different sounds for notification so that when I hear a sound I know which email account a message has arrived for. This cues me as to is the mail personal or business. I turned off sync on the Yahoo account to save my phone battery and I only have this mail on for my smartphone when I really want it or am traveling.

Check back on Wednesday for my next tips on how to really make email in the Cloud work for you.

This first step covered today is really about getting ready to transition and organizing your email accounts into online accounts.

You may have additional prep organization on your end as to changing services that send mail to which account to control what goes where. For me, we webmaster a number of blogs and I took time to point the WordPress control panel notifications to a different email address than my primary business address to further control what arrived in what Cloud email account based on my setup.