| Sam Young Newsletter |
Issue 97, June 2005
Hi guys,
How good an impression do you make when you meet people? Check out how many of the tips in Meeting & Greeting you use below.
For those of you sharing PCs, we look at how you can set up separate Outlook Profiles on a Shared PC.
Don't forget, if you want to be taken off my mailing list, click here to send me a reply e-mail and I will remove your name.
| Meeting & Greeting |
As businesspeople, we meet and greet many people each day, and making a good first impression is vital. Following are seven simple - yet effective - tips to help ensure those initial meetings get off on the right foot.
- Stand up. Not only does this allow you meet eye to eye, but this sends the message that you are treating the person as an equal. It is no longer appropriate for women to remain seated when meeting someone new. If you remain seated, you appear to think the person to whom you are being introduced is not important enough to stand for.
- Make eye contact. You are already eye to eye, so this shouldn't be a problem. Looking directly at a person says that you are interested in talking with them.
- Smile. A smile launches a thousand deals. Always look as if you are pleased to meet people, regardless of what is really on your mind
- Introduce yourself. As soon as you approach, or are approached by, someone you don’t know, identify who you are (standing around waiting to be formally introduced is so last century). You can include a statement about who you are if necessary “Hi, I’m Jane Doe, Sales Manager at Widgets”
- Shake hands. A person who puts their hand out first comes across as confident and at ease, so extend your hand as you say who you are while maintaining eye contact. Ensure that your physical greeting is professional (ie no bone-crushing grips, soggy, limp-wristed shakes or finger-tip dangles; women are especially guilty of the latter two)
- Get that name. Pay attention to names when you meet people. If you have trouble remembering it, try some word association ("Hi, I'm Janet Smith from the Mercury Consulting Group" becomes Janet from Planet). If you repeat the name as soon as you hear it and create a context, you have a much better chance of remembering it.
- Formality. Not everyone wants to be addressed informally on the initial encounter, so listen carefully to how the person introduces themselves. It is sometimes better to err on the side of formality than to offend, so it can pay use a person's surname and title until they invite you to call them by their christian name. This is slightly tricky with women - you run the risk of offending via use of either Ms or Mrs (to then find they are Dr).
Our impressions are made within thirty seconds of meeting someone new. Just remember that other's impressions of you are made the same way. When you get it right, you make new people feel comfortable and at ease; and they will want to do business with you.
| Outlook Profiles on a Shared PC |
If you have to share a PC, don't have a server routing your Outlook email and don't want to have your emails mixed up with the other users' emails, there are two solutions.
User Profiles
The simplest way, if you are operating Windows XP, you can create totally separate log in accounts, or 'user profiles'. Each user can run the same programs and can generally customise the settings to better suit the individual. If you set up individual user profiles then you don’t have to worry about email identities or profiles. Each user can choose any email program they wish, whether it has multiple profile/identity support or not.To set up additional profiles in Windows XP go to Control Panel | User Accounts and set up your required profiles.
Outlook Profiles
Additionally, Outlook also has a 'Profiles' function. This lets you separate email and personal settings and operate each profile differently.You can configure profiles as follows:
| Alternate Line Shading in Access Reports |
If you find it hard to follow your Access reports - especially financial reports with many columns of numbers - across the page, you can make your reports easier to read by adding alternate line shading.
To do that, you have to add some code in the detail section of your report by following these steps:
- Open the report in Design View
- Double-click the Detail Section Selector (this is the box on the ruler to the left of the Detail section divider)
- On the Event tab, select [Event Procedure] from the On Format drop-down list
- Click the button to the right of the drop-down arrow
- Enter the following:
Const vbLightGrey = 12632256If Me.CurrentRecord Mod 2 = 0 ThenMe.Section(acDetail).BackColor = vbLightGreyElseMe.Section(acDetail).BackColor = vbWhiteEnd If
- Close the VBA window
Now when you run the report, Access will use a white background colour for odd records and a light gray background colour for even records. But note that if you have a background fill colour in any text boxes, that background fill will remain the same.
| TLAs for SMEs |
Here are this newsletter's TLAs for you;
- SRM, Storage Resource Management. Software designed for capacity planning, network utilisation trends, and spotting problems prior to crashes. SRM manages both storage devices and logical objects, tracking disks, files, applications and databases.
- SRM, Supplier Relationship Management. Process of streamlining and making more effective the links between an enterprise and its suppliers, usually via Value Chain analysis tools.
Please feel free to email me with any TLAs that you want to get the bottom (meaning!) of.
| Short+Hot Keys... and now tips |
Over the next few newsletters, we are going to look at all you can do with hotkeys in Outlook. This time we look at Alt and keyboard letters;
- Outlook "Close print preview or Accept when responding to an E-Mail schedule request" Alt & C
- Outlook "Decline when responding to an E-Mail schedule request" Alt & D
- Outlook "In Word as email editor mode only, check names" or "Display the Task menu " Alt & K
- Outlook "Display the Format menu" Alt & O
- Outlook "Print from Print Preview window" Alt & P
- Outlook "Save, close and Send when in an email message, or go to Sent Mail" Alt & S
- Outlook "Zoom" Alt & Z
| Hot Linx |
And for those of you who don't know where those Sith's suddenly came from in Star Wars, check out what How Stuff Works has to say about them at http://stuffo.howstuffworks.com/sith.htm
Know what a Wooster is? Then perhaps you should check out the website showing Banksy & his shenanigans at http://www.woostercollective.com/2005/03/wooster-exclusive-banksy-hits-new.html
Have you checked out what sex your brain is at the Beeb yet? If not, hotfoot over to http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/index_cookie.shtml & find out
If any of you remember MIT's Project Oxygen and want a catch up on where that is at, go to their website at http://oxygen.lcs.mit.edu/ for an update
Catch you again soon!! E-mail your suggestions to me here
