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.