Hey, so ita ! was asking over in Bureaucracy where non-business-owners could go to talk about work stuff. I said I thought it would be fine here. I'll quote below her inquiry. What say you all?

The Buffista Business thread is for people who are or run their own businesses.

Where should I post (I'm assuming Natter will be the first answer, but is it the best) about being good at work. And I mean that across a wide range of works.

I might be needing another way to present a 2-page weekly status report for someone else to present to management. Or someone needs to know that trick for Outlook (you know, the way that makes it not suck?--I KEED I KEED). Talk about if certifications improve your resumes in give industries...that sort of stuff could be stultifyingly boring in Natter, out of place in Business, because it's explicitly called out as for business owners only.

I cheated--I really do want that perfect 2 page status report format, and I even have ideas to bring to the table! Status reports of any sort--I'm looking for templates, and can share examples. Never mind--how do you make Project your bitch...and should you have to? Do you apply the Zero Inbox thing to your professional mail? How's that working out for you? GTD in general? Productivity tools?

Some of us drones need help to, even though do report up to someone/thing.

As I said over yonder, I think it'd fit right in.

I tried Project years ago and ran away screaming.

In terms of the zero inbox, I strive for a trash free box. It's not empty, but there is an order to it.

My solution is a fairly granular folder set up. I currently have 23 folders and actually use them all. One is 'unsorted', which I admit is cheating, but my sole motivation for the emails that I keep is to be able to search them, should an issue arise.

Thunderbird gives me a reasonably efficient search function, so it works pretty well.

Another trick I use is to go first to my Verizon webmail page, select all and then click off the non-spam/useless email. That way, only the email I am interested in makes it to the box.

I would love to have a conversation about certifications, too. I have loads, but sort of feel that they are a waste, as no one ever asks for or about them. When I promote them, it feels a little ooky to me.

I zero out my inbox about twice a year. Then I'm diligent about it for another week, and then it gets away from me and right now I have 8000 emails in there. So it goes.

I used to just keep everything. But my hushmail has limits, so I clear that regularly. Personal, though, so there's rarely anything that needs archived.

I feel like my other mail, imap, is only showing me two years back. Do I have it set to automatically delete or something? Cause I don't want that.

I zero out my inbox about twice a year.

I sit in amazement.

I have given up getting to zero in my inbox about 4 years ago.

I think I'm going to forcibly zero out my inbox before the end of the year. I'm going to cheat, but I'll do it. I think the goal of keeping it tidy is important, but I can't tell if I could be achieving that because there's so damned much. I have email in there since my first project at this job.

In fact, lemme do that now.

A bit problem is the fact that I'm on the team group email distro. I can't even count how many emails that is a day. I used to have a rule that funnelled them all off, but then I'd miss things I needed to know about. I now don't funnel emails with URGENT in the subject line, or very specific task-related ones that come every Sunday, but the rest go into a folder I never look at, and there are currently 40696 unread emails there. Only 10 in my normal inbox.

Aargh, how am I off by 12 cents? Where are my 12 cents?

It may be time for lunch, I suspect.

Has anyone else had Office products suddenly stop working?

Word and Excel are freezing as soon as a document is opened.

I read some forum responses that suggested throwing out the properties folders. I did that, but it didn't work.

I've downloaded Open Office, but would love to get the original products back.

Okay, I found the 12 cents, but not until I had mistakenly unreconciled months. But it's back now, and I'm moving forward.

Not had that problem, bonny, any particular file, or all files? Anything else running at the time? What versions of everything?