This might be more of an Outlook tip, but I get a lot of Excel attachments in my Outlook email messages. Most of those files have to be saved, and it seems to take forever for the Save As window to open. Okay, my stopwatch says it’s about 9 seconds – but it seems like forever!
When I’m working, I usually have Windows Explorer open, so I can open and copy the files from there.
I finally discovered that I can drag an attachment directly from an Outlook email into a folder in Windows Explorer.
Drag and Drop to Save Time
For example, here’s a very important Fall TV schedule file that my daughter sent to me.
- In Outlook, I point to the attachment’s file name,
- Drag the file onto the Window Explorer window
- Drop it into the folder where I want to save it.
If there are multiple attachments, right-click on one, and click Select All. Then drag all the files to Windows Explorer.
Now, instead of 9 seconds, saving an Excel attachment takes 2 seconds. Not much, perhaps, but it adds up, over the course of a week.
And I’m sure this tip works for other types of files too, but who cares about those? 😉
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FYI, when I right-clicked an Outlook attachment and clicked Save As, it took less than a second for the Save Attachment window to appear.
Two options with WinXP
1) Use FileBox eXtender to configure explorer shortcuts to most used folders
2) Place a folder shortcut in XP’s Quick Lauch tray, drag & drop any file icon onto the shortcut. Guess where the file ends up?
When I use the right click and save as option, the dialogue box opens straight away, but then when you try to navigate to the correct folder, that’s when I get the delay. For the record (and this is a lot to do with our network) it can take anything upto 20 seconds to open the folder.