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Best Way to Link Documents to Your Contacts

Guest post by: Alex Revai

Article Overview: Do you spend precious time searching for emails and computer files relating to your contacts? Wouldn't be nice just to open your contact for the person you are about to call and click on a hyperlink, which opens the document you need right now? I'll share with you a little-know secret. Keep on reading.

Best Way to Link Documents to Your Contacts

You are a businessman, a practitioner, a professional or a busy service-provider. You work with a lot of clients, internal and/or external. Just like everyone else, you are always pressed for time. Your computer is full of information in the form of email, Word, Excel, PowerPoint files and a host of other application related data. If you are like the majority of computer users, your files may not be well organized. Even if they are, they are still likely to be spread "all over" in your folder hierarchy. Also, you may not always ensure that your file-naming is meaningful and easily recognizable.

So, what happens, when you need to locate a specific, client-related document? You open Windows Explorer and start searching. Depending on the structure of your folder hierarchy and your file naming convention (if any), sooner or later you find the document. If this process fails, you may click on the Search option of Windows Explorer. And then you wait...and wait...As it were, the faster you need the data, the longer it will take to find it. (Another Murphy's law?)

Some of you may have already installed desktop search engines, such as Google Desktop or Windows Search. These (and many other) excellent (and free) programs, fully index your hard drive and create your very own, private and local "Google" environment. You enter your search term...and presto...you are looking at a list of files, which contain your search term. Of course, just like in Google, the less specific the search word or phrase, the more hits. Sometimes you may be back to square one. And, the time is clicking fast.

Now, let me share with you the promised, little-known secret. A free, downloadable utility, called Linker^TM for Windows®, offered by Teamscope Software Inc., will make your life a lot easier. Linker^TM for Windows® creates hyperlinks to items and folders in Outlook, and to files and folders in Windows Explorer.

How do you make the most of this powerful utility in solving the problem I described in my introduction? Start by creating, or revising, your client contacts with a view of to the most important documents, which you are likely to need in communicating with that client. Any time you create or come across a file, which you want to have at your fingertips, use the Linker to create a hyperlink and paste the latter in the Notes area for the Contact in question. The hyperlink may be pasted to display the file path and name or you can name the link in any other, meaningful way.

Now, let's re-visit our introductory scenario. You want to call your client or (s)he just called you and you need to talk about one of those important documents in your "shortcut" list. Open the Contact, look in the Notes area, click on the hyperlink for the file in question...and...you saved a lot of time. No searching, no fussing, no Boolean expressions, just the file you wanted. Life is beautiful!

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Article Tags: best filing practices, client management, computer files, find it fast, hyperlink, linker for windows, managing contacts, precious time, save time



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