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Outlook Tweaks

Hello all-

I am looking for a way to track the day to day minutiae of my ambulance service for me and several other supervisors. This is random information that needs to be referenced sometimes, and that is generally (currently) written down on paper. find that when I want to reference something, I am rifling through weeks worth of paper.

I have proposed moving this to some computer based format, and the higher ups have (sadly) decreed that it will be managed through MS outlook.

I am wondering this: has anyone managed information like this this through Outlook. If so, how? Journal is more than I need, and Notes is too little. So how did you wither tweak those two, or do something completely different?

Thanks in advance.

mwr's picture

Exchange, public folders, and forms?

Granted, I'm neither an Exchange nor Outlook user, but if you have both, then this intro to designing forms for Outlook may be the starting point.

If you don't have both Exchange and Outlook, then a shared network drive with some kind of forms (PDF, Word, whatever) should suffice. The forms would be text-searchable for any particular text you want, and would be the easiest route into managing this mess.

The intermediate step often used is to set up a shared database in Access, Filemaker Pro, etc. Then you can search for records where field A contains text B, and other more complicated searches than the full-text search of the easy method.

But unless you have Exchange, management's route sounds a bit like they went through the thought process of

  • "We must do something!"
  • "This is something."
  • "We must do this!"
 
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