💻 All Tech Tips

Tech Tips from all Thursday Things issues

Author

Alex at CCing my EA
November 14, 2024

This post is running compilation of all of the Thursday Things Tech Tips sorted by reverse chronological order.

This way you don’t have to dig through your old emails just to search for a specific tech tip you wanted a refresher on. 👍

Table of Contents

The Plus Sign Email Trick for EAs ➕ (11/14/2024)

This week's tech tip is inspired by a fellow CCing my EA reader, Stephanie Rohweder!

"I use this for conference RSVPs so I can manage all the event confirmations, location details, and timing updates in my inbox while keeping the registration under my exec's name."

Ever need to book multiple dinner reservations for different execs on the same night? Or RSVP to the same conference for multiple executives? You probably want all the booking confirmations in a single inbox, yours.

Oftentimes you can't use the same email address for multiple registrations, but most of us don't want to check numerous inboxes or have our executives bothered by unimportant emails. So what can we do?

Here’s the hack:

  • Add "+1" before the @ in your email

  • The system reads it as a new email

  • All confirmations still route to your original inbox

Examples:

Perfect for:

  • Multiple OpenTable reservations

  • Conference RSVPs for different execs

  • Free trial signups

  • Event registrations

How to type emojis ❤️ ✅ ⭐ (11/7/2024)

I love emojis because they just add personality to an otherwise mundane email.

Ever notice how much harder it is to type emojis on your computer vs. your phone? Not anymore!

Here how you can pull up the emoji panel with your computer:

On Mac:

Press Command (⌘) + Control (⌃) + Spacebar

or

Press Fn + E

On PC:

Press the Windows Key + Semicolon (;)

or

Press the Windows Key + Period (.)

Extra tip: Sometimes the emoji search isn’t great, so an alternative hack is to Google the emoji you want to type out (e.g. “New York”), highlight and copy the emoji, and then paste it as plaintext.

Use a Pic of Your Messy Meeting Notes to Create Polished Notes & A Follow-up Email ✍️ (10/31/2024)

If you've ever had the experience of trying to capture strategy session notes from a pile of sticky notes or whiteboard scratchings (or just your own messy handwritten notes!) — this tip is for you.

Step 1: Take a picture of your notes

Step 2: Upload your pic(s) to ChatGPT or your AI chatbot of choice, using a prompt like this:

“Transcribe these messy post-its from a strategy session into coherent, well-structured meeting notes. Put the notes in complete sentences and use headings to separate key topics.”

Step 3: Iterate until you're happy with the notes, then prompt ChatGPT to draft your follow-up email:

“Write a follow-up email for all attendees summarizing the meeting and actions/next steps. Put the actions up front.”

Adding international holidays to your calendar 🥳 (10/24/2024)

If you’re scheduling for executives across different countries, it’s often a lot to juggle between the various holidays of each country.

Thankfully, Outlook and Google Calendar have both made it super easy to add international holidays to your calendar!

Vimcal EA users will be happy to learn that once your holiday calendars have been added to Outlook or Google Calendar, they’ll sync right over to Vimcal EA too. ;)

On Outlook:

1) Click “Add calendar”, which is right above your calendars

2) Go to the “Holidays” menu item

3) Add any countries whose holidays you’d like to keep tabs on

On Google Calendar:

1) Click the Gear icon and select “Settings”

2) Under the “Add Calendar” menu item, you’ll want to select “Browse calendars of interest”

3) Add any countries whose holidays you’d like to keep tabs on

You’ll now see every single holiday for those countries right on your calendar!

Bonus: If you’re a sports fan, you’ll notice you can also add the calendar of various sports teams via the “Sports” section.

Tip: For better organization, I recommend choosing different colors for your native country’s holiday calendar vs your new international countries’ holidays calendars.

Night Shift and Night light 💡 (10/17/2024)

Are you having trouble sleeping at night? You probably heard that looking at your screen before bed can delay your brain’s release of melatonin by up to 2 hours.

The best solution is to simply avoid screens before bed, but more often than not, that’s not an option with work piling up and messages coming in late.

Thankfully, Apple and Windows have built in features that help with this called Night Shift and Night Light.

On Mac:

1) Go to System Settings (Apple logo  in top left corner → System Settings)

2) In System Settings, enter “night shift” in the search box and select “Night Shift options”

3) Set your schedule to “Sunset to Sunrise” and click Done.

On PC:

1) Select Start (Windows logo) and enter “Settings” in the search box

2) In Settings, Go to System → Display → Night light

3) Turn on “Schedule night light” and select “Sunset to sunrise”

Note: The more warm you set the color temperature and strength, the less blue light (which keeps you awake) you’ll receive and so the better you’ll sleep. 😪

Create Custom Shortcuts for Lengthy Texts 📜 (10/10/2024)

Tired of retyping blocks of text or constantly switching tabs to copy-paste? Check out TextExpander!

Let’s say you’re always copy-pasting the following block of text from a doc:

Meeting Agenda:

Top of Mind [5 minutes]

TOPIC1 [duration]

TOPIC2 [duration]

TOPIC3 [duration]

Please be sure to send me your top of mind updates and any topic requests by end of day, Wednesday.

Thank you!

Natalie

Instead, just type "@agenda" after pressing cmd (⌘) + backslash (/) on Mac or ctrl + / on Windows. That's it!

To set this up, all you’d have to do is:

  1. Download TextExpander

  2. Create a New Snippet in TextExpander

  3. Copy-paste your block of text into the body

  4. Add the abbreviation, “agenda”.

Best part? It works anywhere on your computer, not just in specific apps!

Unlock Gmail’s Hidden Power with Keyboard Shortcuts ⌨️ (10/3/2024)

Did you know Gmail offers keyboard shortcuts functionality? Here's a step-by-step guide to enable and use Gmail shortcuts:

1. Enable keyboard shortcuts in Gmail settings:

   → Click the gear icon → See all settings → Scroll to "Keyboard shortcuts" → Select "Keyboard shortcuts on"

2. Learn these baseline shortcuts:

  • 'c': Compose new email

  • 'r': Reply

  • 'a': Reply all

  • 'f': Forward

  • 'e': Archive

  • 'x': Select conversation

  • '#': Delete

  • '/': Search your inbox

3. Master advanced shortcuts:

  • 'g' then 'k': Go to tasks  

  • 'g' then 'i': Go to inbox

  • 'g' then 'c': Go to contacts

  • 'g' then 'd': Go to drafts

  • '*' then 'a': Select all conversations

4. Use the '?' key anytime to see a full list of available shortcuts

Pro Tip: Combine shortcuts! For example, 'x' to select, then 'e' to archive multiple emails in seconds.

Streamline Your Meeting Follow-ups with AI 🤖 (9/26/2024)

We've all been there: drowning in lengthy email chains, trying to extract crucial information for our execs. It's time-consuming and often overwhelming to digest every thread, identify next steps, and compile relevant info.

But what if AI could do the heavy lifting for you?

Here's a step-by-step guide to supercharge your post-meeting process:

1. Gather your meeting notes or email chain.

2. Paste the content into Claude AI (it handles long-form text better than some other AI tools).

3. Prompt Claude with relevant questions, such as:

   → "Can you please turn this into a short, digestible summary?"

   → "What are the key action items from this conversation?"

   → "Are there any deliverables mentioned that I should prepare?"

4. Review Claude's responses and refine as needed.

5. Use the AI-generated insights to draft follow-up emails and schedule next steps.

Pro Tip: Ask Claude to suggest personalized talking points for each participant in your follow-up communications!

Lock your computer 🔒 (9/19/2024)

Did you know closing your laptop doesn't automatically lock it? Here’s a quick way you can ensure your laptop is locked.

On Mac:

1) Hold down cmd (⌘) and control (⌃)

2) While holding both, press Q

Note: Be careful! cmd (⌘) + Q alone will quit your current application, so make sure you’re holding that control (⌃) button down!

On PC:

1) Press the Windows key and L

Your screen will lock instantly, keeping your work secure.

Please remember to always lock your screen when stepping away from your computer, even for a short time. It’s a small habit that can prevent big security risks.

3 useful browser shortcuts (9/12/2024)

Following up on August 22nd, 2024’s Tech Tip about navigating between browser windows and tabs, here are three more shortcuts to help streamline your browsing:

⚡ Shortcut #1: Open a new window

1) Have your browser open

2) Press cmd (⌘) and N on Mac or Ctrl and N on PC

⚡ Shortcut #2: Open a new tab

1) In your browser window

2) Press cmd (⌘) and T on Mac or Ctrl and T on PC

⚡ Shortcut #3: Close a tab

1) On the tab you want to close

2) Press cmd (⌘) and W on Mac or Ctrl and W on PC

Tip: Think "N" for New window, "T" for Tab, and "W" for close (or "wipe away").

To see these shortcuts in action, check out the attached video.

EA hack: No more time zone math! 🕒 (9/5/2024)

Today’s 2-part Tech Tip covers a tool that will save you an hour a day on scheduling meetings and converting time zones.

Part 1: Drag and copy availabilties

Instead of tediously typing out each time window you'd like to send someone, you can just drag them on your calendar and then copy paste.

Part 2: Convert up to 5 time zones instantly

To schedule across different time zones, just type out the city, country, or time zone before you copy paste the times.

Your selected times will automatically be formatted to each time zone.

Ok, you caught us red-handed… this is a shameless plug for Vimcal EA. 😳

With Vimcal EA, you’ll never do mental time zone math or manually type out time windows ever again!

What once took 5 minutes now takes 5 seconds.

Schedule a call to try Vimcal EA, a calendar built just for executive assistants.

Formatting flight search results with ChatGPT ✈️ (8/29/2024)

I had a call with an EA the other day who told me she spends 45 minutes/week converting Kayak search results to perfectly templated messages.

Enter: ChatGPT

ChatGPT is free (woo!) but I have the paid version ($20/mo). IMO, it's still a bargain because these 45 minute tasks can be minimized to 10 seconds.

Here's how:

1) Do your normal flight search.

2) Take a screenshot of the results.

3) Upload screenshot to ChatGPT and use this prompt:

"Format the top 5 results from the flight search attached into the following structure:

[DAY OF THE WEEK] [MONTH/DAY], [Departing Airport Code] -> [Arriving Airport Code], [Airline Code], [Number of stops], [Cabin], [Departure time] -> [Arrival time], [Price]"

4) Copy and paste the results to your email/message.

5) Send to your executive.

For all future flight searches, all you need to do is drop in new screenshots. This works for hotel results as well.

Give it a go!

Shortcuts to switch browser windows and tabs (8/22/2024)

This week I’m giving you a 2-for-1, specifically for your browser!

⚡ Shortcut #1: Quickly swap between browser windows

1) Have multiple windows for the same browser open

2) Press Cmd (⌘) and tilde (~) on Mac or Ctrl and tilde (~) on PC

Pro tip: Keep the Command or Control key held down and keep tapping tilde (~) to repeatedly cycle through multiple open windows.

⚡Shortcut #2: Instantly switch between browser tabs

1) Have your browser open

2) Hold down Cmd (⌘) and Option (⌥) on Mac or Ctrl and Alt on PC

3) While holding both, use ← or → arrow keys to move left or right

To see these steps in action, check out the attached video. 👇

What's your favorite keyboard shortcut?

Stop re-typing your Full Name & Email ❌ (8/15/2024)

Isn’t it annoying to always be entering this information?

Not anymore.

Rather than typing ‘Alexander Bayer’ on ticketing sites, flights, appointment forms, etc… I type ‘semicolon + name’.

It’s free, and it’s easy.

Here's how:

1) On a Mac, open your System Settings.

2) Select the ‘Keyboard’ section on the left panel.

3) Click the Text Replacements button.

4) Add a replacement.

To see this in action, I’ve attached a video as well. 😎

⌘ + Tab to switch applications (8/8/2024)

I’ve noticed on Zoom calls that EAs regularly toggle between Outlook and 2-3 other applications. It's a very manual process, and it hurts to see.

Enter: ⌘ + Tab

⌘ + Tab (Alt + Tab on a PC) are 2 keys that already exist on your keyboard. But paired together, they create a shortcut that'll save you precious minutes.

The best part? It’s easy.

Here's how:

1) Hold down on the ⌘ key.

2) While keeping ⌘ held, press Tab once.

3) Continue pressing Tab until you reach your desired application.

4) Release ⌘.

This becomes particularly useful when bouncing between 2 applications, i.e. Outlook & your browser.

🫵 Do you have a tech tip you want to share?

What’s your personal favorite tech tip?

Email us about it directly at [email protected] so we can include it in a future issue!

Be sure to include a link to your LinkedIn page so we can give you proper credit. =)

CCing my EA is brought to you by Vimcal EA — the first calendar designed for Executive and Administrative Assistants who schedule on behalf of others.

Our mission is simple: to take as much of the tedious admin tasks off of your hands so you can focus your attention on the strategic things. ❤️ 

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