Organizing Genealogy Contacts in Outlook
I use Outlook to store my genealogy contacts. First I assigned a new category in the “Master Category” list called “genealogy.†Then for each genealogy contact I put their surname interest in the name of their “company” in all caps, and the word family (in lowercase) after the surname.Â
Now when I open my contact folder I can choose to sort it by “Category,” and then within that category sort by “company name” and I have the listing all organized and it is easy to find folks at a glance! Â
Kristina Kuhn Krumm
Columbus, OH
Organizing E-mail Correspondence
I organize e-mail correspondence by surname. For instance, for all the Granger surnames, I do the following:
Granger, Emily
Granger, Harvey
Granger, Larry
Granger, Mildred
GR-Adams, David
GR-Edwards, Phil
GR-Jones, Bill
GR-Miller, Kenneth
GR-Taylor, Elaine
This way, all of the people/addresses for any given surname are all grouped together, first by those with the actual surname, then by those who relate to that surname.
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Sometimes I have only one person for a surname, so I list the entire surname first, then the person’s name: FAIRBAIRN-Miller, John
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P.A.
Return Envelopes
I’ve been using this great tip since I found out about it ten years ago. When sending away for copies of vital records, etc., use a No. 9 regular envelope to put your address and stamp on and then slip this into your regular No. 10 business-sized envelope with your inquiry. There is no need to fold the SASE and the documents sent back to you easily fit into the slightly smaller envelope. The No. 9 envelopes measure 3 7/8 x 8 7/8″ and the box I got ten years ago is still being used!
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Diana L. Gill
Harvard, Mass.
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Thank you so much for this very helpful info. I can now set up my contacts separate from the non genealogy contacts. Great idea for the envelopes also.
Linda
Sorry, but this is not good enough for me. I appreciate the value of separating genealogy and non genealogy contacts but I need some help going into more depth with Microsoft Outlook Contacts. The big question for me is how to incorporate dual node ancestry within contacts and it astonishes me that an application that is used to store data on people is pretty poor at managing their relationships. There are quite a few ways of working around the problem and as an example I suggest entering the individuals Family interest as a spouse in the “Company” field and the individuals family interest as a son / daughter in the department field. There must also be a way of using the “links” facility to sort all manner of relationships. All of that without even using categories… Can someone suggest a reasoned way of approaching this (ignoring the fact that there are numerous family tree applications around). Many thanks.