How to access Drive share settings

Do you want to share your files quickly and easily? Well, in this video I'm going to show you everything you need to know when it comes to sharing your files and folders right here within Google drive.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And the first thing you need to know when it comes to sharing your files or your folders is how to open up the share dialogue.

Now, when you have opened up any Google file, up in the top right hand corner you will see a share button. Here within this Google sheet you can see I have this green share button, and by selecting this, I will open up the share dialogue.

However, this isn't the only place that we can access that share button.

Even if you have other files which are not Google specific, so for example, here I have an image I will still have access to that share option. If I select the more actions I can come down here and select share as well.

But perhaps the easiest way to share your files is from the main menu, because perhaps you don't want to jump in and out of all of your files, or perhaps you'd like to share multiple files at once.

So by selecting any file you will also have these share option here in the top right hand corner. We can also right click on a file. And about the third option down is the share option.

But maybe the fastest of all is if you select any file or folder, and then select the Period Key on your keyboard that will also prompt up the share dialogue. Now our very first step is to select the people

Adding people or groups to share files with

or email addresses in which we would like to share this file with. Remember all of your contacts within Google contacts will appear here but they don't have to, you can enter in any new email addresses as well.

And if you happen to have groups within Google contacts those will also be available to you here as well. So I'm going to enter in this dummy account and add this individual, 'cause I would like to share this document with them.

Next I want to take a look at the dropdown menu directly to the right of the name or names that I've input here.

Now, by default, it's going to select them as an editor but that may not be the right selection for you, as an editor in this case, they will be able to add and edit anything within this Google sheet, but we do have two other options available to us as well.

The first one is as a viewer, this will give them read only access so that they can see the entire sheet but they won't be able to make any changes. The second one down below is of a commenter, which is kind of like a viewer, but they also have the ability to add suggestions, this won't make any changes to your file or to your document, but you'll be able to see any suggestions or any comments which they add. So make sure that you decide what is the most appropriate level that you would like to grant to this user or users.

Notify people and add a message

Now down below, we have a check box which will be selected by default telling us that this will notify these individuals once we hit the send button. With this checkbox selected, we can enter in a message such as, just wanted to share the new file with you.

If you do not want a notification sent out directly from Google drive, you can uncheck this check box. In this case, you have two options available to you. By selecting the blue share button down below they will instantly have access to this file within their Google drive account.

Or if you would like to send them the link via email

or some other form of messaging, you can select copy link. And now I have a link copied to my clipboard and I can paste that into my message and SMS,

Advanced settings for sharing files and folders

or some other messaging format. Now, before we hit share in this case, I want to pay special attention to one more option available to us and that is the settings or gear icon in the top right hand corner. By selecting this option here we have two additional check boxes available to us.

The first one says, "Editors can change permissions and share". With this checkbox selected, anyone who I select or add as an editor here will also be able to share it with other people and change permissions.

If I do not want to give them that level of permission, I can uncheck this checkbox. The second option down below says, "Viewers and commenters can see the option to download, print and copy". Keep in mind that this second checkbox does not apply to editors.

Editors will certainly have the ability to download, print and copy, but maybe I just want to give someone a preview of this file, so I'm going to make them a viewer.

If I also want to make sure that they can't make a copy for themselves or they cannot download that file I would leave this checkbox unchecked as well. So depending on the file that you are sharing make sure that you select that gear icon and double check just before you hit share.

Now that I'm ready to share, I'm going to select share. And now you can see that we have a new share icon beside this file type. Just like we look down below, I have a few other files that have that share icon as well.

So even at a glance I can see whom I'm sharing these files or folders with.

Editing share settings in Drive

Now, what if we want to share with additional people the same file or perhaps we want to remove access? Well, we can hit that share button in the variety of ways

or use our shortcut key of the Period Key on our keyboard. And now we will always have full access as to whom we have shared these files with. So here is the individual that I've made as a viewer but perhaps I want them to get more involved with this file.

I can simply come down to the right side and change their ability from viewer to an editor in this case, of course they won't become an editor until I hit the save button down below.

The other thing that we want to pay attention to here is that perhaps I want to remove access to this individual as well. Well, I can do so here by this dropdown and remove access so that they no longer can access this file. The one above here you can see is transfer ownership but it's currently disabled

because I don't have anyone as an editor at the moment. If I save this and make that individual an editor and then reopen this file, I can now come down and transfer ownership to them. In this case, they will have all the abilities that I currently have

and they will be the owner going forward, I will still have access to this file but they will be the owner of this particular file.

Using links to share files and folders

Down below you will also notice that we have another option available to us

as soon as we have shared this file with one or more individuals. And this is giving us the ability to restrict, meaning that this file will only be shared with people who can open the link but we can choose to change that to anyone with the link.

Now, this might be helpful if you're wanting to share something with the world or something publicly, such as perhaps a lead magnet or some other free resource and you don't want to have to add individuals one by one and it's not sensitive information.

In this case I can choose anyone with the link and then I can select copy that link. And now when I go and paste it… Let me open up an incognito window just to show you. They will have direct access to this sheet.

Now keep in mind, they only have view only access, so they can't make any changes to this sheet. I'm trying to hit delete on my keyboard, I'm trying to enter in other numbers, I can't do so because I only have view only access. So another safe and easy way to share files with others in this case, if you want to publicly share that file

How to share entire folders with others

with the rest of the world. Now don't forget all of these share options and settings which we've reviewed also apply to folders within Google drive.

Let me take a quick look at this test folder. I have five different folders within this folder and a variety of different files as well, but perhaps going forward I don't want to have to manage

one by one or file by file who has access. Maybe I have colleagues that I want to give access to everything within this folder, either now or when files are added to any of these folders.

In this case, all I need to do is select the folder I want to share, hit the dropdown menu, and then select share. And we are going to be prompted with the exact same menu that we saw when it came to sharing files.

In this case, I'm going to add another individual here. I'm going to make them an editor in this particular case.

I'm going to hit send and once again, we will see that that share icon is visible here,

and now going forward any new files that I add within these folders will be shared with everyone else who has shared access. So a quick and easy way to share multiple files, multiple folders, both in the present and going forward.

Now to get even easier access to all of your dry files and folders, be sure to use Drive for desktop. To learn how to set up for yourself on your computer, be sure to watch this video next.

Remember being productive does not need to be difficult, in fact, it's very simple.

How do labels work in Gmail?

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This video is brought to you by SaneBox. More about them a little later in the video. If you want to be more effective with managing all of your emails, you need to get familiar with labels.

So in this video, I'm going to show you everything you need to know about how to use and create labels right here within Gmail. Here on the left-hand side of my screen, you can see that I am using several labels.

And within my messages themselves, you can see that I've applied several of these labels.

This can make it so much easier for me to find the information that I'm looking for

and to highlight certain messages such as these two urgent emails. So, what exactly are labels? Well, labels are an awful lot like folders, allowing you to categorize your messages.

However, unlike standard file folders, you can apply labels to as many emails as you like, meaning that a single email here can have as many labels and doesn't have to reside or be assigned to a single folder. This can give you a lot more flexibility

How to create a label in Gmail

when it comes to managing all of your messages. So to create a label, all we need to do is come over here and hit the plus symbol to the right of Labels. The first thing we need to do is give this a name.

And in this case, I'm going to title this Manager because maybe I want to identify all of the messages which are being sent from my manager. Now, in this case, I'm going to leave this checkbox unchecked, but we'll come back and address how we can nest and create sub-labels a little later on.

At this stage, I'm going to select Create. And now here on the left-hand side, in alphabetical order, you can see my new label presented as Manager.

Changing the color of labels

Now, perhaps the first thing you'll want to do before you start using that label is to change the color. As you can see in the examples here, having distinct and different colors can really make things stand out.

So in this case, I'm going to select the three dots and my very first option here is to choose a label color. In this case, I'm going to select this blue color so it can stand out from some of the other labels that I'm currently using.

And you may also notice by selecting these three dots, you have other options available to you here as well. For example, by default, when you create a label,] it will always show in the label list and it will always show in the message list,

meaning when you've opened up an email and you want to apply a label, but you can always come here to adjust those settings. You can select the Edit button if you need to rename that label and if you'd like to remove a label or add a sub-label.

Adding labels to messages in the inbox

So in this case, let's go ahead and add this label to a couple of our messages. Now, there's a few ways in which we can do so. Perhaps one of the easiest is to just simply drag that label onto a message.

So if I click and drag, I can just apply that label to this message here. Let's do that one more time and I'm going to apply it to this message down below. So that is perhaps the easiest way to apply labels.

Now, we can also do it in the reverse order, but if you click and drag a message from your inbox into a label, not only will it apply the label, but it will remove it from the inbox.

So for example, I'm going to take a look at this "We have news for you" email. I'm going to click, I'm going to drag it over my Manager label, but it's telling me that it's actually going to move this conversation in addition to applying that label.

You can now see that that message is gone. But if I click on the Manager label, it is now waiting for me here, along with the other two emails, which I've applied that label.

You'll also notice that when you click on the label here on the left-hand side now that we're only viewing those messages with those labels, the label will not appear on the front of the email.

That's because Gmail assumes that you know that these are all Manager emails. And at the very top in our search bar, it's going to tell us this as well.

But if I was to open up any of these emails, you can see that this label is applied

Adding labels to opened messages

at the top of the screen. And that leads us to the third way of applying labels right here within Gmail. If I open up this email and I start to read it, perhaps I've decided that yes, I'd like to apply a particular label.

Now, I could go over here and drag this label onto this email once again. And if you ever need to remove a label, all you need to do is select the X here, but I could also come to the top of the screen.

This is especially useful if I have a very long list of labels. If I select the label icon, not only will it give me a full list and allow me to apply multiple labels at once, but I can also search for a particular label.

So if I start entering in the words UR, it's going to filter that down to my Urgent label. I'm going to select that and select Apply. Once again, you can apply multiple labels at once.

So if I want to apply my Manager and my Newsletters label to this as well, I can do so and have three different labels apply to a single email.

Add labels to multiple emails at once

Returning back to our inbox, we can also apply labels to multiple messages. So for example, if I come over here to the left-hand side and start to select let's say these three messages and maybe one more down below, I can come up to the top of the screen and again select that label icon.

I'm going to start typing in the name of the label I want, that Manager label, and hit Apply. Now I've applied that label to four messages at once, which has made it that much easier rather than going into each one one at a time.

Returning to our inbox, let's take a look at a few more ways in how labels can help us stay organized within Gmail. Under the Labels menu, you will notice that there is a number beside some of my labels.

Just like your inbox will tell you how many unread messages you have, your labels will do the same thing.

So for example, if I click on my Action Required even before I enter into this label menu, it's telling me that I have six unread messages. Clicking on this will actually show that I have a total of nine, but there are three in which I have read already.

These numbers can be a helpful indicator as to how often or when you should be checking in on some of your labels.

Creating nested or sub-labels in Gmail

But another way which labels can be useful is if we create nested labels, sometimes also referred to as sub-labels. So within Newsletters, I have an awful lot of things going on. So maybe I would like to segment this out in a few more ways.

What we can do is come up here to Labels. And in this case, I'm going to call one Golf Digest because perhaps I receive a number of golf-related newsletters. This time, I am going to check the nest label under and I'm going to select Newsletters because I want this label to appear within the Newsletters label category.

I'm going to select Create and now on the left-hand side, you can see that I have Golf Digest listed here.

Now, you can add as many nested labels as you like. And if it gets a little too busy,

you can always collapse that menu so now the Golf Digest has been minimized, but I can expand it at any time. Let's go back to my inbox and I'm going to apply this label to a message which I have not applied a label to yet just to show you how it will be displayed.

Here, you can see that two labels will not be assigned, but it will actually show both of the labels. If I click on this message itself, you can see that it will show the parent or top-level label Newsletters slash the name of that sub-label.

Now, you can nest other labels within other labels, so these can sometimes get a little lengthy,

but it can be a great way to segment out

Adding labels that use AI to manage email

different pieces of information. Now, despite all of your efforts, it can be rather difficult to reduce the amount of spam and unwanted email you receive. But there's a reason why I only have eight messages here in my inbox and not 152, like I did just a few days ago.

And that's because I'm using SaneBox, the easy and simple way to better manage your email inbox. With SaneBox, SaneBox gives you some very customizable folders that actually learn from your behavior.

So rather than just adding a new label, like I would typically do here within Gmail, SaneBox has actually added some customizable folders which have some pretty special powers with them. So for example, there's a lot of email that I don't want to start here in my inbox.

Rather than creating a number of individual filters, what I can do is train SaneBox to send certain messages to the SaneLater folder where I can come and review these messages whenever I need to.

And if something ends up here in my inbox that I want to see in the SaneLater folder going forward, all I need to do is drag it over and it will learn from my behavior. Now, I've got a special offer just for Simpletivity viewers.

You can get started with SaneBox whether you use Google, Office 365, or Apple Mail right away. But if you decide you like the service and sign up for SaneBox, my friends will give you a $25 credit towards your subscription.

That's like getting 50% off of their initial plan for the entire year. So be sure to head over to sanebox.com/simpletivity

or click the link in the description below.

Intro

Do you want to save time, increase your focus, or stop procrastinating? Well, in this video, we are counting down the top 10 productivity books which are an absolute must-read.

Now, for the sake of this video, we are only looking at books published since the year 2010. Why? Because books published prior to 2010 have no mention or knowledge of smartphones, social media, or the way that we interact with the online web.

Now, this certainly doesn't mean that older books still don't have value and have some incredible principles to share today, but such classics as "Getting Things Done"

or "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" really do read as if they were published generations ago and don't seem quite as applicable to our day and age. So with that being said, let's dive into our list. Starting things off at number 10, "Make Your Bed".

Make Your Bed

Former Navy SEAL, William H. McRaven, became somewhat of a YouTube star after his commencement speech in which he talked about the importance of making your bed in the morning went viral.

Shortly after McRaven published the book, "Make Your Bed", which not only includes how important it is to start your day off right, but also nine other lessons, which he learned during his time as a Navy SEAL.

While this is a relatively easy and short read, "Make Your Bed" outlines the importance of doing little things in your life and how they can impact the rest of your day and also the people around you. Number nine, "Grit".

Grit

Author Angela Duckworth has spent most of her career studying successful people.

And in her book, "Grit", she explores what grit is, where it comes from, how it drives success, and most importantly, how you and I can develop it.

After many years of study and research, Duckworth has found exactly why it's so important for us to be consistent and to persevere regardless where we are studying, working, or spending time with others.

The good news is that each and every one of us can develop this important trait. Number eight, "The Miracle Morning".

The Miracle Morning

Author Hal Elrod had an experience many years ago which not a lot of us can relate to. After surviving a horrific car accident, Elrod decided to start living his life in a very different way, and how he started was by changing his morning routine.

By waking up a little earlier and including a series of steps in his morning, he found that he was able to transform his day, and as a result, it has transformed the lives of millions of other readers.

"The Miracle Morning" will not only give you a recipe to starting your day, it will give you a variety of new ideas and inspiration so you can customize it for your own needs. If you are wanting to start the day off fresh, then "The Miracle Morning" is a must-read for you. At number seven, "Atomic Habits".

Atomic Habits

Now, for many years, I considered "The Power of Habit" by Charles Duhigg as the essential reading when it comes to starting or stopping habits, but that was until James Clear published "Atomic Habits".

Now, to give credit, James actually references some of Duhigg's work at the beginning of his book, but "Atomic Habits" is a much easier read and a much more actionable read so you can start applying the powers of habit-breaking or habit-starting right away.

There's a reason why "Atomic Habits" is still at the very top of most non-fiction best-seller lists and probably will be for many years to come. If you want to learn anything about habits, then this book is for you. Number six, "Never Split The Difference".

Never Split the Difference

Now, at first glance, you may think that this book doesn't fit into the productivity and time management category. After all, its focus is all on negotiations and negotiating strategy. However, as author Chris Voss points out, our entire lives are made up of negotiations.

And no, I'm not just talking about buying and selling. Anyone that you have a conversation with, anytime that you are trying to put across an idea, you are negotiating at some level. "Never Split The Difference" is one of the most entertaining nonfiction books I have ever read, why? Because Chris Voss spent most of his career

negotiating real-life hostages around the world. He takes those very extreme situations, which hopefully many of us will never be involved with, and shows the tactics which he has used and are applicable in our everyday lives.

So whether you are wanting to improve your business, improve your relationships, or maybe just get your kids to watch a little less screen time, "Never Split The Difference" might just be the productivity book which will transform the way that you speak with others.

Now, if you've enjoyed this book list so far, you're going to love Shortform. Shortform is my go-to place for detailed and actionable book summaries.

So whether I'm looking for that new book to read or maybe I just want to browse through and get the key points of a bestseller, I can go to Shortform and find exactly what I want. Shortform does a great job of distilling the most important and crucial parts of any book.

And best of all, if I want to choose to listen, rather than read the summary, I can do so here as well. If you'd like to start using Shortform for free and read the summaries of all the books in today's video, go to shortform.com/simpletivity or click the link in the description below. At number five, "Essentialism" by Greg McKeown.

Essentialism

If there's one thing we can all relate to, it is feeling that constant pressure to do more

in less time. But the book "Essentialism" reminds us that when we say yes too often,

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and sometimes without thinking, we are saying no to a long list of other opportunities. Author Greg McKeown shows us real-world examples and real people

who are starting to live the essentialist lifestyle of doing less, but better. Yes, you can achieve more and you can do it with a clearer head just by making a few adjustments as a part of your day, and perhaps, with the way that you live your life.

"Essentialism" is a very practical book and can really help us reflect on what is most important to us and what are some things that we may be able to put aside or ignore altogether. If you're looking to make a significant but important change,

"Essentialism" may be the read for you. Number four, "How Will You Measure Your Life?"

How Will You Measure Your Life?

When you get to the very end and look back on your life, will you look back with a big smile on your face or may you question some of the decisions and choices you made along the way?

In "How Will You Measure Your Life?"? Clayton M. Christensen highlights and asks some very important questions to help us reflect and help us to make better decisions moving forward. This particular book holds a very special place on my bookshelf.

Why? Because in two separate circumstances, this book has influenced two major career adjustments which I have made over the course of my life.

I feel that this book is so valuable that I actually try to read it every three years or so, just to reset myself and see if I'm making the right decisions for me, not only to play to my strengths, but so I can better the lives of those around me.

Whether you're looking to make a big or small change in your life, "How Will You Measure Your Life?" will help you answer some of life's most important questions. Number three, "The 4 Disciplines of Execution".

The 4 Disciplines of Execution

I actually first read this book when I was a manager of a team and found it incredibly helpful. While the way this book is written is still very much focused on managers and team leads, in my opinion, this is the very best book when it comes to goal setting,

and more importantly, goal achieving. In fact, I use these four disciplines in my own business, and use them to achieve my own personal goals as well.

If you're looking for a concrete plan, which is repeatable and which has found success in almost every industry, then I would recommend that you pick up "The 4 Disciplines of Execution". Number two, "The One Thing".

The One Thing

If you've ever joined me for one of my live workshops or virtual seminars, you know that I speak very highly of "The One Thing". And in particular, one of the key questions,

which is shared within the book. Author Gary Keller outlines how we are distracted in so many ways and how we can properly prioritize what we should be doing next.

One of the great things about the one thing is that you can use them for big, significant projects, but you can also use it for the very next thing on your task list.

It contains a wealth of real-world examples and things that you can start to apply

both in your life, but also in your career right away. Now, just before I reveal my number one pick on this list, let's take a quick look at some honorable mentions.

"Smarter Faster Better" by Charles Duhigg. Not only is Duhigg a very entertaining author, but this book summarizes some of the very best productivity tips. "12 Rules For Life" by Jordan Peterson.

This book attempts to address many of the complicated questions in which we face in today's modern world. "Range" by David Epstein. Why being more flexible can actually lead to greater success than staying in a very focused discipline. Number one, "Deep Work".

Deep Work

In a world where we are pulled in so many directions when it comes to distractions

in social media and/or technology, "Deep Work" is, in my opinion, the most profound and most important book of our age. Cal Newport is a prolific productivity writer,

but in "Deep Work", he gives us a template on how to eliminate distractions and expand our focus. Not only is "Deep Work" full of real-world examples,] some of them which may be controversial in our ever connected and fear-of-missing-out world,

but as Cal Newport points out, if we don't focus on what's most important and don't set enough time for it, how can we expect to achieve the things we want?

Now, do you agree with my choices for this list? If not, be sure to let me know in the comments down below, what are some of your favorite productivity books and where would you put them in your own personal rankings?

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult, in fact, it's very simple.

Wrong way to create user guides

Would you like to create professional looking guides in just minutes? Well, in this video, I'm going to show you the easiest way to create step-by-step guides that your users will absolutely love. So let's dive in.

About 10 minutes ago, I started creating this user guide within Google docs and already I'm extremely frustrated and I'm only at step three.

Do you know how time consuming it is to write out every step and then go and grab that screenshot and then come back and paste it and then go to the next step? And then I got to go back and grab that screenshot.

And then, oh, did I remember the step in between. This took me 10 minutes to complete already, and I don't even have any highlights within this particular user guide.

Meanwhile, earlier today I took just 55 seconds to create this nine step guide which includes links, which includes highlights. And I didn't enter in any of this text and look at how beautiful and easy this guide is to read.

How did I do it? By using a free tool called Scribe. And yes, you heard that right, it's free. With scribe, I can create documentation, training materials, how-to guides, or maybe even for my own purposes. So I can remember how to do that complicated thing in QuickBooks.

How to create a Scribe guide

So let me show you how it works. Here I am within my Scribe dashboard and as you can see, I've already created several Scribes.

Now the great thing about Scribes is that they're easy to share and they're also easy to edit if I ever need to come back and make some minor changes but let's go ahead and create a Scribe from scratch.

All we need to do is come up here to the top and select new.

And when you have the extension installed, you can also access it from your browser as well. I'm going to select new Scribe in this case. And either it can help me launch a new tab or I want to show people how to do something or find something within Google Drive.

So I'm going to select Google Drive. The capture has started, indicated also by this flashing icon in the bottom left hand corner. Now, Scribe is not recording any of my audio. In fact, I'm not wasting any time just by moving my cursor around,

because scribe is only going to record my actions. It's going to take a look at where I am clicking or what text I am entering. And it's going to record all of that and produce a beautiful how-to guide. So in this case, I'm going to come down here and I'm going to right click on this file and I'm going to select share.

And then on this screen, I'm going to go and find someone to share this with. I'm going to select that individual here. I'm going to change them from an editor to a viewer. And then I'm going to come up to this icon.

This is what a lot of people miss or don't realize that there's some additional settings and I'm going to uncheck both of these boxes.

I'm going to go back and then I'm going to hit send. So as you can see, that only took me a few seconds, less than a minute to do all of those different steps, but let's go and see what Scribe is going to do. When I'm ready, I can come down here, click on the icon. I can either pause my recording.

I can delete this particular scribe. I can always move these controls if they happen to be in the way. But in my case, I'm just going to say complete recording. And in a new tab, it's going to show me my scribe

Editing your user guide

so I can review it and make any changes if necessary. At the very top, it's going to give maybe some type of default title because I happen to be in Google Drive but I'm going to say this is, this was How To Change Share Settings.

Maybe something like that. I can even give it a unique icon if I want here. And because Google is often a little more associated with maybe a green color here. I kind of like that document though. Let's keep with that document.

Down below, it shows that there are a total of 13 steps and it took me 57 seconds to record, but chances are I probably could have done that in 25 seconds if I wasn't narrating what I was doing. So down below the very first step is to navigate two.

And yes, it's even going to record your URL, because that's probably going to be helpful if you're directing someone to a particular website or a particular application. The great thing is is that all of this is editable.

So for example, if I don't want them to go to that full length there, I can just delete what I don't need. And boom, it's still going to be clickable for the user. Go to drive.google.com. Starting in step two, you can see that scribe has recorded all of my actions in detail.

Yes, I right clicked on this particular image. It will even have this helpful circle color showing exactly where I clicked. Then I clicked shared and then I clicked on this box as well. And an additional built in bonus is that scribe is zooming in on my actions. You can see here, it hasn't just taken a screenshot of everything.

It has zoomed in specifically on the icon or in this case the dropdown in which I selected. Now you can make changes to this.

If you want to pull it back a little bit more, or maybe you want to pan it around, you can do so, but I love how without even changing a single thing, I could probably go ahead and just send this off to the person whom I want to share this with. Now, each of these stages can be editable.

So for example, in this step down below, I did start to type in the letters Sc to search for this email address but you know what, I'm actually going to remove that step.

So I'm going to say delete, because I think this is pretty self explanatory and no,

I don't want them to click or search for that particular user. So I can come in here and edit this. Maybe I can say search for the user you want to share the file with, something like that.

So each of these stages are editable. If I want to, I can also come in here and edit the image as well. So if I'd like to crop that image or maybe I want to annotate, maybe I want to really specify a particular area.

I can create an arrow such as this. I also like that scribe has added a redact forever area. So for example, maybe I want to make sure that we are not sharing other people's email addresses down below.

So I can just cover over this area. And I can say done here in the top right hand corner and now we're returned to my scribe. It's going to update that image. So we've got the arrow and now those email addresses are removed as well.

Sharing your guide with others

Now, when we're all happy with our scribe, the very next step would be to come

and share it with someone else. Now, probably the easiest way is going to be

to copy that link. And if I open up a new incognito window, I'm just going to paste it in here. You can see it's exactly what we saw in the editing mode. Of course they can't edit it, but things like the link.

Perfect. They can go directly to their drive account. They can come through here and see all of the steps in which we recorded but that's not the only way in which we can share. If you would like to share directly from scribe,

you can enter in the email addresses of those that you'd like to share your guide with.

Or we can also export it in a variety of ways, probably exporting as a PDF makes the most sense or is going to be the easiest for people. Just show you very quickly what that PDF will look like.

Essentially what we saw before, but nice and clean, direct, easy to follow and so much quicker than recording a video. Quicker for you, because it takes you only a few seconds or minutes to produce and quicker for them to digest,

because maybe they just need to skip down to step number eight, for example, and they don't want to have to sit through the first three or four minutes of your video.

Now you can create and share as many guides as you want for free. And if you need to record things out of your browser, you can upgrade to this scribe pro plan.

To get started with scribe and to create your first how-to guide, be sure to click the link in the description down below. And if you enjoyed this video, you're going to love these free Chrome extensions that will help you get the most out of your day.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Why sending bulk emails is valuable

There are so many reasons why you may want to send the exact same email

to multiple recipients. So in this video, I'm going to share with you two methods

in which you can do so right here within Gmail. Hello, everyone. Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And perhaps the number one reason to send one email to multiple recipients is so that you can save time.

Rather than having to write out that message over and over again, or copy and paste the same message here, why don't we just write one message and then send it out to 50, 100, or maybe even 1,000 recipients at once?

Well, here within Gmail, I've started to craft a particular email. And in this example, perhaps I'm promoting a sales event, or a special deal. I've got the subject line and I've got the body of the email. But let's come up to the Recipients section here.

Send email with Blind Carbon Copy

You're familiar with the two field. You're probably using that most frequently. And you might be familiar with the CC field, which stands for carbon copy. But what you might not be as familiar with is the BCC field, which stands for blind carbon copy.

The difference with BCC is that everyone included in the BCC line will not see anyone else in the BCC line. So they'll receive the email and feel as if it was created just for them.

Now, remember, anyone in the BCC line will see if you include someone in either the two or the CC line. So for our example, we're going to leave those blank and we're just going to include names here in the BCC field.

Now, you could go ahead and enter in those email addresses one at a time. But if we're dealing with a lot of addresses, you're probably going to want to make use of copy and paste. Here, I already have a spreadsheet. And I'm just going to go ahead and copy these email addresses here,

and then I'm going to come back to my message. And I'm going to paste them in the BCC file. So here you can see all of the names and all of the email addresses listed here. And, remember, even though I have roughly 30 addresses here on the receiving end, they're going to have only their name present.

They're not going to see anyone else because I've included them here within that BCC field. Now, the one thing that you're going to want to note before hitting that Send button is double checking the body of that message. One of the downsides of using the BCC line within Gmail is

that we can't customize any parts of the message. So, for example, I can't say, "Hi, Leota," or, "Hi, Sage," because everyone would see that on their end. I have to leave it at Hi, comma.

And I can't say anything specific about their company, maybe the city or the state that they live in, because, otherwise, everyone would receive that within the message. So you will need to keep your message somewhat generic.

But at this stage, I'm going to go ahead and hit Send. And, now, that message has been sent

to all of those addresses. Now, just to show you what this looks like on the receiving end, here is the message from my test account. Here's that "Special Sales Event Just For You." So I'm going to open up this email.

I can see who it's from, but you can see that there's no one else listed here. Even though there were 33 listed on that BCC line,

it says if this message was sent just to me. So you can be rest assured that you can send a bulk email to many recipients without disclosing those other email addresses.

Gmail plus Google Sheet template method

But what if we want a simpler way to do this and have the ability to add some personalization? Well, in that case, we're going to want to make use of a Mail Merge feature.

Now, if you type in Gmail Mail Merge, the number one result will be this one here from Google itself. Now I could spend the rest of the video walking you through this particular solution, but I won't. And here's why. It's not simple.

It's not easy. And there's actually a lot of room for error, which is the last thing I want you to do

when you're sending out emails to perhaps hundreds of recipients. At the very top, it says that this is for a beginner level, but coding level beginner. Yes, if you have a background in coding or software development, this is fairly straightforward.

But there is still too much room for error.

Customize your bulk emails with mail merge

So instead, we're going to take advantage of the Right Inbox Gmail extension.

Now I've talked about Right Inbox in the past because it's so much more than just a mail merge feature. But I'm going to show you just how easy it is to set up a mail merge and track and personalize those messages right from within your Gmail account.

So with the Right Inbox extension installed, I now have access to this Mail Merge button, which appears directly above my Compose button. So rather than starting my message here, I'm actually going to start by selecting Mail Merge.

And here you can see some of the other mail merge campaigns which I've either set up in advance or one that is currently running and has started to send a number of those emails. To get started, all we need to do is select this Create Campaign button.

And our first step is to choose how we want to add our email recipients. Now, if you only have a small handful, maybe a dozen or fewer, you may want to add them manually and just type them in.

However, for anything larger, it might be more efficient for you to upload a CSV file. So in this case, I'm going to go ahead and upload that same file which I copied from in the first example. Now, when it comes to the contents of your file, you can add as much or as little detail as necessarily.

Yes, of course, your file must contain an email column. However, in this case, you'll notice, I've also included the first name, last name, and the name of the company in which they are associated with.

This is actually quite helpful because I'm going to start to use these other fields as a part of my customization. So back within Gmail, all I need to do is go and select my specific CSV file.

How to add merged fields to your email message

In this case, I'm going to upload it and say Upload CSV. And now I'm ready to start creating my email. Now, you'll see that the editor looks a little bit different but we still have all of the features and functions of a regular Gmail message, including indentation, bold, italic, and even the ability to insert images and links.

So on the subject line, maybe this is a "Special Sales Event," right? That's going to be the title of my line here. And when it comes to the body, this is where we get to personalize specific aspects.

So rather than just saying, "Hi," isn't it a lot more personable if I say, Hi, first name, such as, "Hi, Scott," or, "Hi, Charlene," for example. By adding this Insert Merge Field, it's going to include their specific name.

And here you can see the other three headers. First, last, and company name just as you saw in my previous CSV file.

Now down below, I can say something, like maybe, "We are looking forward to serving," and here I'm going to insert the company name, "serving company name in 2023," or inviting them to a conference, or whatever the purpose of your email happens to be.

Now, in this case, I'm not going to add anything further, but I could add other details. If your CSV file contains information such as the product they last purchased, or perhaps the region of the world in which they live in,

Adding automatic follow-up messages

well, you can include that here as well. Now, a very powerful feature here within Right Inbox is that we can add a follow-up in addition to the original email. So down below, if I wish to, I can say, add a follow up.

And maybe in this case, if they haven't replied to me in just three days, I want to send a special follow-up message. Now, we have a few other options here as well, including if they have opened up the email, maybe the following day after they open the email, I want to send a special message. Maybe if I've included a particular link, I want to send a special message as well.

You can add multiple follow-ups, not just the one, based on your specific needs. Now, in this example, I'm going to remove that follow-up, but this is a very powerful feature right here within Right Inbox.

Next up, let's hit Preview just to see if everything is looking the way we want to. At the top, it's going to show the actual email address which is going to send it out to. And I can see it's going to say, "Hi Lenna, we are looking forward to serving Feltz Printing Service in 2023." 

"Hi Donette, we are looking forward  to serving Printing Dimensions in 2023." Now, of course, you don't need to go through each and everyone. But it might be a smart idea to preview a couple of them just to make sure that your formatting is correct.

But you can see how much more personal, how much more engaging these emails will be since they're addressed to a specific individual

and include some very specific information about them.

Confirm and send out emails

Our very last step is to confirm and schedule this Mail Merge email. Now we can choose a date in the future, a specific date and time. We can also enable link tracking. So if you want to track when a recipient clicks a link in your email, or when they open that email.

This can be especially helpful so that you can reply or engage with them at the appropriate time. The last thing here is you need to be made aware

of the daily message limit within Gmail. There is a 250 daily limit. So if you want to be within that limit, you may need to send out these emails at a smaller batch per day. Now, for myself, we're perfectly fine because we're under that limit.

So I'm going to say 50 per day is absolutely fine. And I just need to acknowledge at this particular step. Lastly, in the top right hand corner, I'm going to select Start Mail Merge. And, congratulations. It will start running at approximately this time later today.

I'm going to return to my campaigns. And now I can see this one that I just created has started to run, is scheduled to go, but I can go back and review the data from my other campaigns as well. And look at all this valuable information.

How many were actually sent? How many have replied?] How many have opened? How many were clicked? And how many perhaps were bounced? Maybe you don't have the correct email address. In my case here, this is because I'm using sample data.

So almost all of those email addresses are fake email addresses, but valuable information that you can use in the future. Now, if you enjoyed this Gmail tutorial, you'll love my video on how to get the most out of filters and labels.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Date calculator & time zone meeting planner

If you like helpful, easy, and free, then this video is for you because I'm sharing with you seven free websites that you probably didn't even know existed. So, let's dive in. Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

And the very first website on our list is something that I've mentioned before, but I'm sharing with you again because I use it just so often.

And that is timeanddate.com. Now there is so much more than just finding out a time zone, or what time is it somewhere else in the world. So let me show you some of the features that I use most often.

Down here, we have a section called calculators and timers. And the date to date calculator is one of the tools that I use very, very frequently. So for example, I want to know how many days or weeks are between now, today, and perhaps an upcoming birthday.

I don't know, maybe it's a friend of mine. I'm going to say calculate duration, and I can find out that it's exactly 65 days

between today and that special day. And alternatively, it gives me several other time units including minutes, hours, weeks, and days, and even the percentage of the current year. Another date calculator that I use quite often is the one where we can add or subtract from a particular date.

So for example, again, I'm going to select today, but you can select any date that you want. And how many days is exactly 100 days from right now? Well instantly, I can see that it is October 13th.

That would take me a lot more work to try and figure out on my own. So whether I'm dealing with negotiations, whether I'm dealing with giving someone a project plan, I can confidently tell them and share those numbers with others all by using the date calculator.

The other feature that I use quite often is the online meeting planner.

And this is most useful when you're setting up meetings for people around the world,

or not within your chosen time zone. So let's say for example, I am planning a meeting for next week. So I'm going to select that date. That may be important because remember some countries, some time zones, do recognize daylight savings.

Others do not, and even if they do, they may be on a different schedule. So I've got my location listed here, and let's go and search for a few others. So I'm going to say that one of the people I'm meeting with is in London, I'm going to select that.

And then let's say that the other person that I'm meeting with is in Boston. So I'm going to select that as well. Now you can add many more than just three locations. But at this stage, I'm going to select show timetable.

And what I love about this is it gives me something very, very colorful, so I can see what times are outright and won't work, but also the times that are most suitable. So for example, I'm certainly available at three

or 4:00 p.m. in the afternoon, but that's midnight for my friend in London.

And that's later in the evening for my colleague in Boston. If I look up a little bit earlier, if we meet at eight or 9:00 a.m. my time, that's probably quite reasonable for the people that I'm trying to meet.

So that's perhaps the time that I'm going to suggest first. So it takes out a lot of the busy work. You don't have to do the math yourself, let timeanddate.com do it for you.

Quick & easy whiteboard

The next free website on our list is called Witeboard. Or is it Witeboard? I'm not exactly sure. All you need to remember is to remove or ignore the H, W-I-T-E board. And if you go to witeboard.com, you can immediately start to draw your diagrams.

You can add text, you can add shapes. I especially like this feature. You can see that I certainly cannot draw a perfect circle, but whiteboard.com will make it into a perfect circle with me.

I can add lines if I want to make connections or maybe make some straight edges, I can add text as well. And maybe I want to change that text, I want to have that text in blue, so you can ask me a question down below.

Witeboard is absolutely free, and you can even share it for free as well. So you don't need to sign up for an account.

The only need to sign up for an account is if you want to save your witeboard, if you want to go back and use it again in the future. witeboard.com is especially useful if you want to quickly and easily share your thoughts visually, and don't need to or want to sign into another account.

Temporary email address

The next free website on our list is all about using a temporary email address.

Something that you probably didn't even know might be helpful to you. How often have you gone to a website and you want to have access to their content, or you want to download their free guide, or whatever the case may be, but you just have a feeling that you're going to be inundated with so much spam and unwanted marketing emails?

Or maybe you're worried that they may sell your personal email to other organizations. Well with tempmail.org, you can receive a temporary email address, an email address which will be good for roughly 10 minutes in duration.

Just enough time for you to gain access to that information or access to that service. So in this case, I have this temporary email address given to me, and I'm going to copy it to my clipboard.

What I'm going to do now is I'm going to go over to Harvard Business Review, and I'm going to register for an account. So let me just put in some dummy information here. My name is going to be Hammersmith at this point in time.

I'm going to paste that email address, remember that's my temporary email address.

And then I'm going to have to add a password here, with some special characters.

I am not a robot, and I'm going to select register. What is going to happen is I should be receiving information from the Harvard Business Review. All I need to do is go back to tempmail.org. And down below, you can see I've received my welcome email.

I'm going to click on this arrow to view it, and I'm going to get all of the same information that I would expect from a regular email. I can see who it's from, I have the date. And I have all of this information that they would've sent to my personal email address.

But the great thing is, is that now I can access this information or get that unique code or that unique link without having to share my actual personal email address. Keep in mind that this temporary email address will only be applicable for roughly 10 to 15 minutes.m So I could repurpose it, I could reuse it.

And maybe HBR is going to send me some other information in the next 10 minutes, that's going to show up here in my temporary inbox as well. But if you need something in a pinch and you don't want to give up your own email address, TempMail may be the solution for you.

Now despite all of your efforts, it can be rather difficult to reduce the amount of spam and unwanted email you receive. But there's a reason why I only have eight messages here

in my inbox, and not 152 like I did just a few days ago. And that's because I'm using SaneBox, the easy and simple way to better manage your email inbox. With Sanebox, SaneBox gives you some very customizable folders that actually learn from your behavior.

So rather than just adding a new label, like I would typically do here within Gmail, SaneBox has actually added some customizable folders which have some pretty special powers with them. So for example, there's a lot of email that I don't want to start here in my inbox. Rather than creating a number of individual filters,

what I can do is train Sanebox to send certain messages to these SaneLater folder, where I can come and review these messages whenever I need to. And if something ends up here in my inbox that I want to see in the SaneLater folder going forward,

all I need to do is drag it over and it will learn from my behavior. But there's so many other great features as well, including the ability to snooze your emails into one of these three categories.

SaneTomorrow, Sane NextWeek, or SaneNextMonth, and let it do the work for you. So rather than having too many emails staring back at me here, I can take some selected ones and perhaps move them to NextWeek.

And then when it's time for me to engage with them, they will automatically appear right here in my inbox. Now I've got a special offer just for Simpletivity viewers.

You can get started with SaneBox, whether you use Google, Office 365, or Apple Mail, right away. But if you decide you like the service and sign up for SaneBox, my friends will give you a $25 credit towards your subscription.

That's like getting 50% off of their initial plan for the entire year. So be sure to head over to sanebox.com/simpletivity, or click the link in the description below.

Profile picture creator

Next on our list, we have a free website, which is going to make you look good no matter where you put your profile picture. Sometimes it can be difficult to stand out,

whether we are on social media or if we just need to upload a great looking headshot to maybe the number of project management, or video conferencing services that we use on a regular basis. But Profile Pic Maker makes this so much easier.

To get started, all we need to do is hit that big green button in the middle of the screen. And I have an image, I have a fairly simple one, I want to start with. Here is a headshot of myself.

Now you can select any picture that you like, but what Profile Pic Maker will do is actually remove the background as a part of the process. And in just a few seconds, it will generate a number of both professional, but also creative ideas for us to select with our profile picture.

Because remember, there might be a big difference between your Instagram profile and something that you want to put on LinkedIn. So here is that image where it's automatically removed that background, and given me a lot of, some a little more crazier, a little more maybe outlandish for me.

But there's some others that I really like, I kind of like this simple border with that color in the background. You can see at the very top, we can go between more creative ideas and maybe some that are a little more professional.

Now earlier when I was playing around, I really sort of liked this idea of just a very simple sort of color change, just sort of this simple round border. But there's some additional features which are amazing here, and it's all for free.

Number one, if I click on this little eyeball icon, I can actually download a matching background which will go with the profile picture which I've just selected. Now that particular one perhaps makes me feel

a little dizzy, but I like something like that. It's the same color, it's the same shading.

It's something that I can add to the back of my LinkedIn profile or Facebook page, or something like that. You can either choose to download a square image or a round image, and you're ready to go. In just a matter of seconds, you've got a fantastic looking profile picture where you can use anywhere on the web

Color palette from picture

or in other applications. Now sticking with colors for just a moment, the next free website is going to allow us to pull out the key colors from any image that you find online. Here we are at Color Palette Generator. And as you can see in this example here, it's pulled out the different hues of pink and green from this image of a flower.

I came across this image not too long ago, and I like sort of the fiery reds and yellows.

I like the mix, I like the feeling that's going on in this image. And maybe I'd like to apply it to my own website. Or maybe a social media campaign, for example. Well all I need to do is right click and copy the image address, and come back to my Color Palette Generator. And I'm going to paste in that URL and say, Color-Palette-ify it,

that's the term that it uses there for that button. Now I've got some of those key colors

from these images and their hex codes. So I can copy and paste and bring these directly into the editor or to whatever I'm using, where I can input that information.

Now it may not grab every single color from the image, but these are definitely fits with the theme of the image on the left. It'll even give you a mix of both duller

and more vibrant colors, so you can choose between the two. But simply double click and copy these hex codes. And you can paste them in Adobe or any other editor of your choice.

Clear recipe instructions

Now the next free website on our list is all about food, which you might find surprising because I don't talk an awful lot about baking and cooking in the kitchen. But I'll tell you one thing that I get frustrated by, and that is when I am searching for a recipe online.

Now don't get me wrong, there are so many wonderful recipes. But when I click on a recipe, I often end up on some type of blog, which is so incredibly lengthy.

Look at the search bar here in the right hand corner. This page is so long, it is full of many different pictures and stories and what this person felt like when her grandmother made these waffles. And yeah, I get it.

I understand how dry ingredients get mixed first. I just want the goods, I just want the ingredients. I want the recipe. Well rather than having to scan all the way to the bottom of this screen, all I need to do is go up and copy the URL of any recipe page. Come back to justtherecipe.com,

and paste in that URL here and say, get recipe. And immediately, everything else is shed away. And now I just have the recipe. The ingredients here on the left, the directions here on the right, and I can get to making these delicious Belgian waffles.

One step further, we can click the edit button if we want to make adjustments\ to any of these ingredients over here. Maybe we try it one time and we say, actually we need maybe 3/4 teaspoon of salt. And maybe we need to bake it in our waffle iron

for a specific amount of time. We can do that here and edit anything as we like. I even like that the format with Just the Recipe is actually a lot better than most of these bloggers' pages. If I keep going down to the actual recipe, here it is, that's what the actual recipe looks like. I've got a huge ad in here, I've got other things that are sort of distracting me and taking me away. This is so much easier for me to read,

whether I'm doing this on my iPad or a tablet, or even on my phone. Now everything is absolutely free. You can even save your recipes if you want, but you will need to sign into an account. So if you're frustrated with all the noise of blog recipes,

justtherecipe.com may be the site for you.

Honest software reviews

And when it comes to websites that provide me with an immense amount of value, and I sometimes can't even believe that it's free, g2.com would be near the top of that list. g2.com is all about software reviews.

And whether you're looking for a simple to-do list manager for yourself, or a complete CRM system for your business, I recommend you head to g2.com first. Here you can see some of the more popular categories, including video conferencing, eCommerce, marketing, and online backups.

And on the right hand side, we can see some popular tools which you're probably already familiar with. Now you can use the handy search bar to type in, well, literally any software that you can think of.

Or you can click on one of the images here on the right to see a deeper dive. So for example, when it comes to Trello, they have over 12,000 reviews from real users. And you can read their testimonials, but better yet, it's going to give you a summary of both Trello pricing and what people like the most about using this software.

I also like that it'll provide a helpful comparison tool, here on the right hand side. So if you are comparing a piece of software to something else, or you just want other ideas, you can do a side by side comparison. So here, I can see the pricing side by side.

I can see the ratings from members. I can see what people like more in one piece of software, and what they like more in the software that I'm evaluating as well. So before you install or start paying for that next piece of software, I encourage you to check out g2.com.

Now if you enjoyed this video, you are going to love my seven extremely useful websites video, which is on the screen right now.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Dashcards

You're not really a Trello user if you're not taking advantage of Power-Ups. So in this video, I'm going to share with you seven of the most helpful Power-Ups so that you can get the most out of all of your Trello boards. So let's dive in.

As we take a look at my sample board here, you can notice on the far left that I have a couple of cards that look very, very different from traditional Trello cards. Now, no, I haven't just added a fancy cover graphic here. These are actually dynamic cards called Dashcards

and they're showing me some very valuable information. This first one here is telling me that I have three cards on this board that are due this week.

So rather than having to scan all of my cards to see what is coming up soon, or having to use the filter option and then put in my specific requirements, this card can tell me right away. And best of all, its dynamic.

The one down below is perhaps even more powerful because it's giving me information not just about this board, but about all of the boards on this workspace.

It's telling me that I have 12 cards that are assigned to me, not just on this board, but within all of the boards as a part of this workspace.

And for example, if I need to add myself to a couple of new cards, in just a few seconds, you will see that this Dashcard on the left will update now to 14, because now there are two more cards in which I am assigned to.

Once the Dashcard Power-Up is installed, you will see a button at the top of your board called Track.

When we select that option, it will get us started with a number of different defaults,

a number of different templates to get us started. And here you can see the assigned to me and due this week, which I've already enabled. But you can not only customize any of the ones that you see here, you can also start from scratch and really apply any filter or criteria that you like.

So for example, maybe I want to create a Dashcard

which is called Stale. I want to identify the cards that haven't been modified in a while. I'm going to come down here and select more filters. I'm going to say last modified, and then I get to choose the timeframe.

So I could say, is there anything this week, this month? What if I want to be even more specific? I'm going to say last modified later than let's say maybe 10 days ago, and immediately it's going to update that Dashcard here as well. 26, there are 26 cards amongst all of my boards,

which have not been changed in the last 10 days. And you can just see how granular we can get. I can include just some specific boards if I want, I can include specific labels or assignees and start to layer out this Dashcard.

And I can even add the background if I want to change it to a specific color, or I can search for some specific photos. So in this case, I'm going to type in the word stale. Would it be great if I had some maybe moldy bread or something like that to show us that something is stale?

Hey, I like that a lot. That's going to stand out. I'm going to say start tracking. Now, this particular Dashcard is going to be added and I can move it around wherever I want.

If I want to have it at the top of another list, I can do so. But it gets even better if I click on one of these Dashcards. Let's go on this due cards this week. I can actually see those specific cards. So down below, I can see which of those cards are due this week. And if I want to click on one of them, I can go directly to that card as well.

So beyond just seeing those powerful numbers on the front of your card, you can go directly to those cards as well.

Show Attachments

Now, the next Power-Up on our list makes finding and viewing attachments that much easier. Here, on the right hand side, you will notice that I have a card here that has some very specific, or shall we say interesting looking labels? Well, in fact, they're not even labels at all.

They are showing me the specific attachments which are attached to this card. You're probably already familiar with the little paperclip icon,

letting us know that there is at least one attachment, and then the number beside it. In this case, it's showing me that there are two attachments, but depending on how you use Trello, you may have several different attachments, and just the number isn't very helpful.

You want to know exactly what is attached to that particular card.

So with the Show Attachments Power-Up installed, we can do that. Now, if I want to access those attachments, I will still need to have to open up the card and then access or edit them from within the card.

If I click on power-Ups and go into my show attachment settings, you can see that I can select a variety of different criteria. So for example, maybe I don't want to see the paperclip icon, maybe I don't care about the name, but I do want to see the number of attachments.

Maybe I'm already using an orange label for something else, and instead of being confused with that, I can change it to another color or just make it transparent altogether.

But I think it's these next two that are perhaps the most powerful options here. So for example, maybe I only want to see the specific attachments on cards that are assigned to myself.

If other people have attachments assigned to their cards, maybe I don't care so much about seeing them, but I would like to see them for myself. The other option we have here is to filter out just specific attachments.

So in this case, you can see that I have a YouTube link video and then I have a JPEG image. Maybe I don't care to see about the video attachment, so I'm going to select this option and hit Save.

And now that other attachment is not shown on the front of the card. It's still there, it still exists,

but maybe I only care about the images themselves or some specific file type. So show attachments can be most helpful if you're managing a large number of attachments and you want to see that level of detail

Rewind Backups

on the front of the card. Now, the next Power-Up in our list is all about safety and helping us from making a major mistake. How often have you shared your Trello board with a new coworker, a freelancer, or someone else and only to have them come in here and make a lot of changes that you wish that they wouldn't have,

or maybe even for your own personal boards where you've gone in and made a few changes and saying, "Oh, I wish I could go back to the way I had this yesterday morning?"

Well, that's precisely why I use Rewind Backups for all of my Trello boards and why it's one of the top three most installed Power-Ups right now .If you want to back up all of your Trello data, if you want to go back in time in case you make a mistake, you can do so with Rewind Backups for Trello.

And if you're not already using Rewind for your Trello boards, you can go to rewind.com/scott-friesen

and get $50 when you subscribe on this page. Be sure to see the link in the description for more details.

Countdown

Now, when it comes to managing all of your cards in Trello, you're probably already familiar with adding a due date. That's because many cards represent a task, a project, or include some other deadline.

But sometimes these dates, such as July 7th or July 14th, can get lost, and we often gloss over in terms of how soon is something coming up, or maybe one of these cards is more important than the other and we would like it to stand out in relation to that due date.

Well, here you will notice I have a couple of cards that have a little timer beside it. In this one. it's letting me know that it's due in just two days time. And this one, titled A Major Problem, is due in just 19 hours.

It's coming up very, very soon. That's because I am making use of the Countdown Power-Up. And the great thing about the Countdown Power-Up is you don't have to apply it to all of your cards, you can apply it to just very specific cards.

So for example, let's take a look at this one here saying July 7th, and maybe I want to make it stand out for both myself and for my colleagues that this is coming up soon,

or to be notified when something is coming up soon. I can click on this particular card, and on the right hand side, when I have the Countdown Power-Up installed,

I can select this and I've got a variety of different options available to me. Now, by default, and I would think in most cases you're going to set it from the card due date.

So if I select this first option, it's going to add that countdown. And, yes, it is one day from now. But you will notice that a target time is added. And in this case, the target time is in sync with the due date, but it doesn't have to be.

So for example, if I click on the target time now that I've added it here, I can change that target time. I could have added this from the first step if I wanted to, but now I get the calendar, but maybe I have to say, you know what? This is actually coming up earlier than we thought, or at least the first stage is coming up earlier. I'm going to hit Submit.

So now we're only 22 hours away from the target time, even though the due date is about a day later. So you can have a lot of flexibility here with that countdown.

Some other helpful features, if I go over to this major problem, which is due in less than 19 hours, if I select this card,

and I can either select the target time, or I can come down and select the Countdown button, I can say pin this countdown. If I select this, what it will do is actually add it to the bottom of my Trello board. So now it's really hard for me to ignore this card. The title of the card will be listed and then how much time is left due.

So in order to make sure that I don't get distracted with other things and other cards,

this can be a powerful feature as well.

Bulk Actions

Now, the next Power-Up on our list is going to save you so much time, even if you only use it once in a while. How often have you needed to come into a Trello board and make changes to multiple cards, such as adding yourself to maybe seven different cards at the same time, or maybe pushing out the due date by, I don't know,

let's say three days for every single card in this list? Well, in order to do so, I'm going to have to click on every single card and change the due date, even if I'm using the Quick Edit here, I've got to click there, and then I've got to click the date, and then I've got to select the date, and then I got to hit Save, and then I've got to hit Save here.

And I got to do that all over again for each card in this particular list. Well, with the Bulk Actions Power-Up installed, you can do this and so much more, making your Trello life that much easier.

By selecting the Bulk Actions button, you're going to see the same Trello board. The only difference is that you'll notice there are now check boxes beside each of your cards, including the list. So going back to this example,

if I wanted to push out the due date for every card in this list, I don't have to click on all four, I could just click on the list at the top of the screen, but I can also click them individually. So if I want to go here and say that we're going to change the due date

of these three particular cards, I've selected them, and now, in the top right hand side of your screen, you can see that we can change, well, pretty much anything that we could within an individual card.

In this case, I'm going to select due dates and I'm going to say we are going to modify the date. I can either choose to change them all to a fixed date, or what if I want to push them out by a certain period? So in this case,

maybe I want to push them all out by one week. I'm going to do so. It'll even give you a quick preview down below before you make the change, just to make sure which cards are going to be applied to and what is going to happen next.

I can either select change due dates, or I can say change due dates and keep selection. Maybe on top of changing the due date, I also need to add a specific label. So you don't always have to go back and change or select all of those cards.

In this case, I'm going to select change those due dates, and now they've all been pushed out by one week.

When I'm done using Bulk Actions, I just need to hit the X in the top right hand corner

and I'm returned to my default view. Bulk Actions is something that I do not use on a daily basis, but when I need it, it is so, so valuable. So make sure that you take advantage of the Bulk Actions Power-Up.

List Limits

Now, I know from experience that it can be difficult and frustrating if there's a particular stage, if there's a particular list in your Trello board where things tend to bottleneck, or you want to make sure that you don't have too many cards at any given time. Well, that's precisely where the List Limit Power-Up comes into play.

Here, on this board, you will notice that one of my lists is not like the other, and in this case, it's the testing list. I have a two out of three, I've got a fraction here telling me that I have two cards within this list, but I only ever want a maximum of three. So if I add a third card to this list, that's fine. But as soon as I add a fourth card to this list,

the entire list turns to a shade of yellow. This makes it very visible to myself and to others to say wait a minute, we've got too much going on here. Can we move something into complete, or do we need to push something back to development?

The great thing about List Limits is that, again, you can only apply them to specific lists. You don't need to apply them to all of your lists. And I would say, in many cases,

there were probably only one or two where this is most valuable. Let's say I want to make sure that the queue never gets too large. All I need to do is select the more option here, and with the List Limit Power-Up installed, I can come down and select set list limit.

Maybe in this case I'm going to say seven and hit Save. So I can quickly see what that limit is and I can also quickly see how many cards are currently in that list. A very simple but yet very powerful Power-Up to use as a part of your Board toolbox.

Card Numbers

Now, the next Power-Up on our list makes it so much easier to reference specific cards, especially when we are collaborating with others. Here, you can see that I have a unique number on every single one of my cards.

So instead of having to describe or list the full name of a card, I can just tell my teammate, "Can you please go look at card number 16 and give me your feedback?" These two cards in particular are rather similar.

They're in the same list, they are both removing something, and I'm assigned to both of them, but there's a pretty big difference between 16 and 19. So if I'm telling or collaborating with someone and say I don't mean 19, let's take a look at card number 16, we can do so. Now, everyone is going to be a unique identifier.

And you can tell that this card was obviously created before this one over here,

which is numbered as 21, but you can make sure that every single one of your cards

has a unique identifier. And when you open up that card, that card number will be front and center as well if you want to see it there. In addition, if we go into the card number settings, we can edit and add a prefix to the front of that number.

You can see that by default, it's going to add the number sign, but maybe I want it to say case number. Maybe this is a ticketing type of system. So now you can see, we have case number as the prefix in front of all of our unique identifiers.

A very simple but very helpful Power-Up nonetheless. Now, if you've watched this far into the video, I'd love for you to prove it by adding the phrase, "Trello Power," to your comments down below.

And while you're there, why not tell me what are some of your favorite Trello Power-Ups that make your days that much easier? And if you enjoyed this video,

you'll love my other Trello videos and playlists right here on the Simpletivity channel.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Create a form in Word or Google Docs

Would you like to turn your document into a fillable form? Well, it's actually a lot easier than you think. So in this video I'm going to show you how to take any Microsoft Word document or Google Doc and turn it into a fillable PDF.

So let's get started. To begin, all you need to do is create your form in the word processor of your choice. So in this example, I'm in Microsoft Word but you can create this in Google Docs or in a variety of other word processors as well.

So in this case, I've created a fairly simple one page form leaving space for the areas where I'm going to be adding fillable components. So at the top here I've got things like name, phone, and email.

Of course, I'm going to make this fillable in the next step, but down below I've also left some space for some drop down menus. Keep in mind you don't have to create tables like you see here.

Sometimes that can be helpful to keep things in order, under this services menu, for example, I'm going to be adding a couple of check boxes but just down below, when I ask them when you would like their service to begin, I'm going to reserve these spaces for radio buttons. So you are probably already familiar

with creating documents within Word or Google Docs. So you can make this as simple or as complex as you needed. In fact, you may already have a form that is ready to go. So let's move on to the next step.

Upload document to OnlyOffice

Now, once your document has been saved, we're going to go online and travel to OnlyOffice.com. OnlyOffice is a full productivity suite which allows us to edit, share and collaborate in a variety of different ways.

I'm going to click on documents because this is where we're going to add those fillable components. Now the very first step is to upload the file to OnlyOffice. Now you can also choose to connect directly to Drive or OneDrive or a variety of other shared cloud services but in this case, I'm going to go and find that file.

So let's go upload our file. And in this case, this is the landscaping document that we were looking at just a moment ago. Once the file has been uploaded to our OnlyOffice account next we're going to want to select the orange button, create and then come down to form template.

Now you could choose to create a fillable form from scratch but in this case, because we've already done most of the work, we're going to say from a text document. OnlyOffice is going to show us all of the text documents available to us.

And ours happens to be the very first one on the list. So I'm going to select that one and say create. Now I have an option here to rename it if I want to. So maybe I'm just going to say sample in this case just so it stands out and I'm going to hit that check mark beside it.

That's going to now open up this file within the OnlyOffice editor. And the great thing is is that we have all of these fillable fields and fillable options available to us. The other bonus is

because OnlyOffice is a full document suite, if we need to make changes to anything within this document we can do so here as well. If I select the home menu for example, we have all of the familiar options available to us including headings and other editing tools, just like we would see in Microsoft Word or Google Docs.

Adding fillable areas to the document

But for our purposes, we want to focus on the forms tab. So it's really as easy as selecting the area of the form where you would like to include a fillable component.

So under name, I'm going to include a text field, seems to make sense, and I'm going to do the same thing for phone and email, but we do have some additional options available to the right.

So for example, here's the placeholder text, your text here. Well, maybe in my case, I'm going to say I only need the first name of that person. So I'm going to type in first name. So that's what they're going to see in that fillable field.

Under the phone field I'm also going to include a text field but this time I'm going to add a few enhancements. Number one, I'm going to select this checkbox which says comb of characters. What that's going to do is actually break this up into different components.

It may be hard to see that at the moment, but if I come down to border color and select a darker shade now you can see as I start to enter in numbers, yes you can see that things are being added along the way. So it's going to be that much more obvious that I'm asking for a phone number. Next, let's add a couple of dropdown menus

Insert dropdown menus to form

to these questions down below. Now, up in the ribbon, you can see that we have two choices available to us, a dropdown menu and a combo box. Now some of you may be confused as to what is the difference between these two.

They're both going to look almost identical. The difference with a combo box is that you allow the user to input an option which is not listed amongst the choices.

So for example, in this question, how did you hear about us? I'm actually going to insert a combo box and on the right hand side I can add the different value options. So maybe Facebook is going to be one of my options.

Maybe I'm going to say Google search is going to be another one of the options. And maybe the last one is going to be like an advertisement, something like that. But of course there could be a variety of different options.

So what this will allow the user to do is actually choose either one of these three or they can type in their own. I'll show you how that works once we've finished publishing the form.

In this second option down below I think it's going to make more sense if I just add a traditional drop down menu. So for my value options, maybe I'm going to add Portland. Let's add Seattle and let's add Vancouver as well.

So those are going to be my three options for location. If I want to change the order and put Seattle as the first option, I can just select it and move it up. So if I want to add some choices there I can do so.

And this placeholder text, just like you saw when I inserted the name is optional. If I don't want anything there, I can leave it blank. Or I can just put in a word such as select, maybe something very simple so they can know where to click and where to choose.

Adding checkboxes and radio buttons

Next up I want to know what kind of service they are after, and in this case, I'm going to add some check boxes. Now I've already reserved a column for these check boxes.

So this is really as easy as inserting my cursor, selecting a check box, coming back down, selecting another check box and then the third one down below. So now they can choose one or more of the services that they are after.

Lastly, let's add a radio button to this final question. When would you like your service to begin? It wouldn't make sense for me to add a checkbox here because I only want them to select one of these three. So in this case, I'm going to select a radio button.

I'm going to come down here, select another radio button and then a third radio button as well. And remember, you can continue to edit along the way. So maybe I'd like to add a single space in between those just so it looks a lot more aesthetically pleasing and easier for people to fill out.

Maybe the last thing that I'll let them do is add in a date. So I'm going to add a text field here and I'm going to say today's date, maybe something like that just to remind them what I'm looking for them to fill in that last component.

Publishing your fillable PDF form

Now, once you are finished and happy with the look and feel of your form, all you need to do is come up to the file tab select download as, and we are going to select PDF. So now when I open up this PDF on my computer I can quickly and easily fill out this form.

So I'm going to enter in my first name here. I can start to fill in my phone number which of course starts with 555. And you can see how easy it was for me to see how many characters, how many numbers they are asking for.

Coming down to our combo box down below, I could say that I found it through Google search but I can always click on this field and because it's a combo box, I can enter in an additional option here. Where are you located? Located in Portland.

And then let's come down to our check boxes and I am looking for both mowing and weeding services. And when would you like your service to begin? Next month, but on second thought, the lawn is getting pretty long.

How about this month? Let's start the services this month. Now, if you enjoyed this video, you'll also enjoy the other app reviews

and tutorials right here on the Simpletivity channel.

Remember being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

What is Walling?

Trello is great and so is Notion, but sometimes you may feel a little boxed in by either of those applications.

So, in this video, I'm going to give you a tour of Walling, and show you why it may be a better solution when it comes to managing all of your ideas, tasks, and projects. Here I am within my Walling account, and I've just created a new wall which is really the equivalent of a project or a workspace.

But I really like that terminology because just like a blank wall in your office or in a room, you don't have to start in the top left and move your way to the right. You don't have to start at the top and move your way down either. Like a blank canvas, I can start anywhere.

If I just double-click in the middle of my screen, I can start with a new task, and then within that task, I can add as little or as much detail as I like. If I want to add some notes or bullet points, I can easily get started with new things, and notes, and everything else that I want to add here. But I also don't have to display it all the time,

so if I want to hide that information, I can do so. If I want to expand it I can do so here as well. And maybe, I don't want to see it there in the middle 'cause I've got a new idea to add, well, I can just drag things around. Here's my second task, for example,

the next thing that I want to do in my list, but I've got some other information that I want to include. Perhaps, in this case, the task is to review the following video. And all I have to do is, well, paste the link to that video and it will automatically embed it right in here.

And the great thing is that I can start to play and interact with this content directly from within the brick itself. Yes, that's right, these components are referred to as bricks because you can place them anywhere that you want. I'm going to drag this one over to the left here,

Easily insert content and move around

and let's just add a few more as an example. Now, Walling also makes it super easy for us to drag and drop other content into our walls. For example, if I want this image, I just need to click and drag it into my wall, I got to place it there.

And now, I've got access to that. I can turn this, and keep notes, and assign it, and give it a due date if I want to as well. In this case, perhaps I want to add this article to my wall, I just need to grab the address, drag it to my tab.

And yes, I'm going to put it here within this first area so now I've got direct access as well. Of course, keeping in mind that Walling is not going to box you in. If you want to grab and drag things to certain areas, keep them in a certain order, it is so easy to do so.

In addition, we can highlight certain bricks in a variety of ways. If I want this to stand out maybe with a particular yellow shade here, and if I want to assign some task management, I can do so as well.

In this case, maybe I want to accomplish these tasks by the end of the week, and I can assign them either to myself or to other people that I'm collaborating with. So, a very flexible way of keeping all of those ideas and all of those tasks on the same page, and unlike Trello or Notion, I can see all of those details on the same screen.

Here you can see I've got a fair amount of text, I've also got a checklist within this particular brick. But if I don't want to see all of that information, I can collapse it while I'm still staying on this page. If I need to expand it, I can still see it in the context of my other bricks and pieces of information here.

So I don't have to be going in and out, or looking at the back of a cart and going back and forth all the time. I can have all of that information available to me, and I can minimize it whenever I need to.

Viewing multiple sections on the same page

But perhaps one of the most helpful features within Walling is creating multiple sections on the same screen. Here, you can see at the top, I'm going to give this section the title of, Ideas. But down below, I'm going to create a new section called, Tasks.

I can keep this as very much a brainstorming area where myself or other members of my team can freely add those ideas.

But if I want to graduate something, I can move it down into the Task section down below, let's move that blog article idea down here as well. But unlike just having two canvas areas, we can also change the way we view that information.

If I do prefer more of a kanban style, I can do so. Here, maybe this is, In Review, maybe that's the first stage within Tasks. And here, we can say that this is the Approved stage for example so I can have that kanban feel.

But on the very same screen, I can still brainstorm and reference that information up above. You can see here on the right-hand side, the multiple types of views that we can add or change through.

If I want a calendar view, I can do that here as well, and here I can move things to maybe a little later in the week where that particular article is going to land. So, not only can we get access to multiple views,

but we can view them on the very same screen. If you want multiple kanban boards you can do that here. If you want to drag some creative images in one section and had that show up on a marketing calendar for example,

Walling vs Notion

you can do that right here as well. Now, one of the issues that I hear from many Notion users is just how linear of a system it is. Notion will force you to basically

start out in a document format, and start to list ideas top to bottom, very much like a bullet point system. But as you can see here within Walling, it gives us so much more flexibility regardless of the type of content that we have.

If I want to move things around and group things together regardless if some have video or images and others do not, I can always do that and have that flexibility. In addition, Notion creates everything inside of a database, which if you're working with numbers

and you like that type of format, that may be okay. But again, we have a lot more flexibility here. Another complaint that I hear far too frequently among Notion users is that they have to embed pages within another page, within another page.

And suddenly, on the left-hand side of their Notion account, they've got way too many things going on. Getting back to our example here, we've generated some ideas. But instead of embedding another page, I can bring it down to this additional section

where I can set it up any way that I want. And if I have another step to bring it to, no problem, I can now drag it into my calendar all without having to link or embed,

or add some new content here

Walling vs Trello

on the left hand-side of my menu. Now, if you have more experience coming from Trello, you'll appreciate how Walling can give you faster access to the information you need.

In this example, I've got a kanban style board. But you can see I've got a variety of checklists, I've got links, I even got a file which is attached over here, and I can get direct access to them without having to click in and out of cards.

So if I need to start checking things off of this checklist, I can do so from the front. If I need to access information, I don't have to go in and out, in and out to access that information.

But perhaps, the greatest advantage when comparing to Trello is the ability to manage your information and manage multiple boards on the exact same screen.

Within Trello, you can send information, you can send a card to another board, but you can never see two boards at the exact same time. In this case, if I need to graduate or move this particular piece of information, I can just drag it down below into my board here.

And I can quickly view and move information back and forth, something that makes it a lot more flexible, especially if you want a certain section or a certain board for different purposes.

You can manage your entire workflow within one screen, not having to jump back and forth or click through different menu options on the left-hand side. In addition, Walling makes it easy for us

to manage all of our reference information. If you're a Trello user, you're probably familiar with creating a card or multiple cards just to stuff full of links and documents,

something that's not actually going to move or be accomplished but you have to stick it somewhere. Here within Walling, we can create our own section where I can include files, and links, and other things that I want to reference, but something that is separate from the board itself.

And I can view this in a variety of different ways as well. Perhaps, I want more of a database view as we would be used to within Notion,

I can access that down here below as well. A great way to manage multiple types

of information but on the same page. If you'd like a more flexible and easier way

to manage all of your ideas and projects, be sure to check out Walling. Go to walling.app, or click the link in the description down below. And if you're looking for more great apps that will help you save time, be sure to watch this video next.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult, in fact, it's very simple.

Can you really build a free website?

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Can you really create a great looking website and get it hosted for free? Well, the Squarespace site says no, it's going to cost you $14 a month. The Wix website says no, as well, and even if you do pay this smaller amount, you're going to get ads on top of your site. And Weebly says it's free to use, but wait a minute, we can't even connect a custom domain to that account, that means you're going to have this somewhere in your URL. But don't fret, if you want a 100% free website builder with free hosting and a free custom domain in your first year, I've got the solution for you. Odoo is a website builder specifically designed for businesses, and yes, it is 100% free, including hosting and domain,

Getting started with Odoo

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so let's get started. All you need to do is travel to the Odoo website and we're going to select create your website. And what I love about the Odoo process is that all we need to do is give a little bit of information and then we're off to the races, we can create our website in a matter of minutes. So all I need to do is just fill in some basic information and hit that Start Now button. Now, you've probably familiar with other website builders which give you a number of templates to choose from, but you can tell that Odoo is designed specifically for businesses, because we're going to get right to the core of it, we're going to get right to your business or your needs in just a few steps. I'm going to select let's do it, and the first thing is, what kind of website are we looking for? Because remember, a business website is a little bit different than an online store, versus a blog or an event, or if you're hosting a number of courses.

Now, the great thing about Odoo is that we can layer these things on, but let's start with that business website. And all you need to do in the next step is start to type in,

are you maybe a pet store or a pet grooming business, something along those lines,

maybe I'm a consultant, I mean, I am a consultant, so why don't we go with that? I'm going to be a consultant business in this case. And what is my main objective?

Because again, different websites have different purposes. In this case, I'm going to say that it is to get leads, so I'm going to select that option here. I can choose from one of the pre-made palettes, one of the color palettes here, I'm going to go with, kind of like this color scheme here,

Adding pages and features

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but this is where I think things really stand apart from many other website builders.

I'm going to add the pages that I want or that I need, but nothing more, nothing less. Yes, I want an About Us page, a Services, and maybe I want to add a Live Chat feature, as well. I can continue to layer and add other things, but not only does this get me to my destination of creating my website that much faster, it's going to allow me to customize my website that much easier. So I'm going to say, build my website,

and on the very next screen, I get to choose my theme. Now I've got three different ones to choose from, which is ideal. I don't have time to sift through 100 or 200 different templates, these are very different and distinct. I kind of like the way that things are going on here, but I also like these diagonal blocks that we have here.

So I'm going to pick that middle one here. And it may take a few seconds, it may take up to a minute, depending on how many pages, how many different things that we selected previously, but it's going to take all of that information. Yes, it's a business website, yes, I'm a consulting business and I'm wanting to gain more leads and build me my own custom website that I can start editing immediately. And before you know it, you've got your website ready for you to fill in all of those additional details.

Editing blocks and content

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So everything from the fonts, the layout, even many of the images you see here are going to be very suitable for a business consulting business. Look at even these three pictures here, this is going to fit very well for my business. Now I can edit, and I probably will edit a number of these things, but if you want to quickly create a great looking website, this is a great place to start. Almost everything is editable just by clicking on any field. So if I want to change the title here and say, let's get started, something like that, something to get them enticed, get them ready to work with me.

But on the right hand side of the screen, this is where I think things get really special

with features that you won't find in other website builders, including such things as Squarespace and Wix, is the number of building blocks that we can add to our page.

Yeah, you're going to find a few common things, such as an image gallery, for example, or text, or heading, but what if I want something that looks a little more special? What if I want something that has something like maybe a comparisons?

All I need to do is drag that onto the left hand side of the screen, and look at this great pricing model that is just ready for me to start changing the titles. No, it's not $65, I increase that to $75, and I can start adding and editing those details right here.

Some of my other favorite blocks that I love to use, down below, for example, if I want to make a comparison of items, let's say I am selling something on my website,  I can use this items block, just going to drag it in over here, perfect. So I can have my different services listed here, as well.

Advanced editing features

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Now, another great feature of Odoo is that even when you are bringing in your building blocks and elements into your website, are the number of customizations

in which you can change when it comes to those blocks. So for example, maybe I think that this image is a little doll, so I'm going to select it in this case, and I'm going to come over here and select Shape. Now what I can do is I can pick something

that maybe jazzes things up just a little bit, right? Things that just sort of change it up

in some way, shape, or form, but I can even go one step further and change the animation of this image, as well. So for example, maybe I want it to slide down or fade in from the left when someone scrolls to this part of the website, well.

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So unlike many other free or popular website builders, which don't give you this level of customization, you can do so right here within Odoo. And don't forget, because we selected those additional pages when we first set up our website, they're here and ready for us to start digging in. So I already have an About Us page, just waiting for me to start and edit and fill in this information with things that are relevant to my company. But what if I want more than just this? What if I need some more advanced features? Well, the great thing about Odoo is that you can add on as you go.

Adding e-commerce and cart to website

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So here in the top left hand corner, I'm going to select this little app icon, you can see this little grid here in the top left hand of the page. And what that's going to do is open up the other things that are not only available to me, such as the live chat, you may remember that I said I wanted to enable a live chat for my website, but if I go over here and select Apps, I now have access to all of the Odoo apps that are available to me. Now this may be a lengthy list for you to get through, but trust me, if you're a business owner, you're going to want to work through this. Why? Because Odoo is more than just a website builder. It can be a complete solution for your business, including things such as point of sale,or subscriptions, or invoicing, or almost anything that you could use for your business. Now, in this case, I might want to filter my results to just a website in this case. So yeah, I want to add some eCommerce to my website. All I need to do is hit the Install button, and in just a few seconds, it will apply that to my account. And yes, eCommerce is absolutely free when you create a website with Odoo. That's certainly one of the nice advantages

of using a system like this, rather than getting lost with all of the many different options and having a service try to get you to install or try and get you to engage

with things you really don't need, you can only bring in those components as you need to. So for example, I haven't created any products here, so all I need to do is select New in the top right hand corner of the screen. And in this case, we're not adding a new page to our website, we're going to be adding a new product.

Let's call this product A Cool T-shirt, the type of t-shirt that every single person on the planet wants to buy. So immediately, I can start and upload my image here on the left hand side, change my pricing and how pricing is displayed, and everything from the theme. Maybe I want a different button color on my cart, then something else. I have many of the same blocks and structures and features available to me here on the right hand side, but now I have a fully functioning cart, and eCommerce suite as a part of my website.

Adding business apps to your website

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But remember, you always have access to the full app library. So for example, if I'm focusing on sales, maybe I want to add a CRM system directly as a part of my website. So when someone signs up within my website, I don't have to create some type of connection or API to another system, I can do it right here. Maybe I want to set up a subscription service or manage rentals right here from within my website, right within my Odoo account, I can do so here, as well.

Odoo support and history

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Now, if you're worried that this sounds a little too good to be true, or that you've never heard of Odoo before, don't be. Odoo has been in business for more than 17 years with more than 1,700 employees and 7 million users. That's a lot of sevens, but seven is a lucky number, and here is your lucky number. 100% free website builde with free website hosting and a free custom domain. To take advantage of this, be sure to click the link in the description down below. And if you're wanting to create a free mobile app for your business, be sure to check out this video and playlist next.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.