Content
After you finish processing your messages, you should have a clean Inbox and can switch your focus to your calendar and tasks. If you find that you are repeatedly applying the same categories and flags, create a new Quick Step that flags, categorizes, and files. Quick Steps give you the ability to perform multiple actions in one click. They are a useful tool to help you keep a clean inbox flush DNS and re-sync Outlook and to generally be more efficient at using Outlook.
How can I manage complicated tasks?
This guide represents our advice on how to get the most out of Outlook. A few core scenarios are covered to help you leverage Outlook into your information management needs. Go to File → Office Account → Update Options → Update Now.
I have 10 minutes: What should I read first in my Inbox?
- Each additional person you invite to a meeting adds to the complexity of the meeting, making it harder to control.
- If your corporate policy dictates that you have multiple folders for each type of item, follow that policy.
- These statistics show the importance of efficiently managing your inbox.
- Looking at the whole picture of your time and your tasks will help you to prioritize important work over less urgent tasks.
- Search folders are useful for gathering information from across different mail and RSS folders.
- You can’t read every message you receive — nor should you try to.
- The tool that you use to collaborate during a meeting depends on the location and access of your participants.
Any time you find yourself repeatedly doing the same steps in Outlook, try creating a Quick Step. Collapse the top-level Contact Group folder so that you aren’t distracted by the unread messages in the folders beneath it. For example, we saw how to use Quick Steps, keyboard shortcuts, and calendar reminders.
Fix Tech Issues Fast
Messages to a Contact Group that only occasionally contain useful or interesting content, regardless of frequency, should have a rule and a folder. It’s a best practice to have a central repository for your messages, so that you can refer to them after repair corrupted OST in Outlook you’ve “dealt” with them. The Navigation Pane folder list should be reserved for folders you use often. If it’s filled with folders you don’t even recognize, move all mail into the reference folder and delete your existing folders.
Advanced: How do I create a Search Folder for email messages?
I don’t manage his inbox but I did help modern authentication troubleshooting him get the Stack method set up and he’s blown away by how awesome it is, so now thinks I’m an Outlook wizard. I’m decent but certainly not an expert – so I figure before I actually lead a training I should brush up. It’s liberating to depend on Outlook instead of your overtaxed brain to keep track of your tasks.
That’s not to say that there isn’t a need for browsing through messages that are all on a particular topic or project. Outlook provides better tools — such as categories and search folders — so you can search effectively. By viewing your messages in conversation view, you can easily see which conversations have had the most back-and-forth discussion. In those cases, you might want to read and respond to only the last message in the conversation.
For example, there might be a lengthy series of messages where the last one simply states, “Thanks, that answers my question,” so you can just delete the whole conversation. Sometimes you can’t find a message by only searching in your reference folder alone — it could be a message that you sent or it could have been misfiled. In these cases, start by searching in any folder (Inbox, 1-Reference, etc.), then select the drop down menu from the search box, and then select Current Mailbox. The reality is that if you have a day filled with meetings, you have less time to complete tasks and write messages, so move tasks to other days. The goal of organizing your Outlook is to reduce the amount of unnecessary “noise” in your Inbox and to make the most important items bubble to the top.