Organizing the Inbox

Description of the video:

Many times an email message will require some action on our part.

If we are receiving a large number of messages, it can sometimes be difficult to remember which messages we have acted on and which messages still need our attention.

Outlook has features which can allow a user to indicate messages that need to be followed up on at a later date.

We can mark a message as unread or read, categorize the message, or flag a message.

All of these features can be found in the Tags group on the Home tab, let's use each of these features now.

Let's begin by marking a message as unread, notice that unread messages are in bold blue font while messages that we have read are in a smaller and darker font.

This difference gives us a quick, visual indication of read and unread messages.

I'm going to open the second message, if I close the message now it will no longer be bold and blue.

But what if I know I'm going to need to act on this message sometime soon?

I can change the appearance of the message back to unread, so that I am less likely to overlook it in the future.

As is often the case there are several ways to accomplish this, for now in the Tags group I'm going to click Mark Unread.

There is no noticeable change to the message, let's close it and see what has happened in the Inbox.

The message is once again bold and blue.

It is also possible to right click any message and choose Mark as Unread from the drop down menu.

Another way to organize our Inbox and to give visual cues as to the importance or subject of a message is to color code our messages using Categories.

To open the Color Categories dialog box, I'm going to right click on a message in my Inbox, point to Categorize and click All Categories.

There are six default color categories, we can add new categories or rename these, let's rename one.

Click once on Orange Category and click the rename button.

The name is now highlighted and we can change it.

I'm going to call this category "Discuss with the admin coordinator" and press Enter.

So far I have just changed the name, I haven't applied this category to a message, to do this I'm going to click the checkbox and then click OK.

Now there is a small orange square to the right of the message in the Inbox, and if I double click to open a message there is an orange bar across the top of the message window.

Applying a flag to a message in Outlook can give a visual reminder to follow up on it in some way.

we can use flags with default dates such as today tomorrow and next week or customize our flags with specific dates.

to begin let's open a message.

To flag the message for later follow up here in the tags group click the follow up button and click next week there is now a note above the message listing the follow weapon.

Let's go ahead and close the message.

In the central viewing area we can see a red flag next to the email this flag indicates that we need to follow up on this message next week.

When we finish this task we can mark the message to indicate that it is no longer something that needs our attention we don't have to open the message to do this just right click the message point to follow up and click Mark complete.

Agree check mark replaces the flag icon this is a visual sign that the task has been completed.

Let's create a customized follow up flag will use a different message for this task we don't need to open the message to flag it simply click to select it in the tags group click the follow up button and then click custom.

Custom dialog box opens the phrase follow up is in the flag to field we can modify this to suit our needs press and drag the text follow up.

And type print schedules.

Let's also creator reminder for this task click the reminder checkbox when we click that checkbox the date and time fields become active I'm going to set a date a few days out of course depending on when you're watching this video the date will be different to accept this reminder click OK now outlook will pop up a reminder that will tell me to print schedules for this meeting.

Description of the video:

Different ways we can arrange our inbox.

By such as are an order by the date they were received and grouped by units of time such as today yesterday and last week this can easily be changed.

First let's move to the view tap any arrangement group we can see a few of the group options to see more we can click the more but.

Now we can see all of the ways we can group our messages by the size of the message messages that have attachments even messages that are flagged as high importance notice that the showing groups option is checked if we the messages are still in order by date received but the groups today yesterday last week and such are gone.

Let's check the show in groups option again to take groups returning however we want to group by sender not date click the from button now the messages are in alphabetical order by the person who sent the message and it is easy to find messages from a specific person.

Before we move on let's return to the date grouping in the arrangement group click the date but.

Another Outlook feature that can be used to organize the inbox is column headers we can add or remove column headers and sort messages by a specific pattern.

Like he felt the inbox just placed the following text will column headers from subject received size in categories.

Depending on the way outlook is configured there may be additional headers as well as icons including important reminders and attachment he headers may not all be visible if the reading pain is open to close the reading pane click the reading pane button and click off now that we can see more of our inbox let's add a new column header.

If you are already on the View tab go ahead and move.

There in the arrangement group click the Add columns button the show columns dialog box opens from here we can add columns from several different categories by default the options in the frequently used fields are listed let's change this to all mail fields click the dropdown arrow next to frequently used fields and choose all mail fields let's say after scanning our inbox we want to be able to see who was copied on each message we can add the C.C. field to our column header bar.

In the available column section click.

Now that it is selected we need to click the Add button to move it to the column header bar we could use to move up and move down buttons to rearrange the order of our column headers but for today we'll leave them as they are to accept this change column header bar click the OK button.

And now there is a C.C. column in our.