Microsoft Outlook Tips & Tricks

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Supports Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, Microsoft Outlook 2002/XP, and Microsoft Outlook 2000 unless noted

• Handout: Outlook Keyboard Shortcuts
• Tips & Tricks: E-Mail
• How-To Articles: Microsoft Outlook & E-Mail

• Organizing the Outlook Inbox
• Writing E-Mail Messages
• Reading E-Mail Messages

Turn off Personalized Menus and Toolbars in Microsoft Outlook
Personalized Menus and Toolbars is a terrible feature which limits your initial view to select toolbar buttons and menu commands. I recommend that you turn off this option in all Microsoft Office programs. The steps are the same for all, but Outlook requires an additional first step:

1. Create a new Outlook message.
2. Choose Tools > Customize, and click on the Options tab.
3. For the section, Personalized Menus and Toolbars, check/select the options "Show Formatting and Standard toolbars on two rows" and "Always show full menus." Note: in Outlook 2000, you will need to UNcheck each of these options (the descriptions are a bit different too).
4. Pick Close and also close your new message without saving.

Schedule Your Work with Outlook
How often have you sat down to read and answer e-mail only to look at the clock and see that hours have passed? Is this task taking you away from more important parts of your business?

If you don't already, schedule working with your e-mail during your less productive times which might be the beginning and ending of the day or during lunch when e-mail won't take you away from the top work priorities. Then, during the rest of the day, limit your e-mail activities to key contacts and action items.

Microsoft Outlook: Organizing the Inbox

Streamline with Categories
Categories help to organize active messages in your Inbox. To group related messages with categories:

1. Edit > Categories > Master Category List.
2. Add new categories to describe groupings for your business or personal e-mail.
3. OK twice to save and exit out of Categories.

Categories can be applied to e-mail, calendar entries, tasks, and other Outlook items. Your list of categories won't be in effect until you apply a category to a message or filter incoming messages to a specific category. Then, to organize your e-mail by category, create a view that groups by category (described below).

Apply Categories to Current Messages
Categories can also be assigned to existing messages:

1. Just right-click on any message, left-click on Categories...
2. Assign a category by checking one or more of the choices in your list.
3. OK to apply.

Groups of messages can be more quickly categorized by sorting and selecting first, and then by following the steps above.

Displaying Messages by Category
To more easily organize messages, customize the View of your Inbox. For instance, you can add or re-order displayed fields such as sender, date, subject, size, and more.

To view messages grouped by category (Microsoft Office Outlook 2003):

1. View > Arrange by > Categories
   To view messages grouped by category

(Microsoft Outlook 2002 and 2000):

1. View > Current View... > Group By...
2. Customize Current View...
3. Choose Group items by and pick Categories from the list.
4. OK twice to apply.

Now your Inbox is organized by useful categories which make it easier to focus on your most important messages.

Filter with Rules
Rules are instructions or filters that automatically categorize messages based on conditions that you set. As new messages are received in Microsoft Outlook, right-click on the message and left-click on the command "Create Rule." (In Outlook 2000, choose Tools > Rules Wizard..., and pick New to create a rule).

Pick specific conditions, such as the sender e-mail address, and assign to an existing category, such as "Clients." New, incoming messages will be assigned a category based on the new rule.

Color Code to Identify Key Messages
Color code key messages to quickly identify e-mail from your most important contacts such as clients, staff, your boss, or team members. This has been a huge timesaver me and helps to insure that I don't miss key messages.

To color code in Outlook:

1. Highlight a message from a contact.
2. Choose Tools > Organize. This opens a new window at the top of your Inbox window.
3. Choose the option Using Colors (found at the left of the window).
4. Pick from option, Choose color for selected message and Apply Color.
5. Additionally, you can also pick Show messages sent only to me as a way to highlight messages that are not part of a group distribution.
6. Optionally, choose Automatic Formatting (upper-right corner of window) to view coloring choices or even to apply a different font.
7. Close the Organize window when you are done. All messages in your Inbox from the selected contact are now color coded.

You can color code e-mail messages in Outlook 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you don't see it, the Organize command might
be hidden due to a terrible "feature" called Personalized Menus
and Toolbars which limits your initial view to select toolbar
buttons and menu commands. >>How to Turn off Personalized Menus and Toolbars.

Easily Sort Outlook Messages
To quickly sort your e-mail messages, click once on the column heading for the new order you want. For instance, to sort messages by the sender, click once on the Sender heading. By clicking twice on a column heading, the sort order changes from ascending (A-Z) order to descending (Z-A) order.

Other sort options include subject and date. Or, you can sort a list of e-mail messages alphabetically by sender and then by subject. (The abbreviations RE and FW in the Subject box are ignored when you sort messages alphabetically by subject.)

Microsoft Outlook: Writing E-Mail Messages

Send e-mail to a distribution list minus a few names
It can be a real pain when you have a large distribution list and you want to remove just a few names from the list before sending an email. Perhaps you're having a surprise party for a co-worker--you certainly don't want to send the email to her. Well, removing her from the email and still using your distribution list isn't difficult to do. In Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007, you can expand a distribution list by clicking on the plus sign that precedes the list's name once you've entered it in the To, Cc, or Bcc field. From there, you can simply delete any names that you'd like.

Expand Distribution List to Delete Specific Names

Create an E-Mail Signature
If you send a few basic messages over and over again, such as a reply to a request for product information, consider saving those responses as signatures that can be inserted into e-mail so that you don’t have to retype them.

For a majority of messages, create a default signature that includes your full name, position or title, phone, website, and other contact information. To create signatures in Microsoft Outlook:

1. Tools > Options, click on Mail Format tab.
2. Click on Signatures..., choose New...
3. Type a name for the new signature, enter content for signature and choose Font... and Paragraph... to format the text of the signature.
4. Finish to complete the signature.
5. Under the Mail Format tab, optionally specify your choice for "Signature for new messages" which sets your default signature for every time you create an e-mail message.
6. Choose OK.

Inserting a Signature
To add a signature to a new message or response, choose Insert > Signature and pick a signature from the list.

Quick Spelling Check
To quickly check the spelling in a message, press [F7].

Automatically Prevent Spelling Errors
To improve your outgoing Outlook correspondence, turn on the automatic spell check feature. From the Outlook menu, choose Tools > Options, and then click on the Spelling tab. Next, check the option, Always Check Spelling Before Sending, and then click OK. Outlook automatically checks the spelling in a message whenever you click the Send button.

Microsoft Outlook: Reading E-Mail Messages

Move or remove the Reading Pane in Outlook
One of the changes to the appearance of Outlook 2003 is the Reading Pane. To move it, click on the Mail icon in the Navigation Pane. Then, choose View > Reading Pane > Bottom from the Outlook menu bar. To remove the Reading Pane entirely, select View > Reading Pane > Off.

The Reading Pane can also be quickly turned on or off with a toolbar button found on the Advanced toolbar (don't be put off by the name--you should turn this on for Outlook). To display the Advanced toolbar, View > Toolbars > Advanced.

Easy Navigation
Stop wasting time by moving in and out of each message and
start applying simple navigation tricks. Select a message in the Outlook Inbox with the up or down arrow key. Then press [Enter] to open the message. To move to the next message directly from the current e-mail, look for toolbar buttons with arrow keys or press [Ctrl] + > for the next message and [Ctrl] + < for the previous e-mail.

Quick Way to Close Message or Other Item
Press [Esc] to close an open message and return to the Inbox or previous window.

Does the Outlook Reading Pane Send a Read Receipt?
The result depends on how you view your messages. The default is that a message is marked and displayed as read if you select it and then move to another message.

Use the following options to determine whether items displayed in the Reading Pane will be marked as read or left as unread. Even if you view an item in the Reading Pane, you may want to leave the item marked as unread as a reminder to return to it later.

1. From Outlook 2003, choose Tools > Options.
2. Select the Other tab from the dialog box.
3. Choose Reading Pane Options and choose from these options:

• To mark items that you view as read, select the Mark item displayed in Reading Pane as read check box.
  
  To set a delay for when the item is marked as read, type a number in the Wait [n] seconds before marking item as read text box. The default is five seconds.
   
• To mark an item as read after you move away from it, pick Mark items you view in the Reading Pane as read after you select another item in the list.
   
• To leave items you view in the Reading Pane marked as unread, select Do not automatically mark items as read.

4. Press OK twice to finish.

Do You Want to Send a Read Receipt?
Some Outlook users like to turn on Read Receipts for their e-mail. This way, any time their e-mail is read by another Outlook user, they will (usually) be notified that their e-mail reached its destination. While some find this feature useful, you can choose how you want to respond to these requests.

1. From Outlook 2003 (and others), choose Tools > Options.
2. Select the Preferences tab from the dialog box.
3. Click the button E-Mail Options.
4. Next, click the Tracking Options button.
5. Click one of the three radio button options: "Always send a response", "Never send a response", "Ask me before sending a response."
6. Click OK three times to finish.

>>More Tips & Tricks

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