In: Root » Computers and technology » Microsoft office » How to organise my email messages in Outlook 2003
If you’re one of those unfortunate souls who receives 20, 30, 40 or more e-mail messages daily, you owe it to yourself and your sanity to figure out a way to organize e-mail messages so that you keep the ones you want, you can find e-mail messages easily, and you can quickly eradicate the e-mail messages that don’t matter to you. These pages explain the numerous ways to manage and organize e-mail messages. Pick and choose the techniques that work for you, or else try to convince the Postal Service that you are entitled to your own ZIP Code and you should be paid to handle all the e-mail you receive. In a nutshell, here are all the techniques for organizing e-mail messages: - Change views in the Inbox window: Open the Current View drop-down list on the Advanced toolbar and choose Last Seven Days, Unread Messages in This Folder, or another view to shrink the number of e-mail messages in the Inbox window. - Rearrange, or sort, messages in the Inbox window: If necessary, click the Reading Pane button to remove the Reading pane and see column heading names in the Inbox window. Then click a column heading name to rearrange, or sort, messages by sender name, subject, receipt date, size, or flagged status. See the section, “Reading your e-mail in the Inbox window,” earlier in this article, for details. - Delete the messages that you don’t need: Before they clutter the Inbox, delete messages you’re sure you don’t need as soon as you get them. To delete a message, select it and click the Delete button, press the Delete key, or choose Edit -> Delete. - Move messages to different folders: Create a folder for each project you’re involved with and, when an e-mail message about a project arrives, move it to a folder. See “All about E-Mail Folders” later in this article. - Move messages automatically to different folders as they arrive: See “Earmarking messages as they arrive,” later in this article. - Flag messages: Flag a message with a color-coded flag to let you know to follow up on it. See the following section, “Flagging e-mail messages.” - Have Outlook remind you to reply to a message: Instruct Outlook to make the Reminder message box appear at a date and time in the future so that you know to reply to a message. See “Being reminded to take care of e-mail messages” later in this article. - Make liberal use of the Find command: You can always find a stray message with the Find command. To quickly find all the messages from one person, right-click an e-mail message from the person and choose Find All -> Messages from Sender. Choose Find All -> Related Messages to find messages that are part of the same conversation (the original message and all replies). Flagging e-mail messages One way to call attention to e-mail messages is to flag them, you can make color-coded flags appear in the Inbox window. You can use red flags, for example, to mark urgent messages and green flags to mark the not-so-important ones. Which color you flag a message with is up to you. Outlook offers six colors. - Starting in the Inbox folder: Select the message and choose Actions -> Follow Up and a flag color, or right-click and choose Follow Up and a flag color. To “unflag” a message, right-click it and choose Follow Up -> Clear Flag. You can also right-click and choose Follow Up -> Flag Complete to put a check mark where the flag used to be and remind yourself that you’re done with the message. Later in this article, “Earmarking messages as they arrive” explains how you can flag messages automatically as messages arrive. Being reminded to take care of e-mail messages If you know your way around the Calendar and Tasks windows, you know that the Reminders message box appears when an appointment or meeting is about to take place or a task deadline is about to fall. What you probably don’t know, however, is that you can put the Reminders dialog box to work in regard to e-mail messages. Follow these steps to remind yourself to reply to an e-mail message or simply to prod yourself into considering an e-mail message in the future: 1. Select the message and choose Actions -> Follow Up -> Add Reminder. You see the Flag for Follow Up dialog box. You can also right-click a message and choose Follow Up -> Add Reminder to see the dialog box. 2. On the Flag To drop-down list, choose an option that describes why the e-mail message needs your attention later on, or, if none of the options suits you, enter a description in the Flag To text box. The description you choose or enter will appear above the message in the Reading Pane and appear as well in the Reminders message box. 3. Choose the date and time that you want the Reminders message box to appear. The Reminders message box will appear 15 minutes before the date and time you enter. If you enter a date but not a time, Outlook assigns the default time, 5:00 P.M. 4. Click OK. Items flagged this way appear in red text with a red flag. When the reminder falls due, you see the Reminder message box, where you can click the Open Item button to open the e-mail message. Earmarking messages as they arrive To help you organize messages better, Outlook gives you the opportunity to mark messages in various ways and even move messages automatically as they arrive to folders apart from the Inbox folder. Being able to move messages immediately to a folder is a great way to keep e-mail concerning different projects separate. If you belong to a newsgroup that sends many messages a day, being able to move those messages instantly into their own folder is a real blessing, because newsgroup messages have a habit of cluttering the Inbox folder. To earmark messages for special treatment, Outlook has you create socalled rules. To create a rule, start by trying out the Create Rule command, and if that doesn’t work, test-drive the more powerful Rules Wizard. Simple rules with the Create Rule command Use the Create Rule command to be alerted when e-mail arrives from a certain person or the Subject line of a message includes a certain word. You can make the incoming message appear in the New Items Alerts window, play a sound when the message arrives, or move the message automatically to a certain folder. Follow these steps to create a simple rule: 1. If you want to be alerted when e-mail arrives from a certain person, find an e-mail message from the person, right-click it, and choose Create Rule; otherwise, right-click any message and choose Create Rule. You see the Create Rule dialog box. 2. Fill in the dialog box and click OK. These commands are self-explanatory. Another way to create a simple rule is to choose Tools -> Organize. The Ways to Organize Inbox panel appears. Starting here, you can move messages from a certain person to a folder or color-code messages from a certain person as they arrive. Creating complex rules with the Rules Wizard Use the Rules Wizard to create complex rules that earmark messages with words in the message body or earmark messages sent to distribution lists. You can also create a rule to flag messages automatically or delete a conversation (the original message and all replies). To run the Rules Wizard, click the Rules and Alerts button or choose Tools -> Rules and Alerts. You see the Rules and Alerts dialog box. Click the New Rule button and keep clicking Next in the Rules Wizard dialog boxes as you complete the two steps to create a rule: - Step 1: Choose the rule you want to create or how you want to be alerted in the New Item Alerts message box. - Step 2: Click a hyperlink to open a dialog box and describe the rule. For example, click the Specific Words link to open the Search Text dialog box and enter the words that earmark a message. Click the Specified link to open the Rules and Alerts dialog box and choose a folder to move the messages to. You must click each link in the Step 2 box to describe the rule. To edit a rule, double-click it in the Rules and Alerts dialog box and complete Steps 1 and 2 all over again. All about E-Mail Folders Where Outlook e-mail is concerned, everything has its place and everything has its folder. E-mail messages land in the Inbox folder when they arrive. Messages you write go to the Outbox folder until you send them. Copies of e-mail messages you send are kept in the Sent folder. And you can create folders of your own for storing e-mail. If you’re one of those unlucky people who receive numerous e-mail messages each day, you owe it to yourself to create folders in which to organize e-mail messages. Create one folder for each project you’re working on. That way, you know where to find e-mail messages when you want to reply to or delete them. These pages explain how to move e-mail messages between folders and create folders of your own for storing e-mail. Moving e-mail messages to different folders Click to select the message you want to move and use one of these techniques to move an e-mail message to a different folder: - With the Move To Folder button: Click the Move To Folder button and, on the drop-down list that appears, select a folder. The Move To Folder button is located on the Standard toolbar to the right of the Print button. - With the Move To Folder command: Choose Edit -> Move to Folder, press Ctrl+Shift+V, or right-click and choose Move to Folder. You see the Move Items dialog box. Select a folder and click OK. - By dragging: Click the Folder List button, if necessary, to see all the folders; then drag the e-mail message into a different folder. Earlier in this article, “Earmarking messages as they arrive” explains how to move e-mail messages automatically to folders as they are sent to you. Creating a new folder for storing e-mail Follow these steps to create a new folder: 1. Choose File -> New -> Folder. You see the Create New Folder dialog box. You can also open this dialog box by pressing Ctrl+Shift+E or right-clicking a folder in the Folder List and choosing New Folder. 2. Select the folder that the new folder will go inside. For example, to create a first-level folder, select Personal Folders. 3. Enter a name for the folder. 4. Click OK. To delete a folder you created, select it and click the Delete button. To rename a folder, right-click it, choose Rename, and enter a new name. |
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