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Outlook email management techniques, Part 1: Basics

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4th Nov 2008
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Control email with Microsoft OutlookEmail overload is a chronic ailment of the information age. In this two-part series Microsoft Office expert Simon Hurst suggests some antidotes, starting with tips on screen layout, searching and other simple, time-saving tricks.

The way people deal with emails can be as individual as the way they organise or disorganise their real desktop. Some people file every email neatly as soon as it arrives, while others end up with an inbox the size of a small central European country. Increasingly, email management is included within integrated document management systems but, for individuals or organisations that have to manage their email for themselves, Outlook includes many features than can help handle email more efficiently, or indeed do some of the work on your behalf. This introductory article looks at some of the basics, including how you view and search for emails and some simple hints and tips for showing your inbox who's boss.

Seeing your emails the way you want to see them

It's worth getting to grips with the options in the Outlook View menu and the view window itself. Starting with very basic sorting, if you view your emails using the normal 'table' view then clicking on a column heading will sort the displayed items in the order of that column. If the column is already sorted by the contents of the column, the click will reverse the sort order from ascending to descending or vice versa. You can tell which column is currently being used for sorting because it will contain a small arrowhead - down for descending and up for ascending. You can also click on a column and drag it to a different position or remove it altogether by dragging it outside the column heading row.

You can access a wide range of view settings if you right-click on a column heading rather than left-click. The 'Arrange By' option lets you view emails in additional ways such as by Conversation or by the email account from which they were sent. Perhaps more importantly, the 'Show in Groups' option allows you to group your emails in a variety of categories. For example, if you turn on Show in Groups and arrange by size, emails will be grouped in categories such as Enormous (>5MB) and Medium (25 - 100KB):

Clicking on the plus or minus sign next to a group heading will expand the group to show all the individual items (plus) or collapse it to just show the headings (minus). Right-click on a plus or minus to Collapse or Expand all the groups in one go. A quick way of finding all the emails from a particular correspondent is to arrange by From and then type in (reasonably quickly) the first few letters of the required From name. If the items are just sorted by the from address, without being grouped, then typing in the first few letters will move to the first matching item in the list.

If you enjoy a bit of grouping, then you can go even further by selecting the Group by Box option from the right-click menu. This displays a grouping area above the column headings into which you can drag any of your existing headings to create a hierarchy of up to four grouping levels. Here we have grouped by whether or not the email has an attachment, within date sent, within subject, within 'from' address:

Outlook Group by Box option

From the right-click menu, you can display the Field Chooser which allows you to drag any of dozens of different mail fields into the column area to include them in the current view. Finally at the bottom of the right-click menu you will find the Customize Current View option which provides access to the detailed view configuration options such as the font used to identify emails that have been read.

As well as the normal view listing your email fields in a table, the View menu includes a Timeline option which displays emails arranged along a daily timeline. View-Current View-Define Views lets you set up your own views, including choosing the View Type. As well as Table and Timeline, there is a Day/Week/Month view which can display emails in the same format as the Calendar displays appointments.

Searching through the email haystack

One of the most common requirements for email management is to locate a particular email based on a word or phrase in the subject line or body. This can be particularly traumatic if you use your inbox as a filing system and need to search through thousands of stored emails. Searching is one of the areas of greatest improvement in Outlook 2007. Prior to the integration of Windows Desktop search into Outlook, searching was a painful process, usually involving searching different folders individually and slowly. In fact it was usually much easier to search your emails using a separate desktop search package. The Instant Search feature in Outlook 2007 lets you maintain an index to emails held in several different Outlook folders and to search all mail items in one go:

Because of the use of indexing, Outlook 2007 searches are generally close to instant.

Outlook also includes an Advanced Find option (Tools-Find-Advanced Find. Outlook 2007: Tools, Instant Search, Advanced Find) which allows you to carry out much more involved searches using multiple criteria and being able to include attributes such as date, category and size. In addition, more recent versions of Outlook have included "virtual" search folders. These are folders that are included in a special Search Folders section of the normal folder list, and display items like any other folder, but instead of requiring items to be specifically added to the folder, the contents are based on a saved search:

Hints and tips - some personal favourites

Reminder - One of the Outlook options I find most useful is the ability to quickly add a follow up flag or reminder time to an email by right-clicking on it. After choosing Follow Up from the right-click menu you can either choose a predefined or custom follow up flag to add the email to your To-do list, and/or add a Reminder that will appear in your Reminders window at the designated time. Note than you can type a range of phrases for the reminder date such as tomorrow, next week or, as below, next Thursday and Outlook will convert them to proper dates:

By using follow ups and reminders in this way, I can deal with all new emails instantly, either by deleting or replying or by making sure there is a reminder set up for it.

Alerts - I was once given some very good advice on email alerts, advice which, to my discredit, I have studiously avoided implementing, but often wished I had. The suggestion was to turn off email alerts so that you deal with emails when it is convenient to you, rather than letting emails continually intrude into your working day. If you are strong-willed enough to turn off your alerts, you can find the setting via Tools-Options-Preferences section-E-mail Options button-Advanced E-mail Options, 'When new items arrive in my Inbox' section.

Signatures and stationery - The Tools-Options-Mail Format tab includes the Stationery option which lets you personalise the appearance of your emails based on built-in themes and/or a choice of fonts which can vary according to whether you are composing a new email or replying to or forwarding an email. There is also a Signature option in the same place that provides for the set up of multiple signatures and the ability to assign particular signatures to different types of emails sent from different email accounts. If you end all your emails in the same way, it obviously makes sense to build your closing lines and paragraphs into an automatic signature so you don't have to type it each time.

Coming next week: Part 2 - advanced Outlook management

In the second part of this guide to managing email, we'll look at some of the more advanced features in Outlook that help control email and automate its management ,including the Organise screen, Outlook Rules and Alerts, and templates.

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By AnonymousUser
07th Nov 2008 12:08

No need for these Tips
Use Xobni (www.Xobni.com) a free add-on to Outlook that does all that's in the Tips and more with a few simple clicks (maybe a touch of hyperbole in that comment :)

If it's good enough for Mr. Gates to use it's good enough for me!

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By User deleted
05th Nov 2008 03:08

How to do email management on SharePoint
Greeting from nSynergy. It's very useful for our enterprise and end users.

Here, we use a great tool called myDocs which is an add-in for Outlook, that lets us view SharePoint Document Libraries by clicking standard Outlook folders, and drag emails into these folders to upload into SharePoint.

For more information on this, you can visit http://www.nsynergy.com/Products/myDocs/Pages/About_myDocs.aspx or email to [email protected].

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