14. Organize your Inbox

In this chapter

Display and manage conversations

Arrange messages by specific attributes

Categorize items

Organize messages in folders

Practice files

No practice files are necessary to complete the practice tasks in this chapter.

You can use Outlook 2016 to manage multiple email accounts, including multiple Microsoft Exchange Server accounts and their associated contacts, calendars, and other elements. Even if you use Outlook only for sending and receiving email messages, it can be challenging to keep track of them and to locate specific information that you’re looking for. Fortunately, Outlook provides many simple yet useful features that you can use to organize messages and other Outlook items and to quickly find information you need.

By default, the message list displays the email messages you receive in order by time and date of receipt (from newest to oldest). You can arrange, group, and sort messages in Outlook to keep conversation threads together and to help you quickly determine which are the most important, decide which can be deleted, and locate any that need an immediate response.

You can simplify the process of organizing Outlook items of all kinds by assigning categories to related items. You can then arrange, sort, filter, and search for Outlook items by category.

This chapter guides you through procedures related to working with Conversation view, arranging messages by specific attributes, organizing items by using color categories, and organizing messages in folders.

The conversation header provides information about the messages within the conversation, including the number of unread messages and whether one or more messages includes an attachment, is categorized, or is flagged for follow up.

You can display differing levels of messages within a conversation, as follows:

Click the conversation header or the Expand button once to display the most recent message in the Reading Pane and to display all the unique messages in the conversation (the most recent message in each thread) in the message list. Reading only these messages will give you all the information that exists in the conversation.

Click the Expand button again to display all messages in the conversation, including messages from your Sent Items folder.

Benefits of displaying messages as conversations include the following:

When you receive a message that is part of a conversation, the entire conversation moves to the top of your Inbox and the new message appears when you click the conversation header.

A blue vertical line and bold blue subject indicate that a conversation includes unread messages. If there are multiple unread messages, the number is indicated in parentheses following the subject. The senders of the unread messages are listed below the subject.

Sent messages are available from within the conversation. (They remain stored in the Sent Items folder, but you can read and open them from the Inbox.) This is particularly convenient when you need to access sent attachments that aren’t available in the replies.

You can manage all the messages that are part of a conversation as a group. Clicking the conversation headers selects all the messages in the conversation. You can move or categorize all the messages as a unit.

You can modify the way Conversation view displays messages to suit the way you work by turning the following display settings on or off:

Show Messages from Other Folders By default, Conversation view displays messages stored in any folder, including sent messages that are stored in the Sent Items folder. (Within an expanded conversation, sent messages are indicated by an italic font.) You can turn off this setting to display only messages from the current folder.

Show Senders Above the Subject By default, when a conversation is collapsed, the conversation header displays the names of all the conversation participants above the conversation subject; when the conversation is fully expanded, the conversation header displays only the subject. This setting reverses the order of the information in the conversation header; the names of the conversation participants are displayed above the conversation subject. In some cases, such as when Outlook displays a message on the second line, the subject might not be visible at all.

Always Expand Conversations This setting causes Outlook to display all messages in a conversation when you click the Expand Conversation button or conversation header once.

Use Classic Indented View This setting causes Outlook to indent older messages within individual message threads to show the progression of the thread. This setting is not as effective as the default setting for displaying split conversations, because a message might be at the root of multiple branches but can appear only once in the message list.

Outlook tracks conversations by subject regardless of whether you display the messages in Conversation view. You can use the following features to manage conversations:

Ignore Conversation This command moves the selected conversation and any related messages you receive in the future directly to the Deleted Items folder.

Clean Up Conversation This command deletes redundant messages—messages whose text is wholly contained within later messages—from a conversation or folder. By default, Outlook doesn’t clean up categorized, flagged, or digitally signed messages. You can modify conversation clean-up settings when you clean up conversations, on the Mail page of the Outlook Options dialog box. For information about modifying mail settings, see “Configure Office and Outlook options” in Chapter 12, “Customize Outlook,” of Microsoft Outlook 2016 Step by Step by Joan Lambert (Microsoft Press, 2015).

To turn Conversation view on or off for one or all folders

1. Do either of the following:

• On the View tab, in the Messages group, select or clear the Show as Conversations check box.

• Click the message list header, and then on the menu, click Show as Conversations.

2. In the Microsoft Outlook message box, indicate the scope of the change by clicking All mailboxes or This folder.

To display the messages within a conversation

1. Click the conversation header or the Expand button once to display the unique messages in the conversation.

2. Click the Expand button again to display all messages in the conversation.

To select all the messages in a conversation

1. Click the conversation header once.

To change the way conversations are displayed in the message list

1. On the View tab, in the Messages group, click Conversation Settings. On the Conversation Settings menu, a check mark indicates that an option is turned on.

2. On the Conversation Settings menu, click a setting to turn it on or off.

To remove redundant messages from a conversation

1. Select any message in the conversation.

2. On the Home tab, in the Delete group, click Clean Up, and then on the menu, click Clean Up Conversation.

3. If the Clean Up Conversation message box opens, do the following:

a. If you want to instruct Outlook to clean up conversations without requesting confirmation, select the Don’t show this message again check box.

b. If you want to change the conversation clean-up settings, click Settings to display the Mail page of the Outlook Options dialog box. Scroll to the Conversation Clean Up section, and change any of the settings you want to. Then click OK.

c. Click Clean Up.

To remove redundant messages from a folder

1. Select any message in the folder.

2. On the Home tab, in the Delete group, click Clean Up, and then on the menu, click Clean Up Folder or Clean Up Folder & Subfolders.

3. If the Clean Up Folder message box opens, do the following:

a. If you want to instruct Outlook to clean up folders without requesting confirmation, select the Don’t show this message again check box.

b. If you want to change the conversation clean-up settings, click Settings to display the Mail page of the Outlook Options dialog box. Scroll to the Conversation Clean Up section, and change any of the settings you want to. Then click OK.

c. Click Clean Up Folder.

To ignore a conversation

1. Select any message in the conversation, and then do either of the following:

• On the Home tab, in the Delete group, click Ignore.

• Press Ctrl+Del.

2. If the Ignore Conversation message box opens, do the following:

a. If you want to instruct Outlook to ignore conversations without requesting confirmation, select the Don’t show this message again check box.

b. Click Ignore Conversation.

To stop ignoring a conversation

1. Display the Deleted Items folder.

2. Locate and select any item in the ignored conversation.

3. On the Home tab, in the Delete group, the Ignore button is active for a conversation that is being ignored. Click the Ignore button to turn it off.

Account Messages are grouped by the email account to which they were sent. This is useful if you receive messages for more than one email account in your Inbox (for example, if you receive messages sent to your POP3 account within your Exchange account mailbox).

Attachments Messages are grouped by whether they have attachments and secondarily by date received.

Categories Messages are arranged by the category you assign to them. Messages without a category appear first. Messages with multiple categories assigned to them appear in each of those category groups.

Flag: Start Date or Due Date Unflagged messages and messages without specific schedules appear first. Messages that you’ve added to your task list with specific start or due dates are grouped by date.

From Messages appear in alphabetical order by the message sender’s display name. If you receive messages from a person who uses two different email accounts, or who sends messages from two different email clients (for example, from Outlook and from Windows Mail), the messages will not necessarily be grouped together.

Importance Messages are grouped by priority: High (indicated by a red exclamation point), Normal (the default), or Low (indicated by a blue downward-pointing arrow).

To Messages are grouped alphabetically by the primary recipients (the addresses or names on the To line). The group name exactly reflects the order in which addresses appear on the To line. Therefore, a message addressed to Bart Duncan; Lukas Keller is not grouped with a message addressed to Lukas Keller; Bart Duncan.

Size Messages are grouped by size of the message, including any attachments. Groups include Huge (1–5 MB), Very Large (500 KB–1 MB), Large (100–500 KB), Medium (25–100 KB), Small (10–25 KB), and Tiny (less than 10 KB). This feature is useful if you work for an organization that limits the size of your Inbox, because you can easily locate large messages and delete them or move them to a personal folder.

Subject Messages are arranged alphabetically by their subjects and then by date. This is similar to arranging by conversation except that the messages aren’t threaded.

Type Items in your Inbox (or other folder) are grouped by the type of item—for example, messages, encrypted messages, message receipts, meeting requests and meeting request responses, tasks, Microsoft InfoPath forms, and server notifications.

After arranging the items in your message list, you can change the sort order of the arrangement. The message list header displays the current sort order and arrangement of the message list.

By default, the messages within each arrangement are in groups specific to that category. For example, when messages are arranged by date, they are grouped by date; groups include each day of the current week, Last Week, Two Weeks Ago, Three Weeks Ago, Last Month, and Older. Each group has a header. You can collapse a group so that only the header is visible, or select and process messages by group.

In Single view or Preview view, you can sort messages by any visible column. If you want to sort by an attribute that isn’t shown, you can add that column to the view.

To arrange messages by a specific attribute

1. Do any of the following:

• In any view: On the View tab, in the Arrangement gallery, click the message attribute.

• In Compact view: In the message list header, click the current arrangement, and then click the message attribute.

• In Single view or Preview view: Right-click any column header, click Arrange By, and then click the message attribute.

To reverse the default sort order of the message list arrangement

1. Do any of the following:

• In any view: On the View tab, in the Arrangement group, click Reverse Sort.

• In Compact view: In the message list header, click the current sort order.

• In Single view or Preview view: Right-click any column header, and then click Reverse Sort.

To group or ungroup messages

1. Do any of the following:

• In any view: On the View tab, in the Arrangement gallery, click Show in Groups.

• In Compact view: Click the message list header, and then on the menu, click Show in Groups.

• In Single view or Preview view: Right-click the header of the column you want to group by, and then click Group By This Field.

To select a group of messages

1. Click the group header.

To expand the current message group

1. Do any of the following:

• Click the arrow at the left end of the group header.

• Press the Right Arrow key.

• On the View tab, in the Arrangement group, click the Expand/Collapse button, and then click Expand This Group.

To collapse the current message group

1. Do any of the following:

• Click the arrow at the left end of the group header.

• Press the Left Arrow key.

• On the View tab, in the Arrangement group, click the Expand/Collapse button, and then click Collapse This Group.

To expand or collapse all message groups

1. On the View tab, in the Arrangement group, click the Expand/Collapse button, and then click Expand All Groups or Collapse All Groups.

To reset the message arrangement (and other view settings)

1. On the View tab, in the Current View group, click the Reset View button.

2. In the Microsoft Outlook dialog box, click Yes.

Each category has an associated color, which provides a visual indicator in the item windows and in the module content views. More importantly, the category is a property that you can use to search, sort, and filter items within or across all the Outlook modules.

Outlook 2016 comes with six starter categories named for their associated colors. You can rename these six categories to suit your needs. If you don’t rename a standard color category before assigning it for the first time, Outlook gives you the option of renaming the category the first time you use it.

You can create new categories as you need them. Each category can have the following elements:

Name The category name can be one simple word or a long, descriptive phrase. The first 32 characters of the category name are visible in the Color Categories dialog box, but pointing to a truncated name displays the entire name in a ScreenTip.

Shortcut key You can assign any of the 11 available keyboard shortcut combinations (Ctrl+F2 through Ctrl+F12) to the individual color categories.

Color You can assign any of the 25 available colors to a category, or you can choose not to assign a color and to rely only on the name to distinguish between categories. When you assign a category that doesn’t have an associated color to an Outlook item, the color block or color bar is shown as white. You can assign a color to multiple color categories.

Categories that you assign are represented by color blocks in a content list view, and by color bars in the open item window and in the Reading Pane.

When Conversation view is on, the conversation header displays all the color category blocks assigned to the individual messages in the conversation.

You can designate one category as the Quick Click category. When displaying items in a view that includes a Categories column—such as Single view or Preview view—clicking the Categories column assigns the Quick Click category.

To quickly view the items that have a specific category assigned to them, you can group items by category or include the category in a search. In a list view of any module, you can sort and filter by category. On the To-Do Bar, you can arrange flagged messages and tasks by category.

To display the Categorize menu

1. Do any of the following:

• On the Home tab of any mail or contact folder, in the Tags group, click the Categorize button.

• On the item tool tab (such as Appointment or Meeting) of any calendar item, in the Tags group, click the Categorize button.

• Right-click an item or selection of items, and then click Categorize.

To open the Color Categories dialog box

1. Display the Categorize menu, and then click All Categories.

To assign a category to a message or other item

1. Select the item or items that you want to categorize.

2. Display the Categorize menu, and then do either of the following:

• If the menu includes the category you want to assign, click the category.

• If the menu doesn’t include the category you want to assign, click All Categories. In the Color Categories dialog box that opens, select the check box of the category you want to assign, and then click OK.

To assign or remove the Quick Click category

1. In any module content list view, click in the Categories column for the item.

To remove a category from an item

1. Open the item, and then right-click the colored category bar.

2. On the shortcut menu, click Clear “Category”, Clear All Categories, or the name of the category that you want to clear.

Or

1. Select or open the item, and then display the Categorize menu.

2. On the Categorize menu, click Clear All Categories, or click the category that you want to clear.

To create a category

1. Open the Color Categories dialog box, and then click New.

2. In the Add New Category dialog box, do the following, and then click OK:

• In the Name box, enter the category name.

• In the Color list, click the color you want to assign to the category.

• If you want to assign a keyboard shortcut, click it in the Shortcut Key list.

To rename a category

1. Open the Color Categories dialog box.

2. Click the name or select the check box of the category, and then click Rename to activate the category name for editing.

3. Change or replace the category name, and then press Enter or click away from the active name box.

To delete a category

1. Open the Color Categories dialog box.

2. Click the name or select the check box of the category, and then click Delete or press Alt+D.

3. In the Microsoft Outlook message box asking you to confirm the deletion, click Yes.

To set or change the Quick Click category

1. Display the Categorize menu, and then click Set Quick Click.

2. In the Set Quick Click dialog box, click the list, click the category that you want to set as the default, and then click OK.

Or

1. Open the Outlook Options dialog box, and display the Advanced page.

2. Scroll down on the Advanced page to display the Other section, and then click the Quick Click button.

3. In the Set Quick Click dialog box, click the list, click the category that you want to set as the default, and then click OK.

Popular personal-organization experts advocate various folder structures (for paper folders and email message folders) as an important part of an organizational system. You can apply any of these ideas when you create folders in Outlook, or you can use any other structure that works for you. For example, you might create folders that designate the level of action required, create a folder for each project you’re working on, or create a folder to store all messages from a specific person, such as your manager, regardless of the message subject.

When you create a folder, you specify the location of the folder within your existing Outlook folder structure and the type of items you want the folder to contain. You can create folders to contain the following types of items:

Calendar items

Contact items

InfoPath Form items

Journal items

Mail and Post items

Note items

Task items

The selection you make governs the folder icon that precedes its name in the Folder Pane, the folder window layout, the ribbon tabs and commands available in the folder, and the content of the Folder Pane when displaying the folder.

You can move messages to folders manually, or if your organization is running Exchange, you can have the email system move them for you. You can automatically move messages to another folder by creating a rule—for example, you can automatically move all messages received from your manager to a separate folder. You can also set up different rules that go into effect when you’re away from the office.

To create a message folder

1. Do either of the following to open the Create New Folder dialog box:

• On the Folder tab, in the New group, click the New Folder button.

• Press Ctrl+Shift+E.

2. In the Name box, enter a name for the new folder.

3. In the Folder contains list, click Mail and Post Items.

4. In the Select where to place the folder box, do either of the following:

• Click your mailbox (at the top of the list) to create the folder at the same level as the Inbox.

• Click your Inbox to create a subfolder of the Inbox.

5. Click OK.

To move a message to a folder

1. Drag the message from the message list to the destination folder in the Folder Pane.

Or

1. In the message list, select the message you want to move.

2. Do either of the following to display the Move menu:

• On the Home tab, in the Move group, click the Move button.

• Right-click the message, and then click Move.

3. On the Move menu, do either of the following:

• Click the folder you want to move the message to.

• Click Other Folder. In the Move Items dialog box displaying the full Folders list, click the folder you want to move the message to, and then click OK.

Display and manage conversations

Arrange messages by specific attributes

Categorize items

Organize messages in folders

1. Display the messages in your Inbox as conversations. Notice the changes in the appearance and grouping of the messages in the message list.

2. Change the conversation settings so that the senders are shown below the subject in the message list instead of above it. Consider the benefits of the two options.

3. Select one conversation that has several messages, display the unique messages in the conversation, and then display all the messages in the conversation.

4. Remove redundant messages from the conversation.

5. Select any message in the conversation, and open the Ignore Conversation dialog box. Read the message in the dialog box, and then click Cancel.

6. Configure the conversation settings to suit your preferences.

1. Use any method described in this chapter to arrange messages by sender (From).

2. Use any method described in this chapter to reverse the default sort order of the message list arrangement.

3. Switch to Compact view. Notice that the messages are no longer arranged by sender; the arrangement is only applied to the view in which you set it.

4. Use any method described in this chapter to group the messages in your Inbox.

5. Collapse a group of messages so that only the group header is displayed, and then expand the group again.

6. Collapse all message groups, and then expand them all.

7. Configure the view and arrangement settings to suit your preferences.

1. Create a new email message addressed to yourself. Enter Work with categories as the subject, and send the message.

2. When the message appears in your Inbox, select it.

3. Create a new color category, and do the following:

• Name the category StepByStep.

• Assign the Dark Maroon color to the category.

• Assign the Ctrl+F10 keyboard shortcut to the category.

4. Finish creating the category, and close any open dialog boxes. Notice that the selected message now has the StepByStep category assigned to it.

5. Set the StepByStep category as the Quick Click category.

6. Switch to Single view. In the message list, point to an unassigned category block in the Categories column to display the ScreenTip.

7. Click the block to assign the Quick Click category to the message. Then click again to remove the category.

1. Create a new folder, and do the following:

• Name the folder StepByStep.

• Configure the folder to contain messages.

• Save the folder as a subfolder of your Inbox.

2. Finish creating the folder. Then move the Work with categories message that you created in an earlier set of practice tasks to the StepByStep folder.

3. Retain the folder, message, and category for use in practice tasks in later chapters.