Chapter 4: Organizing Your Outlook Environment

There are several tools available inside Outlook to help you get organized. Many refer to this as taking back control of your email. If you are feeling email overload, this chapter is for you! You will gain confidence in maintaining your emails by organizing your environment with techniques you will learn in this chapter, such as taking instant action with Quick Steps to setting rules.

By using color, you will be able to create and use categories to color code emails, calendar items, contacts, and tasks. The more you can automate in the Outlook environment, the easier your life will be when handling loads of emails every day. This chapter is all about automation!

In this chapter, we’re going to cover the following topics:

• Conversations
• Quick Steps
• Categories
• Conditional Formatting
• Flags
• Rules and alerts

Conversations

Conversations view lets you manage sent and received messages by grouping them into conversations. Turning on this view will allow you to take action on all emails in a string of conversations at once. To save space in your Inbox, you can also use the Conversation Clean up feature, which will remove emails that have identical text (that is included in the subject line of the replies).

Conversation view

To group your emails into conversations, click View | Messages | Show as Conversations.

Figure 4.1 – Turning on conversations

A dialog box will open, as shown in Figure 4.2, asking whether you want to show messages arranged by conversations in the following places:

• This folder: To show conversations in the current folder, which is usually the Inbox
• All mailboxes: To show conversations in other folders, such as the Sent Items folder, as well

Figure 4.2 – Show messages arranged by…

In the viewing window of your Inbox, you will now see items shown as a single item.

1. To view all the messages in a conversation group, click the arrow icon to the left.

Figure 4.3 – Collapsed conversation

2. Click this arrow twice to see the full conversation, including your sent items, as shown in the following figure:

Figure 4.4 – Expanded conversation

When you receive a new message that is part of a conversation, this email moves to the top of the conversation message list. Unread messages will have a bold subject and the count will be displayed next to the subject.

Conversation settings

There are a few conversation settings that you can change. The checkmark toggles on and off each time you select the desired setting.

Figure 4.5 – Conversation Settings

Turn on (check) the following:

• Show Messages from Other Folders: To display any messages that have been moved to various folders and messages in your Sent Items folder.
• Show Senders Above the Subject: To show the sender’s name above the conversation instead of showing the name in the subject.
• Always Expand Selected Conversation: To expand the currently selected conversation automatically when selected.
• Use Classic Indented View: To indent the conversation message based on what position it appears within the conversation. Outlook 2016 and later no longer use this view.

Conversation Clean Up

To keep your mailboxes cleaned up, you can run the Conversation Clean Up tool. You can choose to clean up a single conversation within all your folders or just from the current folder. You can adjust these settings by clicking on Home | Clean Up.

Figure 4.6 – Clean Up

This tool will remove redundant messages within the selected conversation. You will also have the option to select the Settings button.

Figure 4.7 – Settings in Clean Up Conversation

By clicking on Settings in the Clean Up Conversations dialog box, an Outlook Options dialog box will open, and you can scroll down to the Conversation Clean Up section if needed. A checkmark in the box indicates that the feature is turned on.

Figure 4.8 – Outlook Options Conversation Clean Up settings

Note

You will have to run Conversation Cleanup periodically yourself. It does not run automatically. To remember to do this, you may want to set up a recurring appointment.

Quick Steps

Quick Steps lets you reduce the steps you take to create a group or an item to manage your email. You can reduce several steps down to one click with Quick Steps. To set up and use Quick Steps, click Home | Quick Steps.

Figure 4.9 – Quick Steps

3. The first time you use Quick Steps, you will be prompted with the First Time Setup dialog box. If the quick step had been assigned an action, Outlook would have done that action instead. If you want to change the settings for the button, then you click on the dialog box launcher button at the bottom right of the Quick Steps section, then click Manage Quick Steps.

Figure 4.10 – Manage Quick Steps

4. Select the quick step that you want to change and then click Edit. The Edit Quick Step dialog box will open, and you can select the steps you want to take to have the button selected take on actions to perform when clicked on.

Figure 4.11 – Edit Quick Step

Six quick steps are installed with the initial setup of Outlook. You can also use the additional Quick Steps templates that are available. To use these templates, click the Inbox folder in the Mail Objects folder navigation pane, or you can press Ctrl + Shift + I. Choose one of these six templates and then select your desired action.

• Move to Folder: Moves to a specified folder.
• Flag & Move: Moves selected message to a specified folder, marks the message as read, and assigns the follow-up flag.
• New Email To: Opens a new message window with the To field containing the recipient’s email ID.
• Forward To: Opens a forward message window with the To field containing the recipient’s email ID.
• New Meeting: Opens a New Meeting window with the To field containing the email ID of the invitees.
• Custom: Opens the Edit Quick Step window. Create your own quick step as desired.

  Note

  Once you set a quick step to an email, you cannot undo the action with Ctrl + Z or undo commands.

Categories

All Message, Task, Calendar, Note, and Contact items can be color coded to help keep you organized. You assign a category to an object to apply an assigned color that you can customize for your system.

Applying a category

Let’s learn how to apply a category:

1. Select an email message and click Home | Categorize.

Figure 4.12 – Categorize

2. Select a color or category to use.

Figure 4.13 – Category colors

3. You can also click on All Categories… to customize the list of colors to your liking. Using the buttons on the right side of the Color Categories dialog box allows you to create a new category, rename categories, delete categories, change the color, and apply a shortcut key.

Figure 4.14 – Color Categories

4. Once the category has been assigned to the email, you will be able to view the color in the Category field in the inbox.

Figure 4.15 – Inbox with Category field

Now we can learn how to remove a category.

Removing a category

Select the item that you want to remove the category from, then select Home | Categorize | Clear all Categories, or you can right-click the category and choose Clear All Categories. The color will be removed from the selected email’s Categories field.

Conditional Formatting

Applying different formatting to messages can help you view and read your email messages faster. When you see a specific color or formatting applied, you will know what the message is regarding or possibly who it is coming from. To apply this formatting automatically, you can use Conditional Formatting. This tool is also available in other Microsoft applications. But it is used and turned on differently within Outlook. With Conditional Formatting in Outlook, create the condition by clicking on View | View Settings.

Default Conditional Formatting rules

When you open your Inbox, you have probably noticed your email messages are bold if you have not clicked on the message to open it. You may have also noticed that once you click on a message and view it, the bold format goes away, and it appears in normal text. This applied formatting is the effect of a Conditional Formatting rule. These are examples of two of the eight preconfigured Conditional Formatting rules that are set up by Outlook by default.

To view and apply these rules, first click View | View Settings. This will display the Advanced View Settings dialog box. Click the Conditional Formatting… button.

Figure 4.16 – Advanced View Settings – Conditional Formatting…

Selecting the Conditional Formatting… button will open the Conditional Formatting dialog box. The default rules will be displayed in the Rules for this view section. When you click on one of the rules, the properties of the rule will be displayed in the bottom box.

Figure 4.17 – Conditional Formatting rules

These are the seven default Conditional Formatting rules that you can apply in the Outlook 2021 version. In previous versions, there were eight, but the Bing rule, as shown in Figure 4.17, is not a default now.

The seven default rules are as follows:

• Unread messages
• Unread group headers
• Submitted but not sent
• Expired email
• Overdue email
• Messages in other folders
• Site Mailbox document pending upload

Each selected rule will apply the assigned font settings from the rule to any messages that match the specified rule, that is, unread messages will have a bold blue font applied to the message.

To turn off the rule, click in the selection box to the left of the rule’s name. It will still be available to you if you wish to enable it later. You can also make changes to the properties or formatting of these rules by clicking on the Font… button for the selected rule.

Click the Add button to create a new Conditional Formatting rule.

Figure 4.18 – Adding a new rule

Now, you can make changes to the default rule. You can use the following options to make changes:

• Name
• Font…
• Condition…

To create rules beyond Conditional Formatting, see the Rules and alerts section of this chapter.

Flags

Attach a flag to a message to mark its importance or to set a reminder to follow up or come back to it later.

Steps to set a flag

Let’s understand the steps in detail:

1. Select the message you want to attach the flag to. Select Home | Follow Up.
2. Choose the type of flag you want to place on the message. The flag will appear in the flag field for that message. Another way to set the flag is to right-click on the flag in the message. You will get a drop-down menu and you can select the flag from this list.

Figure 4.19 – Right-click menu for flag

The right-click menu has the Add Reminder…, Mark Complete, Clear Flag, and Set Quick Click… options.

3. When you select Add Reminder…, you will get the Custom dialog box.

Figure 4.20 – Custom reminder

4. This Custom dialog box helps you to set up flags, reminders, and dates and times for reminders. There is also a Clear Flag button if you no longer want to have the flag. Click OK and at the designated time, Outlook will display a reminder for the email message as set by you.
5. If you find yourself always wanting to apply a specific flag instead of right-clicking on the flag field, you can use Set Quick Click…. You can set this from the right-click menu on the flag field.

Figure 4.21 – Set Quick Click

6. Click the drop-down selector for the flag and you will see a list of the possible flags.
7. Select the one you want to set as a quick click. When you click on the flag, instead of right-clicking, use a left-click and that flag will be applied to the message. When you click on the flag a second time, it will change the flag to a checkmark, indicating that the message is complete and the flag is no longer applied.

Figure 4.22 – Flag complete

Flags are very useful if you like reminders. They are a great way to remind you that you need to take action on an item. Let’s now discuss how to use rules and alerts, which not only are useful for flagging items in your email but also give you the power to stay up to date and organized by automatically managing your mail before those messages arrive in your mail folders.

Rules and alerts

Create rules to move, flag, and respond to email messages automatically. Rules typically process your emails as they arrive in your Inbox. Some examples of rules you can create are as follows:

• Move email to a folder
• Play a sound
• Display a new item alert
• Set a flag
• Multiple steps combined

Creating rules

The steps to create a rule to apply to a selected email ID are as follows:

1. Select a message that you would like to base the rule on. (Only select a message if you want the rule to be based on that type of message.)
2. Click Home | Rules | Create Rule…. (This is also found on the right-click menu of a message.)

Figure 4.23 – Create Rule…

3. In the Create Rule dialog box, check the boxes that you want to include in the rule. Notice that because I right-clicked on the message from Microsoft Edge, that option appears as From Microsoft Edge; I clicked the checkbox to select that option to verify that is what I want.

Figure 4.24 – Create Rule

4. The Create Rule dialog box displays a template that can be used to prompt you for possible options to use for the rule you are creating. Click the box to the left of the suggestions to have that item included in the rule. You will also need to fill in the information next to that box to indicate what Outlook will be looking for to match the condition you specify.
5. Now you are ready to set up additional detailed information about the rule. Click on Advanced Options…. This will open the Rules Wizard dialog box, which has more options for you to choose from. Spend some time looking through the options in this box as it will give you some ideas for some useful rules that you can apply.

Figure 4.25 – Create Rule dialog

The Create Rule dialog box displays a template that can be used for the rule you are creating. Click the box to the left of the suggestions to have that item included in the rule. You will also need to fill in the information next to that box to indicate what Outlook will be looking for to match the condition you specify.

Now you are ready to set up additional detailed information about the rule. Click on Advanced Options…. This will open the Rules Wizard dialog box, which has more options for you to choose from. Spend some time looking through the options in this box as it will give you some ideas for some useful rules that you can apply.

Figure 4.26 – Advanced Rules Wizard

When you click on the box to select the item to include in the rule in Step 1, more information will appear in the Step 2 box that follows. When you click on the blue hyperlinked items in the box, another Search Text box will open where you can enter the specific words or phrases of what the rule is asking for. It is very intuitive, and I have found that just letting the wizard prompt me for responses has helped me to successfully apply these rules.

Figure 4.27 – Search Text dialog box

Now, let’s understand how we can manage rules.

Managing rules

To maintain your rules, click Home | Rules | Manage Rules & Alerts. You may also right-click and then select Rules | Manage Rules and Alerts.

The Rules and Alerts dialog box will display with the email’s Rules tab activated. If you don’t have an email to begin with, this is another option to create a rule from scratch. From this window, you can do the following:

• Create a new rule.
• Change a rule.
• Delete a rule.
• Copy a rule.
• Move the selected rule.
• Run the rule now.
• Access options to import and export rules from previous versions of Outlook or upgrade.

Rules can be a real time saver; they are extremely important to set up and are especially useful if you want to streamline the emails that come into your Inbox.

In Chapter 14, Nine Useful Rules, we will go over suggestions for useful rules to use for your business email account.

Summary

This chapter was all about saving you time and automating those tasks that you find yourself doing repeatedly. These chores become a thing of the past when you apply these automation techniques. You can use Quick Steps with one click or use rules to process while you’re away from Outlook. The formatting and routing of messages can be done with categories and flags to cause messages to stand out so you don’t miss an event or deadline again.

In the next chapter, we will discuss a few of Outlook’s advanced tips and tricks for sending emails with Mail Merge to customize emails for our recipients. We will discuss using color flyers and creating forms and we will save them as templates to use over and over again with ease.

Questions

1. What is the difference between Quick Steps and Quick Parts?
2. What is the focused inbox feature?
3. Can I set more than one category for an email message?
4. What is the shortcut to go to the next email when you have an email opened?
5. How does flagging a message work with To-Do List?

Answers

1. Quick Parts, New Email | Insert | Quick Parts, are messages/text that can be inserted into a new email without retyping the text. Quick Steps is preformatted actions that are assigned to a button to streamline a task, as was discussed in this chapter.
2. You can turn the focused inbox on or off by going to View | Show Focused Inbox. Turning this on will show tabs for Focused and Other at the top of the Inbox. Bulk emails will be pushed to the Other folder so that you can use the focused inbox just for important emails. If an email gets through that you don’t want in Focused, simply right-click on the message and choose Move to Non-Focused.
3. There are 25 color tiles available to apply a category to an email message. You can assign the same color to multiple emails.
4. Within an email, to switch to the next email, use Ctrl + . (period). To switch back to the previous email, use Ctrl + , (comma).
5. Flagging an email message also adds a task to the To-Do List folder. If you delete the message, it also disappears from To-Do List. Don’t confuse To-Do List with a task. A task is an Outlook item that is saved to a task folder. However, To-Do List contains all flagged items plus tasks, allowing users to see a list of all items that need to be actioned.