You can use Outlook Categories to identify groups of Contacts, or types of calendar appointments or emails. For example, mark email messages as personal or business, or create Contact groups like members of a club, a committee, etc.
There are some preset Categories but you can create your own.
In Outlook 2003, open a Contact, then click the Categories button in the bottom right corner. You will see the preset categories. To alter these or add your own, click the Master Category List button. Type the name of a new category in the New box, then click Add. Click OK to return to the Category list, and your new one should have been added.
In Outlook 2007, click the Categorize button on the toolbar, then click All Categories. You can rename the default colour categories, or add your own new categories, selecting a colour from the palette.
To use categories effectively you have to get into the habit of remembering to categorise every new Contact, or every personal email, etc, depending how you have decided to use them. If you apply contacts consistently you will find they can be a great tool for organising things in Outlook. |
If you have applied categories to your messages, contacts or appointments, you can filter your view of these items to show only a selected category. In this example we will use contacts.
I am in Contacts view, and want to show only those Contacts in my Suppliers category. In the left hand navigation pane, click on Customise Current View. Now click on the Filter button, then the More Choices tab.
Click the Categories button to see a list of all your categories. Tick the one(s) you require, in this case Suppliers, then click OK. Click OK twice more to be returned to the Contact list, and you should see only those Contacts which you have categorised as Suppliers. Outlook reminds you that you have applied a filter by showing Filter Applied in the bottom left corner of the Outlook window.
To remove your filter again, click on Customise Current View, then Filter, then click the Clear All button. |
