Microsoft Outlook Tips

If you regularly send emails which have a common layout or content, you can create a template which will capture all the common features, making it quick and easy to create these messages.

Open a new email and set up all the parts which are repeated each time you send this. This can include regular addressees, a subject line, and any content or signature information.

Once your message is ready, save it by going to the Office button in Outlook 2007 or the File tab in Outlook 2010. Select Save As, and from the list of file types, select Outlook Template.

To create a new message using your template, in Outlook 2007, select Tools, Forms, and in Outlook 2010 select New Item, More items. Now select Choose Form. In the Look In box select User Templates in File System. You should see your template listed, and selecting it will cause a new message to be created with all your saved features. These can all be edited, so you can add or remove addressees, or other items.

Outlook offers you the possibility of directing messages to specific places as they arrive in your Inbox. This is great if you have different categories of mail arriving, for example business and personal, or new enquiries and on-going projects. Using Outlook rules you can specify what folder messages from a specific person or company, or messages to a specific address, should be filed in. New messages will still be highlighted in bold, and the folder will show the number of unread messages as happens with your Inbox.

To create rules, go to your Inbox, then select Tools, then Rules and Alerts. Any existing rules are listed here, and you can click New Rule to start a new one. At the next screen Outlook offers some Template rules which you can modify. If they don’t cover what you need, then under Start from a blank rule, click on Check messages when they arrive.

So if all the messages I received from Tom McKay are instructions for a project I am working on, I can select the first template rule “Move messages from someone to a folder”, and click Next.

The Rules Wizard is now displayed, and in Step 1 the appropriate box is already ticked, so in Step 2 I need to click on the people or distribution list link and specify Tom McKay’s address, then click Next.

The wizard now asks what I want to do with messages from Tom, so I need to click on the specified folder link, and select the folder to which the messages should be diverted, e.g. Tom’s Project, then click Next again.

Lastly the wizard asks whether there are any exceptions to the rule, for example, when the message has been copied to me, not addressed to me, or if it is an Out of Office message. I could choose not to file these ones. Click Next again, and finish by giving the rule a useful name, then specifying whether the rule should be run on messages which are already in your Inbox, and whether it should now be turned on.

Creating Email Signatures in Outlook

Select Tools, Options then click on the Mail Format tab.

Look for the section which says Signatures, and click the Signatures button. If you have any existing signatures set up, they will be listed here and you can edit them by selecting the title in the top box, and altering the text in the lower box.

You can also create a new signature by clicking on New and giving a name for this signature. When you OK the name, you can enter the text in the Edit signature box.

Once you have the text you want, you need to use the options in the top right corner to define when your signature should be used. Select the email account with which you want to associate it, then select your signature name in the New Messages box to have it appear when you create a message, and select it in the Replies/forwards box if you also want it to appear on replies.

When you click OK the next message you create should show your signature.

Keyboard shortcuts for folder navigation

Do you find yourself frequently navigating through the Outlook folder list? Here are some basic shortcuts to help you get around from anywhere in Outlook:

Jump to the Inbox (Ctrl + Shift + I) or the Outbox (Ctrl + Shift + O).

What about an all keyboard method of getting to any folder?

Begin by using Ctrl + Y. This will open the Go to Folder window.

From here you can navigate using up and down arrow keys, Home and End keys, or better still, by typing the start of the folder name you need, and allowing auto-lookup to take you there.

When you've highlighted what you need, hit the Enter key to both exit the window and to be returned to Outlook in the designated folder.

Creating and using categories

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.

Filtering using categories

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.

Add an event to your calendar direct from an email message

When you receive an email containing details of something you want to put on your calendar, e.g. an event you want to attend, you can put the event onto your calendar using drag and drop.

From your Inbox, click and drag the event message onto the button you use to switch to the Calendar (or onto the Calendar folder in your folder list).

A new Calendar Appointment opens, with all your message details in the body. You can set the date and time fields to schedule the event according to the details.

Now you can delete the email, keeping all the event information in a useful place. If you think you would forget that the information is inside the appointment, why not add a * to the subject field, as a reminder to look inside.

You can use the same principle of dragging from the Inbox to create new Contacts or Tasks.