Managing Outlook

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Managing Incoming Email in Outlook

How do you respond to incoming mail?  For most of us, most mail response falls into one of several categories:

• No response required
• Respond immediately
• Respond at some particular time
• Respond after some interim step(s), such as acquiring necessary information
• Schedule an appointment

Similarly, we have several options for what to do with the information in an incoming message

• Discard it (before or after reading)
• Save it temporarily (e.g., while a given project is underway)

• Save it permanently (for example: you could archive, save on a file share or file using a document management system)

Views are at the heart of Outlook. They control how you interact with messages, contacts, and other items in Outlook folders, as well as how Outlook prints your data.

Using the Outlook's inbuilt views

If you receive many messages via email and do not have time to respond to them all, you may want to set up reminders to follow up the messages later. When you set up reminders, a red flag will appear next to the message with the reminder. You can set up your reminders for many different tasks.

Add a Flag

1. While pointing at the item you wish to flag, click the right mouse button.
2. Select Follow-up.
   
3. Select the Flag type.
   This choice simply determines what is displayed in the header of the reminder message - if you choose to set one.
4. Select a date and time.
5. Click OK.

Clear A Flag or Mark As Complete

Once you have flagged a message you can either clear the flag (remove it) or mark the item as complete. If you mark a flagged item as complete, the flag colour changes to grey.

1. While pointing at a flagged item, click the right mouse button.
2. Select Clear Flag or Flag Complete.

Flag A Message Before Sending

If you flag a message before sending it, then the recipient receives the benefit of the flag including the flag icon and any follow up reminders you set.

1. Create and address your email.
2. Before sending the email, click on the Flag button on the Standard toolbar.
3. Select the Flag type.
4. Select a date and time.
5. Click OK.
6. Send the email.

Sorting Flagged Messages

Flagged messages display a flag icon beside them (in most views unless you turn off this feature). You can sort your message lists to group all the flagged items together.

1.  Click on the Flag header (at the top of the flag column).

Categories are one of the least-used features in Outlook, but a powerful feature. In Outlook a user has the ability to assign one or more categories to each item.

• You can use these categories in filters and Rules Wizard rules.

• Outlook provides a default Master Category List, which users can customize.

A category is a keyword or phrase that you assign to an e-mail message, task, appointment, journal entry, or contact to help you keep track of it. You can assign a category to related items that are saved in different folders.

For example, if you have a client named Tasmanian Computer Trackers, you can track all of the meetings, contacts, e-mail messages, tasks, and journal entries related to your client. Just create a category named Tasmanian Computer Trackers and assign those items to it. Outlook comes with a default master category list and you can create your own. Every Outlook item can be manually or automatically assigned to a category.

Customise Master Category List

1. Right click on the item.

2. Select Options.

3. Click on the Categories button.

4. Click on the Master Category List button.

5. Add or Remove categories.

6. Click OK.

Categorise an Item

1. Right click on the item.

2. Select Options.

3. Click on the Categories button and check the categories to be assigned to the items.
   OR
   Type the category names in the space provided, separate the category names by a comma if there is to be more than one assigned.

Grouping items by Category

1. Click on the Group By Box button on the Advanced toolbar.

2. Click on the Field Chooser button.
   The Field Chooser palette is displayed:
   

3. Click on Categories and drag into the Group By area.
   
   
   The items are grouped by category.

Viewing all items belonging to a category

1. Click on the button.
   The Finds toolbar is displayed:
   

2. Click on the button and select Advanced Find.
   

3. Click on the Browse button and check the folders you wish to search.

4. Click OK.

5. Click on the tab.

6. Click on the button.

7. Select a category or categories.

8. Click OK.

9. Click .

   è	Add rules to automatically assign categories to items based on the subject line or sender.

Instead of constantly organizing an ever-growing number of messages manually, use the Rules Wizard to help you automatically process and organize your messages. After you use the Rules Wizard to create a rule, Outlook applies it when messages arrive in your Inbox, or when you send a message.

As messages arrive or are sent, the rules you set up can trigger Outlook to perform certain operations, for example:

• Assigning categories to messages
• Deleting conversations
• Running VBA code written in Outlook to perform more complex operations
• Flagging messages from a specific person
• Notifying you when messages containing certain words arrive in your Inbox

Creating a Rule

You can either customize one of the sample rules in Outlook or build a new rule from scratch. Most rules operate on messages as they arrive or are sent, but you can create a rule and select it to run on messages in your Inbox (or other folders).

1. From the Tools menu select Rules Wizard.
2. When this wizard box is displayed, click on the New button.
3. Select Start from a blank rule.
4. Click Next.

5. Check when you want this rule to be applied applied.

6. Click Next.

7. Select which condition or conditions that Rule needs to check.
8. Click Next.
9. Add any exceptions to the rule if needed.
10. Click Finish.
11. Click OK.

Removing a Rule

If you ever want to get rid of this rule, just go back to the Rules Wizard and take the check off of this rule to temporarily disable it or highlight it and hit the delete button to permanently remove it.

Using an existing message to create a rule

1. To colour-code your calendar, right-click an appointment, select Labels, and then select the label you want.
   Or,
   When you are scheduling an appointment, click a colour in the Label list.

2. The labels can be renamed by right clicking on the label and selecting Edit Labels.

1. To create a new appointment from an email message in Outlook, simply drag the email item from the Inbox, or any other folder, and drop it onto the Calendar folder. 

2. A new Calendar item is created (the original email is left in the original folder, for you to file or discard as you prefer). 

3. You must select the day/time for the event, and then click Save and Close to create the appointment. 

4. Similarly, dragging an email to the ‘Tasks’ folder creates a to-do; dragging to the ‘Notes’ folder creates a post-it note.