Thursday, March 29, 2018

Top 3 Outlook tips to help with day to day life

Outlook has SO much functionality built into it that it can get overwhelming at times - meetings come in, reminders fire, emai pops up, etc.. etc… etc..

But there are some actions you can take to make your life much easier.  I share these with each new team I go to and want to put them here as well.  For Outlook "old-timers" (to which I belong since I was there for Outlook 97) these may seem obvious.  If you have never heard of these before, these may really help.

  1. Create  a "cooling off" rule.  I have a rule set to delay all mail I send by 2 minutes.  This helps me a few times per year when I notice a typo at the last second, see that someone else replied while I was pressing send, or otherwise make some goof I need to correct.  Here's how

    1. Open the Home tab | Rules | Manage Rules and Alerts…
    2. Select Apply rule on messages I send | Next

    3. Conditions is the next tab.  I leave this as is since I want this to apply to all my mail, so I click Next.  I get a popup that says this will apply to every message I send, and since that is exactly what I want, I click Yes.
    4. Now I get the action I want Outlook to take.  I select Defer delivery by a number of minutes and change the link to 2:
      Now all mail will wait in the Outbox for 2 minutes after I press send.
    5. Exceptions can be useful.  You may want the rule to be Delay all mail by 2 minutes unless is it High Importance, so you can set exceptions like that here.
    6. Click Finish and the rule is saved.
  2. Second tip is helpful when an email thread is spiraling out of control.  Right click it and select "Ignore".  You will get an alert reminding you that this item and all replies, etc… will be moved to Deleted Items.  Nifty.
  3.  Finally, I work remotely now and then and it is helpful to force Outlook to sync.  Yes, it syncs automatically, but if I know I am about to lose my wifi connection, I can force it to sync by hitting F9.  This is more useful in soothing my conscience, but it is a habit that mentally helps me so I keep doing it.

1 and 2 are the biggies.  They don't help every single day, but when they do help, they make a HUGE difference.
Enjoy!
 
Questions, comments, concerns and criticisms always welcome,
John

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