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These still apply to today’s world but have been lost in the flurry of digital organizing. "Working less" means you touch each piece of correspondence one time only. Whether it’s an actual paper envelope with a letter or whether it’s an email. "Correspondence" means Incoming Information, not necessarily "follow-up tasks". In this article, we’ll give you some of the best Outlook hacks for digital office management, along with some awesome Outlook tips and tricks featured in the repair PST file without data loss program. I told my boss I'd like to give a (voluntary) company-wide training in something someday as a self-development goal and he suggested Outlook/inbox management.
How can I manage complicated tasks?
For example, many messages can be responded to in two minutes or less. But if a message takes longer than two minutes to deal with, defer it. To get a sense of what two minutes feels like, try timing yourself. If you never want to receive another message as part of this conversation, ignore it. Categories aren’t a required aspect of this system, but they will make your life easier if you are diligent about using them. For example, they can help you more easily identify what you can do now and help you group similar tasks so that you can do them all at once.
I have 10 minutes: What should I read first in my Inbox?
- In the days of "paper offices" (pre-computer age), we had 3 filing systems.
- For example, if you have only a few minutes, make all of your phone calls (if you have just a few).
- For example, there might be a lengthy series of messages where the last one simply states, "Thanks, that answers my question," so you can just delete the whole conversation.
- However, the read and unread states of messages can be easily be triggered by clicking around your messages so they aren’t a perfect record — just a tool.
- Rather than using Bcc to inform a third party of an issue, forward the message after you send it.
- If you are taking notes or minutes for the meeting, you can also use OneNote to insert meeting details from Outlook into your notes.
- Use the Bcc feature to remove extra people from an email conversation when you deem that they no longer need the extra email or if the conversation topic has changed.
After you process your messages, you can tackle your task list. This is when you respond to those messages that you have deferred. Sometimes you receive a message that is really meant for someone else to deal with.
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Messages to a Contact Group that only occasionally contain useful or interesting content, regardless of frequency, should have a rule and a folder. It’s a best practice to have a central repository for your messages, so that you can refer to them after FixTechGuide fix for stuck folders you've "dealt" with them. The Navigation Pane folder list should be reserved for folders you use often. If it's filled with folders you don't even recognize, move all mail into the reference folder and delete your existing folders.
Advanced: How do I create a Search Folder for email messages?
I don't manage his inbox but I did help FixTechGuide fix for stuck folders him get the Stack method set up and he's blown away by how awesome it is, so now thinks I'm an Outlook wizard. I'm decent but certainly not an expert - so I figure before I actually lead a training I should brush up. It’s liberating to depend on Outlook instead of your overtaxed brain to keep track of your tasks.
And as projects change, update your Quick Steps so that they are only the things you really do. For reference messages that you have responded to or otherwise dealt with. Your Quick Click category should be the category that you apply most often.
Rules help this process by moving messages into folders based on criteria that you set. Rules filter the messages coming into your Inbox for must-read items only. Favorites, a subset of your mail folders, appear at the top of the navigation pane. Outlook’s Calendar Reminders feature helps users keep their calendars in order so they don’t miss any crucial appointments or meetings.