📨 Outlook Tips & Tricks to Take Control of your Inbox

hi everyone kevin here today i want to show you my favorite top 10 tips and tricks for successfully controlling your microsoft outlook inbox when i worked at microsoft i routinely received about 250 to 300 emails every single day and of course only a small fraction of that email actually required my attention i learned a whole bunch of different techniques for successfully managing my inbox and today i want to share those with you all right let's open up microsoft outlook this brings us to tip number one you can receive a text message when you receive an important email this way you'll be sure not to miss it here for example my manager patty fernandez sent me an email and she wants me to get back to her asap now let's say i'm focused on some tasks maybe i have outlook minimized or maybe i'm sitting in a meeting and i'm being good and i'm not looking at my laptop screen i might just completely miss this email so how do we set it up so outlook sends me a text message well here with this email we want to create a rule here i'll select the message from patty and then up here on the top ribbon within the home view i'll select rules over here and next i'll select create rule this opens up the create rule dialog and i want it so any email from paddy also sends me a text message right up here i'll select this check box for from patty fernandez next let's click into advanced options within advanced options i can select all these other filters for what emails i want to have trigger the text but i'm going to keep it simple and i'll just say from patty fernandez let's click on next on the next screen i'm going to select the option that says forward it to people or public group let's check this box and then down below click on this text that says people or public group this opens up a prompt where i could define my phone number where i want the text to go right down here i'll type in my 10 digit phone number and yes this is my phone number next we need to append the sms gateway and i happen to be a t-mobile user and the sms gateway is at tmomail.net to find out what your sms domain gateway is i've included a link in the description for a website that lists out many of the different carriers throughout the world and the associated sms domain gateway over on the left hand side simply look down this column to find your carrier and then over in this column you'll see what the sms domain gateway is once you finish entering your phone number and the sms domain gateway click on ok back on the rules wizard let's click on next and here you can define if there are any exceptions once again i'm just going to leave it pretty basic so i'll click on next and then i'll click on finish and here i received a text message with the important message on my phone now i could open up my computer and i could respond to the message or i could even respond to it right here this brings us to tip number two you can conditionally format messages in your inbox so the messages that matter stand out here i have three different email messages and patty fernandez sent me a message and i want to make sure this one stands out compared to all of the other messages right up here i'll click on the top tab that says view and within view let's click on view settings this opens up view settings and right down here i can define my own conditional formatting let's click on this within this prompt i can see all of the existing rules that are currently applied to my inbox so you've probably noticed this before but if you have an unread message it's formatted differently from a red message here you can define what all of those rules are but along with being able to modify existing rules you can also add your own let's click on add for this new rule i'll give it the name from patty fernandez next i can click on fonts to define the formatting for what messages look like from patty when i get a message let me change the color to red just so it stands out a little bit more under the font style i'll make this bold and under the size i'll go with bigger this all looks good i'll click on ok down below i can set the condition for when this format applies when i click on condition i have all of these different options this is basically a way for me to filter messages and only if it matches those filters does it apply the formatting i can search for specific words in the subject or even in the message body i want to keep things really simple so i'll say from patty fernandez over here i have even more choices to filter my messages and if i click on advanced i have full control over what types of messages have this formatting applied here i'll click back to messages and once again i'll leave it pretty simple and then click on ok i'm all done setting my formatting so i'll click on ok here and then click on ok again now if you look at my inbox look at that i definitely won't miss this message from patty fernandez this brings us to tip number three and i call it the 2 or cc rule right here in my inbox you'll see that i have four different messages and here i have a message from patty she has a specific request of me and i'm also on the two line here nestor asked me a question and here too i'm on the two line here nester sent me an email and he put me on cc and this is information that i want to know and then right up here i got the kevin cookie company newsletter from diego and he sent this out to a distribution list now although it might be interesting information to read it's purely informational and there's really no action for me and especially when i worked at microsoft i found that you could very quickly drown in newsletters and unfortunately sometimes you'll try to unsubscribe but you might have nested newsletters and it turns out being pretty difficult so if you only look at messages where you're on the 2 or the cc line in an email you'll very quickly narrow down to the emails that matter to you two set up this rule let's go up on top and click on home and right in the center let's click on rules and then click on create rule this opens up a prompt where i can create a rule and let's jump directly into advanced options this opens up the rules wizard and here i could select the condition i want this to apply to every single message that lands in my inbox so i'm not going to select anything here i'll click on next on this next screen i can decide what happens to messages where i'm not on the 2 or cc line so once again this is like diego's newsletter i don't want to look at it but i also don't want to delete it just in case i want to refer back to it in the future over here i could select to move it to a specified folder down below i'll click on specified and let me simply move it to the archive so this way i could always get back to it if i need to i'll click on ok and then let's click on next on the last screen i can choose any exceptions so currently the way it's set up is any message that hits my inbox will move into my archive now i don't want that i want messages where i'm on the 2 or cc line to stay in my inbox so here i'll select this exception right here and then i'll click on next on the last screen i can specify a name for this rule here i'll change it to keep messages in inbox where i'm on 2 or cc down below i can also select to run this rule on all messages that are already in the inbox once i'm all done i'll click on finish and here now you'll see in my inbox i now only have messages left where i'm on the 2 or the cc line and of course i didn't delete those other messages like the newsletter i could simply click into my archive and i could go back and reference any one of those messages this brings us to tip number four and this is a really simple one you can show all of your messages in your inbox as a conversation here for instance i see a message from patty where she wanted me to follow up with her and then here she sent me yet another message but right now this is taking up two different slots in my inbox if i go up to the view tab up on top there's a checkbox for show as conversations when i check that here i can decide whether to apply it just this folder or all my mailboxes i'll select all mailboxes and here you see that it moves the conversation to the top with the latest message featured so this is a nice way to clean up your inbox where it groups together related messages this now brings us to tip number five and that's to triage everything that comes into your inbox now that we've reduced the number of messages coming into the inbox with the previous tips now you should have a very manageable number that require your attention here with the first message i'm on cc and i wanted to read this so once i review this message up on the top toolbar i'll click on archive this will move it over to the archive folder on the left hand side i could always click into here if i want to get back to the message and i can even search for it if i need to reference it again but i've already read it and i've consumed that information down below here nester is asking me a question and this is something i need to follow up on i'll have to pull the q1 number so it's going to take me a little bit of time so i can't just respond right away so instead i'll hover over this message and then i'll flag it now that it's flagged it'll add it to my task list or my to-do list and now i want to get it out of my inbox so here i'll click on archive and that's now moved it out now that i finished triaging my inbox i could shift over to the task view so i just focus on the different messages that require response i'll go down to the bottom left hand corner and click into tasks here i see the email from nester with the question once i pull together the numbers i can click into this task to respond to them one of the really nice things about flagging email in outlook is it also brings it over to microsoft to do and if you use to do as a task manager this works especially well over here on the left hand side i'll click on flagged email and here i see that message that i flagged and let's say that today i'm pulling together a list of all of the different action items that i want to focus on here i could right click on this message and i can add it to my day over on the left hand side now when i click into my day i can see all the different tasks that i want to finish up today if you've never heard of the my day view before this is a really nice way to stay productive every single day every day the my day view resets so you'll have a blank list that you can build up of the things you want to get done today then tomorrow you'll have a blank slate where you can then start again this brings us to tip number six often times you'll ask a question of someone or maybe you have a request but then they never follow up with you you can set a flag on a message to make sure you don't forget and then you can ping them again in the future here i have a message that i'm sending out to diego with a request and i want to make sure this gets done right up above i can click on this follow-up flag and i'll set it to no date my message is now all ready to go so i'll click on send within my task view i can now see the email that i flagged as i sent it out but here it mixes it in with all of my other tasks i want to make sure i add a new category where i can see everything that i'm waiting on here i'll right click on the task and right down here i'll click on categorize and i'll go down to all categories within categories here i'll add a new category and i'll call this waiting for response here i can pick a color i'll go with red just to show some urgency and then i'll click on ok then i'll click on ok again back on the main view up on top i'll click on view and here i can switch to categories so right here i can see all of my different emails where i'm waiting for a response so maybe at the end of every week i could go through all of my messages where i'm waiting for a response and if i didn't hear back from the recipient of the message i could just ping them again to see if they have an update tip number seven you can respond with a meeting instead of emailing back and forth here i'm in an email thread where we've had a few back and forths and i can imagine that this thread would go on for a while if we try to discuss it over email instead i could set up a very quick meeting up here under the home tab there's a button right here that says reply with meeting let's click on this this opens up a new meeting invitation and here it pulls in the subject from the thread it also pulls in everyone who is involved in the email and here it has all of the context of the email thread so i don't have to retype any of that i could simply say let's discuss here i'll choose a time and once i'm all ready to go i'll click on send and my meeting is now set up this brings us to tip number eight outlook is constantly trying to distract you from getting work done when you receive a new message you'll hear a sound you'll see an alert you'll see a notification i recommend turning that off at least that's what i always did anytime i set up a new version of outlook up in the top left hand corner click on file and then go down to options within options let's click on mail and then scroll down just a little bit to the section that says message arrival and here you'll see what happens when a new message arrives now you can imagine if you're getting 250 to 300 messages a day you're going to be hearing the beeping sound a lot throughout the day so let's uncheck this let's uncheck this one this one and this one and this should help you focus a lot better once you're done unchecking all of those click on ok this brings us to tip number nine when you have a message that let's say you want to respond to or forward you could come right up here and click on reply reply all or forward and when i click on that that'll open it up directly in line now the one problem with this is over on the left hand side you'll continue seeing all of the messages that are flooding into your inbox and that'll distract you from the message that you're trying to compose maybe a more enticing email comes in so you click over onto that over here and then you've lost track of where you were in your message instead you can focus by opening your reply in a new window to do this let's go up to the top left hand corner and click on the file menu then go down to options and within options click on mail here within mail let's scroll down just a little bit to the section that says replies and forwards and here we have the option to open replies and forwards in a new window then let's click on ok back in the message when i click on reply all this now opens up a brand new window and i'm no longer distracted by my inbox and this brings us to the last tip of today i know so sad that we're near the end but this is a pretty good one i don't know let's say that you're on an email thread where all of your co-workers are making fun of you maybe you no longer want to see any of the responses that are coming in right up on top on the home tab there's a button called ignore and when you click on this you can select to ignore the conversation any additional message that comes in as part of this conversation will automatically go to the trash bin and you no longer have to look at that so yet another way to help clean up your inbox all right well let me know down below in the comments did you learn any new techniques that you're going to implement to help control your inbox to see more videos like this please consider subscribing and i'll see you next time you

Channel: Kevin Stratvert

Views: 162,314

Rating: 4.9609008 out of 5

Keywords: kevin stratvert, outlook tips and tricks, outlook, microsoft outlook, inbox, email, mail, overload, cut down on email, control inbox, manage inbox, outlook mail, outlook tips, outlook tricks, microsoft email, microsoft mail, tutorial, outlook tutorial, how to use, how to use outlook, 2021, 2019, microsoft outlook tips and tricks, microsoft, office, outlook 365, 365, 2020, outlook email, office 365, microsoft 365, top, tips and tricks, tricks, tips, teams, stratvert, kevin, mail in outlook

Id: _DTI-9DnV_g

Length: 15min 44sec (944 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 16 2021