Using Outlook to increase your productivity

Kris’ Top Ten List of Outlook Tips1 Use the power of the wheel - change font size of messages2 Remind myself to reply to an Email3 Quickly find related messages4 Use Quick Parts for content reuse5 Procrastinate in a good way – Defer sending Email6 Use proper etiquette7 Foil the reply-all nazis 8 Automatically create things from Email9 Use Rules to carve up the fire hose

10 Use custom views to highlight certain types of messages

Increase font size of messages

• Open the message you would like to read. Hold down Ctrl button and scroll the wheel on your mouse up.

• Alternatively, you can increase font size under Other Actions->Zoom.

Who doesn’t love to use the mouse wheel?

Remind myself to reply to an Email

• Right-click the important message, select Follow Up, and click Add Reminder. You can select the follow up day or select a custom reminder.

Quickly Find Related Messages

• Open a message and click the Related button in the Find box.

Use Quick Parts for content reuse• Highlight a section of your Email and click on the

Insert toolbar and Quickparts button. Select “Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery”

• To reuse simply select the section you want to reuse.

Defer Email sending

• Individual Emails or all Emails• Give you time to think/rethink• Control delivery time• Use a rule to delay all Email by X minutes

Use proper Email etiquette

• Use subject line designators– AR: Action Required– FYI-REF: FYI for your reference– FYI-DEL: FYI can be deleted– NH: Need Help– <EOM> : End of Message

• Use the “To” line ONLY when assigning action items to recipients

• Use “CC” line if no action required (equivalent to FYI-REF)

• Enable Outlook to always check spelling before you send

Foil the reply-all nazis• Create a No Reply All template on your computer• Click Tool, Forms and Design Form and open the message form in

the standard forms library.• Click on the action tab and double click the Reply All row to edit it

and uncheck “enabled”.• Save and publish the form.• Hit the new dropdown and select form and find your form.

Automatically create things from Email

Contacts Appointments Notes - requires OneNote

Drag and drop messages to your calendar on the “To Do” bar. Hold the Control key to create a new copy.

Use Rules to carve up the fire hose

• Create subfolders and filter messages automatically based on rules you define– Example rules:• Move messages from X to a subfolder. X

being a person, a distribution group, etc.• Move messages about a certain subject to

a subfolder• Move all CC messages to a subfolder

If everything sits in your inbox you are not leveraging technology to help you.

Use custom views to highlight certain messages• Customize the main outlook message view by

using automatic formatting. • Click on View -> Current View -> Customize

Current View• Use criteria like “make all messages sent only

to me appear Blue”