Outlook Top 10 Time Saving Features of 2016

Tip 1 Avoid Duplicating Emails, Use Outlook Templates

Ever find yourself writing the same email over and over? A quotation for a customer, a supplier enquiry, a feedback request? If so, you should be using Outlook templates. When you create a template in Outlook, standard text and even attachments are stored so that they can be easily re-used at a point in the future. Here's how...

1. Create a new message containing the text you want to store along with a subject line and any file attachments.
2. From the File menu select Save As
3. Change the Save as Type drop down to Outlook Template
4. Give it a file name and click Save
5. To access the template you will need to add the Choose Form button to the Quick Access Tool bar, to do this, click Home, New Items, More Items and then right click Choose Form, select Add to Quick Access tool bar
6. The button is now added to the Quick Access Tool bar in the upper left corner of the screen
7. Whenever you want to use the template, click the button and select User Templates in File System then select the template you require

Tip 2 My Fave 3 Find Features

1. FLAGS:- Use Flags to quickly find messages. To flag a message use the Insert key on the keyboard to toggle the flag status to red or complete (alternatively click the flag icon to the right of the message).
2. SEARCH FOLDERS:- When you flag a message you can view all flagged messages easily by making use of the Follow Up Search Folder. If you're not already familiar with search folders you should be! For any search you perform often, just save the search for quick access. To do this, right click on Search Folders in the left navigation menu, select "New Search Folder," and then select what you want, in our case Mail Flagged for Follow Up. Likewise you could create search folders for mail with attachments to quickly filter messages with file attachments or Unread Mail to see all unread messages fast.
3. ADVANCED FIND:- Already using the search box above your inbox to find messages? When you click in the search box a new tab appears at the end of the ribbon called Search Tools, giving you the ability to perform an Advanced Find. Use an advanced search to specify more criteria to narrow down your search results.

Tip 3 - Create an Outlook Item from your Clipboard

Copy any text to your clipboard, then in Outlook press Ctrl-V. Outlook creates a new message (or note or whatever item, depending on the folder you're viewing) with the text already pasted.

So instead of creating a new item in Outlook, and then copying and pasting text in, you do both in one step.

Look forward to seeing you soon,

Anita Lund
Owner and Founder of Trainers Direct Pty Ltd (Sydney)  
On Site MS Office, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook and computer training courses and workshops in Sydney
www.trainers-direct.com.au
​& Storm Training & Solutions (UK) www.stormtraining.com

Tip 4 - Turn off Email Conversations (Grouping of Emails)

I don’t like Conversation View and how it groups emails together as it requires additional clicks to get to a specific message within a conversation.  It's particularly common if you're using the web app version of Outlook. 

Also, it makes it difficult to find a message. I couldn't find a message which I received last week and then discovered it under “Yesterday” under a different “From” name of someone who replied later! I'll show you here different ways to de-activate this and how to do the same on your I-Phone too.

In Outlook on the Web, you’ll find a drop down link at the top right of your message list. When you click on this link, you can select various filters and sorting methods.
At the bottom of this list, you’ll find a section where you can choose between “Messages” and “Conversations”. Select “Messages” to turn off Conversation View. The screen shot below shows Outlook 2013 which is similar.

How to Turn Off Threads in Mail on the iPhone 6

1. Tap the Settings icon
2. Choose Mail, Contacts, Calendar
3. Scroll down and tap the button to the right of Organize by Thread to turn it off. You will know that thread organization has been turned off when there is not any green shading around the button.
   

Tip 5 - Group and Sort

To quickly sort by a column click on its heading to sort ascending and then again to sort descending. You can also remove a column by dragging it away from the title row and Arrange By to group emails together.

Tip 6 - My Favourite Outlook Shortcut Keys

​Tip 7 - Outlook Notifications

If you receive a lot of messages or are easily distracted by the notification sound that plays for incoming messages, you may wish to turn off the following options:
In ​File, Options, Mail ​under the Message Arrival section untick 'Display a desktop alert' and any or all of the other options shown below.

Tip 8 - Advanced Search

A really useful button to add to the quick access toolbar in Outlook is the Advanced Find button. A normal search in Outlook will only search the email subject by default so if you want to search the message body or search against other criteria such as importance, from etc you'll need to add this button.  

1. Click in the Search box just above the received column, a new Search tab will appear at the end of the ribbon.
2. Click the Search Tools button
3. You will see Advanced Find in the list.
4. Right click Advanced find to add it to the quick access toolbar.
5. The next time you want to use advanced search criteria, simply click the button which will have been added to the end of the quick access toolbar in the top left hand corner of the screen.

Tip 9 - Add an Email address to Your Contacts List

The next time you receive an email from someone and you want to add them to your contacts...

• Click the email in your Inbox to highlight it (don't double click to open it).
• There email address will be displayed in the preview pane to the right or at the bottom.
• Right click on their email address and choose Add to Outlook Contacts.