What is Microsoft outlook
Millions of people use Microsoft Outlook but how many really make use of
its features? The abundance of buttons and tabs can put some people off, it can
seem confusing and complicated. But it’s quite brilliant, most people just
aren’t using it effectively.
Here are 10 features that most people are unaware of, which have the
potential to change your entire experience of Outlook:
1. Scheduling emails
Sometimes I work late at night, but I don’t always want clients knowing
that. You might have some news, a blog, or an article that you don’t wish
people to know about until the next day, but you won't have time then to start
sending updates. Outlook allows you to write an email and schedule when you
want it to go out.
2. Create new
meetings, appointments, tasks and contacts from one window.
If like me you find yourself switching between contacts, calendar and
email frequently, then you’ll really like this feature. It allows you to create
a new task or appointment without having to leave your inbox.
3. Send similar
emails quickly with Quick Parts
If you send similar emails on a regular basis, for example to invite
people to an event, then Quick Parts allows you to save the text of the email
(or parts of it). Then you can insert it into future messages. Plus, if you
save it as auto text, then next time you start to write the same content,
Outlook will suggest the remaining text for you and you can simply hit Enter to
insert the text.
4.
Keyboard Shortcuts
We love keyboard shortcuts and there are some handy ones to know for
when using Outlook:
- Switch
to Mail: CTRL+1
- Switch
to Calendar: CTRL+2
- Switch
to Contacts: CTRL+3
- Switch
to tasks: CTRL+4
- Make
a new appointment: CTRL+SHIFT+A
- Create
a new contact: CTRL+SHIFT+C
- Start
a new message: CTRL+SHIFT+M
- Send
message: ALT+S
- Reply
to a message: CTRL+R
If you haven't used keyboard shortcuts before, we'd highly recommend
learning a few - you'd be amazed how much they speed up your day!
5. View it your way
Most people use the default view of their inbox but there are other ways
to view it which may suit you better.
In Windows, click the View tab (top
toolbar) and then Change View. You should see a few preset views to
choose from. If you wish you can go a step further then you can click View
Settings, where you can add columns, sort emails, change the font and much
more. Once you have the settings you’d like you can save the view.
6. View messages your
way
I really like this. You can custom the way that certain emails appear.
For example, instead of bold, my unread emails are Green. Even more useful is that
any emails that contain a certain word (in the title or body) are blue. This
really helps me when I’m looking for particular emails. For example we organise
an event called Tech Talks, I can see relevant emails to the event at a glance
which is extremely helpful.
You could have emails from your boss in a bright colour to make sure you
spot them, or emails where you're only copied in (rather than addressed
directly) in a lighter colour.
Pro tip: you can do the same with calendar appointments, for example, turn
all the Microsoft Teams online meetings purple and all the meetings with your
boss a bright red!
7. Sharing calendars
Sharing calendars can save time and make for better teamwork. At
SpiderGroup most of us have access to at least one other person in the office,
while many of us share access to our calendars with everyone. It's useful to
see what availability people have, especially when you need to book a
meeting!
8. Effective Task
management
Tasks are definitely among the items that are seriously under-used.
Similar to calendars, task lists can also be shared. Even better you can
actually delegate tasks to people in your team. This is great if you’re working
on a project with one or more people, because you can assign certain tasks to
certain people and get notified of when they are complete. Everyone can see how
close to completion they are and if any are yet to be started.
9. Creating and managing rules
The rules element of Outlook helps you to prioritise and organise emails
to suit you. Examples of what you can do include: having emails from a
particular person going to a separate folder. You might want newsletters to go
to a ‘read later’ folder for when you have some quiet time. You might want to
permanently delete emails from a particular person, (that certain someone who
sends blanket emails that you cannot unsubscribe from, perhaps). You can
forward certain emails to someone else on the team or have folders specific to
certain projects. You can also have an alert sent to your phone if you're
waiting on something urgent for example.
10. Search
Gone are the days of having to partition out all your emails into
separate folders so you have any hope of finding them again. The search feature
in Outlook has improved a great deal and can help you find any content based on
only a few words.
- add
'from:' or 'to:' before your search to find emails from a specific person
- If
you're after an email attachment try adding 'hasattachment:yes'
- looking
for that elusive email you know arrived yesterday, try 'received:yesterday'
- If
you're running out of space in your inbox you can find all the large
emails by searching 'messagesize:enormous'
- Just
want to see all the emails you've not found the time to read yet, try
'read:no'
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