Outlook main Home screen
The main screen opens when you first open Outlook. I set my columns so that “From” and “Subject” are the widest and “Received Date” is narrower but I can still see the date. I get a lot of information knowing who sent the email to me, when, and what it is about. I set the columns in the View Tab (View Settings Icon) and then used the pull down under “Change view to apply the view to other folders”. Then, any folder I open looks the same. This makes it easy to deal with several subjects at once in different folders. See my main home screen below:
Keeping Emails in folders
I keep my email in folders and to do this (since subjects and senders are all different), I use the Move Icon. Click on an email and select Move. A list of folders opens and you move the email where it belongs. Now every once in a while, it would be handy to have the same email in two very different folders because it applies to both subjects. So then I use the Move pull down, and select “Copy to folder” and do that. Then I go back to the same email and select “Move to folder” and move it to the other folder. Now I have save my email in two places.
A lot of my emails have varied subjects and varied senders, so Rules do not help me much. In addition, rules can go bad and Outlook can go haywire. Accordingly, I do not use Rules and I know better how to manage my own email in my own way. Rules are OK (barely) but I do not really recommend them.
Reply All
Like everyone else, I get emails for which I am one of a number of recipients. If I must reply, I take care whether I “Reply” or “Reply All”. We all get copious quantities of email. Indiscriminate “Reply All’s” are usually not appreciated. Take care with your replies and your users will thank you. A subset of Reply is “Forward”. Reply does not keep attachments; “Forward” does keep attachments. It is handy to differentiate how each one works.
Deleting Emails
Deleting emails can also cause issues. When you delete an email, it goes into the “Deleted Items” folder. I set Outlook not to empty “Deleted Items” on exit. That way, there is a second chance to recover a deleted email. I am very careful about this but accidents do happen and I like a second chance.
Attachments
Did you know you could separate an attachment from an email? You get an email with a big attachment and you may wish to save the attachment, or perhaps you do not need the attachment and can delete it. I have the attacment management screen below:
From the reading pane (where you can see the email) or else open the email and then right click on the attachment. You can remove the attachment (which deletes it) or select “Save as” and save the attachment to a permanent folder. I find it helpful to keep important items in Windows folders for later access.
Reading Pane
I use the Reading Pane a lot. Most people (not everyone) say what they need to say in the first paragraph, so the Reading Pane makes it easy to manage work. No need to actually open the email in most cases. In the Reading Pane options, I set the email to be marked “Read” after 2 seconds. I only want “Unread” emails briefly. I read the emails and then put them in folders right away except for a very small number I keep until Saturday in my inbox. The settings for “Folder Pane”, “Reading Pane”, “To Do Bar” and “People Pane” are under the View tab. More about these later.
Message Preview
The setting for Message Preview affects how many lines one email header uses in the email list. This setting is also in the View tab, but it affects how much space is used for the list of email headers. The default is 2 lines and I turn it off. That way I have more lines available for email headers and that suits me better. You should always use what suits you better, but Microsoft defaults are usually not set for effective productivity.
Junk Email
I use Mail.com to filter out spam. Very rarely, I do a Send / Receive and my email appears to have vanished. Outlook (properly installed and set up) does not randomly delete emails. So I look in my Junk Folder and usually that is what has happened. This is indeed rare, but you can pull down the Junk icon and see Settings at the bottom. I turn Junk filtering off, but you may wish to use it and this is where you find the Junk Mail settings for safe senders and recipients.
Search
There is a Search Bar above the email list of headers. Look closely at that bar. When you click there (say to type something), it bring up the Search Toolbar. In here, you can search through “All Mailboxes” which includes Archives, “Current Mailbox” or specific folders. Under Search Tools, you will find Advanced Options.
For the most part, I type something and see what it finds. I have “All Mailboxes” enabled. If a basic search through all mailboxes satisfies my current need, fine. Otherwise, I go back and use the Advanced Options. Sometimes it takes a couple of tries to find exactly what I want because lots of client emails are similar in content.
Categories
I do not use categories because it does not fit my need (Many clients and subjects and all my clients are important). You might find Categories useful in your work.
Outlook View Tab
Up to now, we have found everything we needed under the Home screen tab. Let’s click now on the View tab. Here is the main View Screen.
View Settings
View Settings brings up a Window of what columns, groupings and sorts you use. You can change the labels of columns, date formats and many things in here. When you have a folder the way you like, click on the Change View pull down and you can “Apply the current view to other folders”. This way, you can make all folders look and sort the same way. This is very handy in my work and saves time for me.
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