One of the main factors determining productivity when using an email service, It is the order that the information stored in this medium is maintained.
At particular case of Outlook, we have available a very interesting tool to manage the organization of our emails, in order to be able to group them in the way that is most convenient for us. We are talking about tags or categories.
In the next few paragraphs, We will teach you step by step everything you need to know about this useful tool, from its usefulness and the advantages it provides, to other useful tricks you can apply to improve the productivity and organization of your email inbox. Outlook.
What are labels and what are they for in Outlook?
The tags function, better known as categories, is an organization tool that allows you to group emails and calendar events into a specific group, identified with a label. These categories are assigned by default in Outlook, although you will also have the option to create your own custom categories and assign them to your emails and calendar events to optimize the order of your tray.
Among other advantages that we can find in the use of categories, we can highlight:
- Easier to find your messages: Through the integrated search tool of Outlook, you can quickly locate the desired categories to find the desired emails more easily.
- You can assign several categories to the same email: Unlike the folders function, by using the categories, you can assign a message to several groups, thus avoiding having unnecessary copies of a message stored in several folders.
- Color categorization function: In addition to custom names for the categories, you can assign a color coding to the custom labels, thus allowing the quickest location of the labels in the search.
- Manage labels without affecting messages: If at any time you have a tag that you want to delete, you can do it safely, without having to worry about deleting the messages assigned to this tag.
- Assign actions to emails by means of labels: this is possible through custom categories. You can create the new labels and use them as reminders of actions to be taken on the emails to which they are assigned. For example, you can create a tag named “Urgent – Reply” and assign it to the messages that you need to reply to more quickly.
Learn how to create labels to organize your Outlook mail as much as possible
The process of creating and organizing Outlook categories it is quite simple and applicable in all emails from any tray, so it is possible to assign emails from the inbox, outbox, drafts, starred, etc. to one or more groups.
In addition to this, the categories will help us organize our contacts into specific groups, which we can easily access through the Outlook search tool:
To organize emails
With the objective of get the most out of our inbox, one of the best methods is to organize the related emails in a common category, with the aim of being able to locate them more easily.
To assign a category to an email, you must follow the steps described below:
- Login to your email from Outlook.
- Open the folder where the message you want to categorize is located.
- Choose the message and click “Categorize”, option that you will see in the toolbar at the top of the message.
- Click on one of the available categories to assign it to the open mail.
The selected email It will be assigned to the category you have chosen, and you will have the possibility of assigning more labels to organize it in more groups of messages. You will be able to filter all these categories through the Outlook search tool.
To create contact groups
This convenient feature will allow you create contact groups quickly and easily through the labels assigned to each contact on your list, so that you will have access to groups organized by category.
Let’s see:
- In the Outlook desktop app, open the tab “Search tools.”
- click in “Categories” and select the category you want to filter.
- For select all contacts assigned with this category, click on one of them and press “CTRL + A”.
- Right click on the selected contacts, and from the drop-down menu, select “Copy to folder”.
- In the pop-up window, select the option “New folder”.
- Edit the name of the folder and save it in the contacts storage of the Outlook application by pressing “Okay”.
- Go to the tab “Beginning” and select “New group of contacts.”
- Define the group name in the text box and follow the path Add Members> From Outlook Contacts.
- Click on “Directory” and select the folder you created for the contact information.
- Select all contacts and click “Members”. Then click on the button “Okay”.
- Once this is done, you will return to the window of “Contact groups” where will you click “Keep”.
Through this process, We will have created a new group of contacts based on the categories assigned to each contact. This process can be repeated as many times as necessary to create new contact groups with different labels.
Other actions you can do to better organize your Outlook email
In addition to simply assigning categories, Outlook allows us to perform a variety of actions that allow us to optimize the organization of our inbox, to get the most out of it. Although the Outlook web portal has a variety of organizational features, most of these processes can only be done through the Outlook desktop client.
Go for it:
Create categories
To create a new category for your Outlook emails, You just have to follow a process very similar to that applied to assign an existing category to an email.
Through the following steps:
- Login to your Outlook account.
- Select a message from any folder in your tray
- click on the arrow visible next to the label “Categorize”
- Choose the option “New category” in the drop-down menu
- Write the name of the new label, assign it a color from the available list, and then click “Keep”
When saving the new category, this will be assigned to the open email, and available in the list of categories to use in the future on any other mail that we want to group. This procedure is quite simple and it is applicable as many times as you think necessary on the same email, so you can assign a single email to different groups and categories.
Create a Quick Step
The quick step are a function that allows you to automate repetitive tasks in the emails of Outlook, allowing them to be done much faster, and thus improving productivity.
These quick steps are programmed as follows:
- In the Outlook desktop app, select the tab “Beginning”.
- At the bottom, click the group “Quick Step” and select “Create new”.
- Assign a name for the new Quick Step in the window “Quick Step edit”.
- Click on “Choose an action” and select an item from the dropdown list, for example “Copy to folder”.
- Choose the complement of the action if necessary. In the case of action “Copy to folder”, You will have to select the destination folder.
- If you wish, you can click again on “Choose an action” to add a new process for the selected emails
- Click on “Finalize”.
This function provides the user with a significant increase in productivity, by drastically reducing the time required to carry out long and tedious process chains just a few clicks away.
Use email templates
Email templates Outlook are predefined text formats that can be used to reply to one or more emails quickly, also having the possibility of modifying them to reflect a different text, according to our needs.
To create and use an Outlook template, follow these steps:
- Log in in the web application of Outlook with your user credentials
- From your inbox, click the button “New message”.
- Select the three points, located at the bottom of the message window.
- Click on the option “My templates”.
- Select the icon “+ Template”.
- Enter title to be displayed in the list for the template.
- Specify the content of the template, which is reflected in the message once you select it.
- Click on “Keep”.
- Select the newly created template from the list to use as a new message.
Now you will have the possibility to create this reliable and fast response mechanism That you can use to answer any email, as well as send multiple recipients to improve the use times of your email platform.
Configure conditional formatting rules
The conditional formatting rules without a number of custom attributes that can be apply to incoming messages to highlight them.
This feature can be easily activated from the Outlook desktop app settings:
- Follow the path “File> View Settings> Conditional Formatting> Conditional Formatting”.
- Click on “Add” and enter a name for the new format.
- Choose “Fountain”, and defines the font and its attributes for the new format. Then click “Accept”.
- Click on “Condition” and defines the conditions under which this format will be applied (for a specified period, on certain specific senders, or on a specific word or phrase in the subject).
- Click on “Accept”.
- Accepts the modifications in the dialog boxes of “Conditional format” Y “Advanced settings”.
To the activate formatting rules, we can more easily view the messages received from the assigned recipients. Yes It is the case that you only require this function to be active for a period of time, you can define it during setup.