Top Microsoft Outlook Tips

For many of you, emailing will be at the epicentre of your daily working lives. Your inbox is like the hub that allows you to communicate, collaborate and organise yourself from day to day. Outlook is an example of an email app that goes above and beyond and doesn’t just stop at sending emails. It also has many more features that you may or may not know about that can make completing daily tasks that little bit easier!

Use your folders

With emails coming in from every direction all day long, it can be hard to keep track of them all. By setting up your own personal folders, you automatically send certain emails to certain folders by making rules for the folder. For example, you can send every email that has a particular word or phrase in the subject to a folder of your choice, making it easier and quicker to locate the emails that you’re looking for.

Try a template

If you send a multitude of emails every day, they might be getting a bit repetitive and fall into a cycle of habit in which the same email is sent out over and over again. To break this cycle, why not try some of the built-in Outlook email templates. This will allow you switch up the design of your emails and potentially create more engagement from your recipients!

Schedule your emails

This is a great feature for when your emails are time sensitive. Instead of waiting for a certain time to send out an email, Outlook makes it easier for you to delay your email to a time that is more appropriate. This feature if especially useful when sending emails to people in a different time zone, meaning you can send them emails whilst they’re at work, rather than when they’re asleep!

Add a background

Another way to spice up your emails and make them a bit more interesting is to add some colour or an image to the background. Place your cursor in the message box of a new message > Options > Page Colour > Now either pick a colour or go to Fill Effects to add an image.

Import mailing lists

If you have a mailing list in an Excel sheet or a CSV file, it is very easy to import this into Outlook. Go to file > Open & Export >Import/Export > Import.

Forward attachments, not emails

Forwarding an email as an attachment is different to simply forwarding an email because it includes everything from the original message. The header and routing information will be included, not just the message. This information can be very important when troubleshooting or reporting a suspicious email. Sending an attachment may also be useful for when you want the recipient of the message to know that you haven’t edited it, or to send them a record of a conversation. Select the email > Home > Respond > More Respond Actions > Forward as Attachment.

Say when you’re away No one likes feeling like they’re being ignored… so if you’re not going to be available to contact for a long period of time, make sure you let your colleagues know! It’s very quick an easy to set up an automatic reply in Outlook: File > Automatic Replies > Send Automatic Replies.

About the author