1. Microsoft ® Office Outlook ® 2007 Training Get out of your Inbox Jim Taliaferro Community Mental Health Center

4. Overview: Tame the chaos of your Inbox Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 While e-mail can make communication more efficient, the sheer volume of messages can also get overwhelming. Outlook 2007 includes flexible features to help you control e-mail volume, find what you need, and act when and where action is required. This course offers a glimpse of what’s available and shows you how to make the best use of messages in your Inbox and beyond.

6. Lesson 1 Use your mail to take action

7. Use your mail to take action Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 Reading an e-mail message usually prompts you to take some sort of action. You might reply right away, or take a secondary action like setting up a meeting. In order to clear away the clutter in your Inbox, think about a message as you read it and decide whether it requires action. If it does, what do you need to do? Use Outlook to take that action, when and how you need to.

9. Drag a message to take action Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 You can get started with each action by dragging the message to the appropriate button in the Navigation Pane. While this functionality isn’t new to Outlook 2007, it provides a handy illustration of how messages in Outlook can have uses beyond e-mail.

10. Set up a meeting Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 If a message makes you realize that you need to meet with someone, here’s how to get started. Drag the message to the Calendar button in the Navigation Pane . A new appointment opens, where you’ll fill in the details such as date, time, and location. Then invite the person to the meeting and… … click Send .

11. Create a task Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 Sometimes a message contains information about some action that you need to take. For example, in the picture, the message from Ben Smith in Mark Lee’s Inbox reminds Mark that he needs to promote a line of office furniture that his company recently introduced.

12. Create a task Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 Mark can drag the message from his Inbox to the Tasks button in the Navigation Pane to quickly start a new task. He can change the subject to something more task-like, for example Show office furniture to Coho , and then save the task. The task is added to Mark’s task list.

13. Create a contact Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 Are you keeping a message around so that you’ll have a contact’s e-mail address handy? Here’s a better idea: Create a contact entry in Contacts . As the picture shows, you can drag a message to Contacts to get the contact entry started. When you drag a message to the Contacts button, a new Contact form opens and the e-mail address in the message is automatically added to it.

14. Create a contact Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 From there you can fill in the rest of the details, such as a street address, telephone number, and so on. The next time you need to look up a bit of information about that contact, you’ll know right where to look: in Contacts .

15. When the action is extraction Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 Say you receive a message with an attachment, and all you really want is the attachment. You can save the attachment to your hard disk independent of the message. In other words, you can “extract” the attachment from the message.

16. When the action is extraction Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 Once you’ve saved the attachment, you may no longer need the message. If this is the case, you can delete it or file it away. Another message out of your Inbox!

24. Lesson 2 Keep track of messages with flags and the To-Do Bar

25. Keep track of messages Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 The first time you start Outlook 2007, you’ll notice something new. It’s called the To-Do Bar , and it’s there to help you remember to take action when you need to. In the To-Do Bar, you’ll see upcoming items from your calendar as well as flagged messages and tasks. Curious about how things get into the To-Do Bar? That’s what this lesson will tell you.

26. Meet the To-Do Bar Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 The To-Do Bar displays flagged messages, tasks from your Tasks folder, and upcoming meetings, appointments, and events from your calendar. In the To-Do Bar, you can see these things at a glance, without having to switch to other windows in Outlook.

27. Meet the To-Do Bar Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 The picture shows the basic parts of the To-Do Bar. Date Navigator Upcoming calendar appointments A place to type new tasks Your task list (flagged messages and tasks)

28. Prioritize with follow-up flags Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 The first lesson familiarized you with how to create a task by dragging a message to the Tasks button in the Navigation Pane . An even easier way to keep track of what you need to do, based on the information in a message, is simply to flag the message for follow-up. The picture shows a message in the Inbox that has been flagged with a follow-up flag. Notice that the flagged message also appears in the To-Do Bar.

29. Prioritize with follow-up flags Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 Flagged messages show up in many places. Messages that you flag for follow-up not only show up in the To-Do Bar, they also show up in your task list and on your calendar. That’s to help you remember to do the things on your list. And, if that’s not enough, you can set reminders for them so that you actually remember to follow up.

30. Change the subject, but only in the To-Do Bar Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 The subject of a message doesn’t always describe the task you need to do. In that case, you can change the subject of a flagged message in the To-Do Bar. When you do this, the subject of the message in the Inbox is unchanged.

32. When you complete, don’t delete Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 You may be tempted to delete items from the To-Do Bar when you’ve completed them. However, there’s a better way. When you complete a task, mark it as complete using the Mark Complete command. A quick way is to simply click the flag next to the item. Completed items will drop off of your list as you might expect.

33. When you complete, don’t delete Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 But what’s really helpful about marking an item complete? You’ll see it listed on your calendar at the bottom of the day on which you completed it. And it’ll be crossed out so that you’ll know you’ve completed it. It’s a great way to remind yourself of all of the work that you’ve done.

34. When you complete, don’t delete Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 But what’s really helpful about marking an item complete? In the To-Do Bar and in the Calendar, any task not marked as complete on its due date will automatically be carried over to the following day until you complete it.

35. Turn a message into a calendar entry Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 Earlier, the lesson pointed out the Date Navigator at the top of the To-Do Bar. You can use the Date Navigator to quickly create a new calendar entry from a message. The picture shows the process: just drag the message to a date in the Date Navigator.

36. Turn a message into a calendar entry Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 The process is similar to the process of dragging a message to the Calendar button in the Navigation Pane , as described in the first lesson. Why is this method better? Because there’s one less step: The date information is filled in automatically to match the date you drag to in the Date Navigator.

39. Show the To-Do Bar as you like it Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 To change what’s shown in the To-Do Bar, point to To-Do Bar on the View menu, and select or clear the items you want to show or hide. Also, a quick way to make more room for other windows in Outlook such as the Reading Pane, is to minimize the To-Do Bar by clicking the Minimize the To-Do Bar arrow next to its title.

47. Lesson 3 Name your color: Organize with colored categories

48. Name your color Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 Tired of losing things in your Inbox? Want to be able to quickly spot messages from your boss or about a specific topic? Use color to instantly organize and sort your mail. With colored categories, you can make specific messages more visible—even if all you do is leave them in your Inbox. Categories and their associated colored labels let you quickly see what’s what in a way that makes sense to you.

51. How to assign a category Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 Wondering who creates the category names? You do. You create a category name and choose the color that’s associated with it. Then, you can assign that category to incoming and existing messages. One way to assign a color category to a message is to right-click in the Categories column and use the shortcut menu, as shown in the picture.

52. How to assign a category Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 Wondering who creates the category names? You do. You create a category name and choose the color that’s associated with it. Once you’ve assigned a category to a message, you can quickly scan your Inbox and find the message just by looking for its colored tag.

53. How to match names and colors Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 Outlook categories start with unspecific names: Red Category, Orange Category, etc. Naturally, categories will have the most meaning if you give them specific names. The first time you use one of the default categories, such as the Purple Category, Outlook will prompt you to rename it using the Rename Category dialog box. You can type a new name for the category in the Name box, as shown in the picture.

54. Can’t remember what the color means? Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 It happens to the best of us: We come up with a great system for staying organized, and then poof, we forget part of the system. Say, for example, that you used orange to color code all personal messages. Then, suppose you don’t get a personal message for a while, and you forget what orange means. No problem. As the picture shows, the decoder is a just a click away.

55. If you used colored flags in Outlook 2003… Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 If you used colored follow-up flags in Outlook 2003, you’ll probably want to know why the new colored categories in Outlook 2007 are better. With colored categories, you can assign meaningful text at the same time that you assign a color. Another advantage is that colored categories can be applied to all Outlook items, so you can organize your contacts, calendar items, and tasks all in the same way.

57. If you used colored flags in Outlook 2003… Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 If you color coded messages with flags in Outlook 2003, those flags will be updated automatically to colored categories. A good practice would be to find these messages and give them a more meaningful category name.

58. View messages by category Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 Let’s suppose you’ve color-coded all your messages according to specific projects or clients. How can you view your messages in these groups? It’s easy. Click the Arranged By shortcut menu (under the Search box), and then click Categories . The picture shows the switch from arranging messages by date to arranging them by their categories: Blue Yonder Airlines , Coho Winery , and Contoso .

59. Categories and rules, a great combination Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 You can color-code messages automatically by using rules . For instance, are messages from your mom always personal? If you’ve got a Personal category set up, you can streamline categorization by creating a rule that automatically marks all messages from your mom with the Personal category.

67. Lesson 4 Store it

68. Store it Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 Do you like an empty Inbox? One easy method for clearing away clutter is to create custom folders and then move messages out of your Inbox and into these folders. With folders, you choose the names, so the organization of your messages will make sense to you.

69. Why create folders? Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 Previous lessons described ways to act on messages and ways to sort and organize them within a category. But what if you want to sort messages into distinct groups and keep them separate from other messages (thereby getting them out of your Inbox)? Folders can help you do this.

70. Why create folders? Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 The picture shows an example of using folders: “Coho Winery” and “Contoso.” You may already use a filing system in your office. Once you learn how to create folders, you can easily adapt any existing folder-naming system to Outlook.

73. Move messages by dragging Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 Once you’ve created a folder, you can move one message or multiple messages to it by dragging. The picture shows how to drag a single message from the list of messages to a folder in the Navigation Pane.

74. Move messages with a command Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 The dragging method just described is fast. However, it has a down-side: The chance that you’ll accidentally “drop” messages in the wrong location. A safer method is to right-click the message or messages you want to move and then click Move to Folder .

75. Move messages with a command Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 In the example in the picture, messages are arranged by category. Right-click the category heading. Click Move to Folder . Select the folder name from the list of folders in the Move Items dialog box, and then click OK . To move the entire Coho category to the Coho Winery folder, here’s what you’d do.

76. Use Favorite Folders Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 Once you start filing your e-mail messages in folders, you’ll notice that some folders get used more frequently than others. To make finding and filing go faster, move those frequently used folders to Favorite Folders . To make a folder a favorite, drag it from Mail Folders to the Favorite Folders area of the Navigation Pane.

77. When a favorite isn’t anymore Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 Favorites come, favorites go. When a favorite folder falls out of favor, you can remove it from the Favorite Folders area of the Navigation Pane. Just right-click it and then click Remove From Favorite Folders .

85. Lesson 5 Find any message, fast

86. Find any message, fast Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 Let’s face it. No matter how organized you are, whether you organize everything in folders or love to color code, the time will come when you just can’t find that important message. Luckily, using Instant Search to search for messages in Outlook 2007 is not only easy, but it’s fast. And now you can search for messages that are in different locations, including archives or multiple mailboxes. No matter where you store your messages, Search can help.

87. Find it fast with Instant Search Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 In earlier versions of Outlook, searching for items may have required a lot of tweaking and waiting before you found what you were looking for. Now with Instant Search, you’ll not only find messages much faster, you’ll also be able to quickly and easily fine-tune your search results. For example, add more words to your query, and you’ll see the search results narrow instantly.

88. Find it fast with Instant Search Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 Outlook now also makes it easy for you to see why a certain message appears in the search results: The words or terms that made a particular message a match are highlighted. You can see this in the picture, which shows the results of a search for messages containing the words “quarterly sales.”

89. Advanced search Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 Typing in the Instant Search pane brings up search results based on any matching words in a message. If you want to search on specific parts of a message—for example, if you want to search based on who a message is from —you’ll need to use advanced search terms.

90. Advanced search Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 The picture shows how to do this. Click the Expand button, and type the advanced criteria. You’ll notice that as you do this, the words in the Instant Search box are updated to show the new criteria.

91. Search archives and beyond Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 New to Outlook 2007 is the ability to search multiple locations at one time. For example, you can search Archive folders and your Microsoft Exchange Server mailbox at the same time. How? Select All Mail Items as the location for your search. All Mail Items appears at the top of the Instant Search pane so that you can clearly see what’s being searched.

92. Search archives and beyond Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 Here’s a possible scenario for you to consider. Suppose you automatically archive any message older than 30 days because you rarely need to refer to messages beyond the current month. However, every once in a while, you do need to find one that’s older than that.

93. Search archives and beyond Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 Here’s a possible scenario for you to consider. It’s easy to search your archives. By selecting All Mail Items , you can now search different e-mail locations all at the same time and look for that one message in all locations. This makes search far easier than in earlier versions of Outlook.

94. What about other Outlook items? Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 You can search your Inbox, Calendar, and Tasks all at once. First switch to the Folder List (click Folder List in the Navigation Pane ) and use the Instant Search pane there. Otherwise, search is restricted to one type of Outlook item at a time—messages or Calendar items, for example.

95. See all of your messages again Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 When you search, the search results appear in the main Outlook window. They’ll remain there until you tell Outlook what to do next. You’ll always know that you’re looking at search results if the Instant Search pane is active. You can tell if the pane is active if it’s a different color from the surrounding panes and you see the words (Search Results) after the folder name at the top of the pane.

96. See all of your messages again Get out of your Inbox with Outlook 2007 When you search, the search results appear in the main Outlook window. They’ll remain there until you tell Outlook what to do next. To restore all of the messages in the current folder, click the Clear Search button.