Organizing Emails in Outlook

Using Folders or Colors to Organize your Emails

Using folders:

• 1. First, create a new folder to store specific emails in. Click on File, New and Folder.
• 2. Give your folder a new name, and click where you’d like to add it. Wherever you click, it will be placed under. So if you click on Personal Folders it will be under that. If you click on Inbox, it will be under that.
• 3. Drag messages you want to include in this folder from the Inbox into this folder.
• 4. Now the documents are in the new folder, rather than the Inbox.
• 5. You may create as many folders as you like, one for each project.
• 6. If you didn’t like where a folder ended up, right click on the folder, and you will have many options (as you can see to the left). You can delete it, rename it, copy it and so on. Don’t delete it if it already has messages in it, though, or you’ll lose those messages. Happily, if your folder is in the wrong place – say you put it under Inbox when you really wanted it under Personal Folders – drag the folder up to Personal Folders, and it will now appear there (in alphabetical order, of course).

Alternative to folders – Color

If you’d rather not create folders, you can right click on the Quick Click tab for messages. The first time you use a color, you’ll be given the chance to Rename it.  You can sort on color and easily put all items you’ve color-coded together. 

Sorting your inbox (and searching it):

• 1. You can easily sort your Inbox (or any other file), by clicking on Arrange By and then on a variety of choices, shown here. The default is by Date, with the most recent shown on top. You’ll notice that how it’s ordered is shown directly to the right of “Arranged by,” and this can also be changed by clicking on it.
• 2. You can search for specific text in the message or subject line by entering a word or phrase in the Search Box. To get out of the search results, just press the Escape key (or click on the Inbox in the folder list at the left.)

Reminding yourself to take action – use flags

If you right click on the flag next to a message, you can use one of the flags to remind you to take action. 

Delete messages

Finally, if you don’t need it, delete it.  When your cursor has clicked on the email, press the Delete button.  This leaves you with many fewer messages to search through.