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The Living in Outlook series is about sharing tips and workflows around real-world scenarios. We’ll start the conversation with a topic – you can add to it by posting your tips and workflows in the comments!
Because I am usually juggling several projects at once, my Inbox tends to become cluttered with e-mail and meeting requests related to the different things I’m working on.
The Color Categories feature has been incredibly useful for organizing and triaging my incoming mail. I have Color Categories defined for each project that I am working on, this way I can quickly tag meetings or mail.
Not only is the color of the item now a visual cue, but the categories are another layer of context that can be used to group items and search over them. Check out this post on time management for more details about using Color Categories.
My trick to optimize this process is to use rules to automatically categorize my incoming mail. This way, it is already tagged with the appropriate category when I get it and I can easily know the context of the mail without having to open it!
It only takes a few steps to set this up.
1. Define Your Categories. The first step is to customize the categories that you want to assign. Right click on any mail item and click All Categories under the Categorize menu. From the Color Categories dialog you can create custom categories for every project or topic relating to your mail. 2. Set Your Rules. From the Rules wizard (Tools | Rules and Alerts | New Rule) select “Check messages when they arrive” under the “Start from a blank rule” heading, and click Next. Here’s where you get to be creative! The criteria you use to categorize your mail are up to you, and they really depend on the format and types of mail that you receive. I set my rules based on three major criteria: Specific words and phrases in the subject of the message Specific words and phrases in the body of the message Any message from a distribution list
1. Define Your Categories.
From the Color Categories dialog you can create custom categories for every project or topic relating to your mail.
2. Set Your Rules. From the Rules wizard (Tools | Rules and Alerts | New Rule) select “Check messages when they arrive” under the “Start from a blank rule” heading, and click Next.
Here’s where you get to be creative! The criteria you use to categorize your mail are up to you, and they really depend on the format and types of mail that you receive. I set my rules based on three major criteria:
Setting Up Your First Rule
1. Define the Conditions Select the checkbox next to with specific words in the subject. Click on the specific words link, and type in the words or phrases that are of interest to you. I would recommend using multi-word phrases in order to minimize the number of false positives captured by the rule. Make sure you include quotations to match the entire phrase only. Click Add to commit each phrase you enter to the rule. 2. Set the Category Once the list is created return to the Rules wizard and click Next. Select assign it to the category from the actions list. Click the Category link to choose the category you wish to assign.
1. Define the Conditions
Select the checkbox next to with specific words in the subject.
Click on the specific words link, and type in the words or phrases that are of interest to you.
I would recommend using multi-word phrases in order to minimize the number of false positives captured by the rule. Make sure you include quotations to match the entire phrase only. Click Add to commit each phrase you enter to the rule.
2. Set the Category
Once the list is created return to the Rules wizard and click Next. Select assign it to the category from the actions list. Click the Category link to choose the category you wish to assign.
Once the rule is complete you can retroactively run it on your entire inbox. Now all of your incoming mail is automatically tagged for easy organization. If you define multiple rules, the Color Categories will be applied in the order they are listed in the Rules Wizard.
This is by no means a perfect science so you may have to adjust your rules and criteria until you find the right combination for the e-mail you receive. With the right set of categories and rules you can demystify your inbox and have a customized and automatic organizational system.
Justin Mahood Outlook Program Manager
Comments: (8) Collapse
Great. I am left wondering if the search text is case sensitive. In your example I note you used title case "Outlook Blog", would that rule also catch outlook blog and oUtlOoK bLog?
It's so pity, that it doesn't work with Tasks. And, yes, you can use Color Categories, until Microsoft Dynamics CRM Outlook Client will be installed on your computer. :( P.S. Sorry for my English.
I was wondering how useful is this as compared to creating filters that redirect your mails to seperate folders instead of cluttering your inbox.
WHY? WHY? WHY? and HOW? In Outlook 2003 and previous versions, I have been developing a meaningful set of categories for years. Most of my contacts have multiple categories assigned to them. A subset of the people in the "Church" category attend "St. Paul's", a subset attend "St B's", a subset attend "United Methodist" and all have (had) both the "Church" cagetory and their respective specific church categories. And a subset of all the "Church" category may also be "Clients" which is broken down into "Product A", "Product B", "Product C", etc. Some of those are on my "Golf" list and some are on my "Tennis" list. Some like it when we hold a "Italian" pot luck dinner and some like "Cajun". How am I supposed to shoe-horn my 150 categories into "Blue", "Green", "Orange", "Purple", "Red", and "Yellow"? How can I get my Outlook 2003 categories list into Outlook 2007?
You can add as many categories as you like in outlook 2007. you shouldn't have any problems. what will be interesting is that you can assign people to several categories so that when you look at clients, it will list them there, as well as in church or wherever else you want them. Outlook 2007 has added the color-code option categories, as well as made the categories available throughout all the features: tasks, email and calendar now can share color codes and categories. I am sure you can make it work.
How can I setup the rule to check for multiple Specific words and phrases in the body of the message (AND Condition). Like, look for words "Outlook" AND "Living" AND "Blog" and then take action.
One comment above mentioned "why not use folders" instead of categories. Well, why not use folders as a top level sort and then categories as a sort of sub category. I work projects as well as tech support. I use a folder for project email and another for tech email then I have categories for project names and products that I support. I can go to my tech folder and have a nice category view that groups all my email by product. My project folder groups all my project email by the name of my project. Assing the same categories to my meetings and scheduled support calls in my calendar and wow... That's just a small portion of what I use my 100 or so categories that I created and continue to add to.
I use rules to sort to folders. I guess I get too many emails from too varied a collection of people. My inbox would soon look melted rainbow sherbet. slovacek (above) mentioned moving his collection of categories and I am in a similar situation.
Now that I have become accustomed to using categories, I find that there is no easy way to copy/move them from my old drive to the new one. Oh eck!
Any help there? Chris
Comments: (loading) Collapse