Hi everyone, Kevin here. Today I want to show you my favorite top 10 tips and tricks
for successfully controlling your Microsoft Outlook inbox. When I worked at Microsoft,
I routinely received about 250 to 300 emails every single day, and of course, only a small fraction
of that e-mail actually required my attention. I learned a whole bunch of different techniques for
successfully managing my inbox, and today I want to share those with you. All right let's
open up Microsoft Outlook. This brings us to tip number one. You can receive a text message when
you receive an important e-mail. This way you'll be sure not to miss it. Here for example,
my manager Patty Fernandez sent me an e-mail and she wants me to get back to her ASAP. Now,
let's say I'm focused on some tasks. Maybe I have Outlook minimized, or maybe I'm sitting
in a meeting and I'm being good and I'm not looking at my laptop screen. I might
just completely miss this e-mail. So how do we set it up, so Outlook sends me a text message?
Well here with this e-mail, we want to create a rule. Here I'll select the message from Patty
and then up here on the top ribbon within the home view, I'll select rules over here,
and next, I'll select create rule. This opens up the create rule dialog and I want it so any
e-mail from Patty also sends me a text message. Right up here, I'll select this checkbox for
from Patty Fernandez. Next, let's click into advanced options. Within advanced options,
I can select all these other filters for what emails I want to have trigger the text,
but I'm going to keep it simple, and I'll just say from Patty Fernandez. Let's click on next.
On the next screen, I'm going to select the option that says forward it to people or public group.
Let's check this box and then down below, click on this text that says people or public group.
This opens up a prompt where I could define my phone number where I want the text to go.
Right down here, I'll type in my 10-digit phone number, and yes, this is my phone number. Next,
we need to append the SMS gateway and I happen to be a T-Mobile user and the SMS gateway is
@tmomail.net. To find out what your SMS domain gateway is, I've included a link in
the description for a website that lists out many of the different carriers throughout the world
and the associated SMS domain gateway. Over on the left-hand side, simply look down this
column to find your carrier and then over in this column, you'll see what the SMS domain gateway is.
Once you finish entering your phone number and the SMS domain gateway, click on OK. Back on the
rules wizard, let's click on next and here you can define if there are any exceptions. Once again,
I'm just going to leave it pretty basic. So, I'll click on next and then I'll click on finish. And
here I received a text message with the important message on my phone. Now I could open up my
computer and I could respond to the message, or I could even respond to it right here. This brings
us to tip number two. You can conditionally format messages in your inbox, so the messages
that matter stand out. Here I have three different e-mail messages and Patty Fernandez
sent me a message and I want to make sure this one stands out compared to all of the other messages.
Right up here, I'll click on the top tab that says view, and within view,
let's click on view settings. This opens up view settings, and right down here, I can define my
own conditional formatting. Let's click on this. Within this prompt, I can see all of
the existing rules that are currently applied to my Inbox, so you've probably noticed this before,
but if you have an unread message, it's formatted differently from a read message. Here you can
define what all of those rules are, but along with being able to modify existing rules, you can also
add your own. Let's click on add. For this new rule, I'll give it the name from Patty Fernandez.
Next, I can click on fonts to define the formatting for what messages look like from Patty.
When I get a message, let me change the color to red just so it stands out a little bit more. Under
the font style, I'll make this bold, and under the size, I'll go with bigger. This all looks
good. I'll click on OK. Down below, I can set the condition for when this format applies. When I
click on condition, I have all of these different options. This is basically a way for me to filter
messages, and only if it matches those filters does it apply the formatting. I could search
for specific words in the subject or even in the message body. I want to keep things really simple,
so I'll say from Patti Fernandez. Over here, I have even more choices to filter my messages,
and if I click on advanced, I have full control over what types of messages have this formatting
applied. Here I'll click back to messages and once again I'll leave it pretty simple and then click
on OK. I'm all done setting my formatting, so I'll click on OK here and then click on
OK again. Now if you look at my inbox, look at that. I definitely won't miss this message from
Patty Fernandez. This brings us to tip #3 and I call it the to or CC rule. Right here in my inbox,
you'll see that I have four different messages, and here I have a message from Patty. She has
a specific request of me and I'm also on the to line. Here Nestor asked me a question and here too
I'm on the to line. Here Nestor sent me an e-mail and he put me on CC, and this is information that
I want to know, and then right up here, I got the Kevin Cookie Company newsletter from Diego
and he sent this out to a distribution list. Now although it might be interesting information
to read, it's purely informational and there's really no action for me, and especially when I
worked at Microsoft, I found that you could very quickly drown in newsletters, and unfortunately,
sometimes you'll try to unsubscribe, but you might have nested newsletters, and it turns
out being pretty difficult, so if you only look at messages where you're on the to or the CC line in
an e-mail, you'll very quickly narrow down to the emails that matter to you. To set up this rule,
let's go up on top and click on home and right in the center, let's click on rules, and then click
on create rule. This opens up a prompt where I can create a rule and let's jump directly into
advanced options. This opens up the rules wizard and here I can select the condition. I want this
to apply to every single message that lands in my inbox, so I'm not going to select anything here.
I'll click on next. On this next screen, I could decide what happens to messages where I'm not on
the to or CC line. So once again, this is like Diego's newsletter. I don't want to look at it,
but I also don't want to delete it just in case I want to refer back to it in the future. Over here,
I could select to move it to a specified folder. Down below, I'll click on specify and
let me simply move it to the archive, so this way I can always get back to it if I need to.
I'll click on OK and then let's click on next. On the last screen, I can choose any exceptions. So,
currently the way it's set up is any message that hits my inbox will move into my archive.
Now I don't want that. I want messages where I'm on the to or CC line to stay in my inbox.
So, here I'll select this exception right here and then I'll click on next. On the last screen, I can
specify a name for this rule. Here I'll change it to keep messages in inbox where I'm on to or CC.
Down below, I can also select to run this rule on all messages that are already in the inbox.
Once I'm all done, I'll click on finish, and here now you'll see in my inbox, I now
only have messages left where I'm on the to or the CC line, and of course, I didn't delete those
other messages like the newsletter. I could simply click into my archive, and I could go
back and reference any one of those messages. This brings us to tip number four, and this is a really
simple one. You can show all of your messages in your inbox as a conversation. Here for instance,
I see a message from Patty where she wanted me to follow up with her, and then here she sent me yet
another message, but right now, this is taking up two different slots in my inbox. If I go up
to the view tab up on top, there's a checkbox for show as conversations. When I check that, here I
can decide whether to apply it just to this folder or all my mailboxes. I'll select all mailbox and
here you see that it moves the conversation to the top with the latest message featured.
So, this is a nice way to clean up your inbox where it groups together related messages. This
now brings us to tip number five, and that's to triage everything that comes into your inbox.
Now that we've reduced the number of messages coming into the inbox with the previous tips,
now you should have a very manageable number that require your attention. Here, with the first
message, I'm on CC and I wanted to read this, so once I review this message, up on the top toolbar,
I'll click on archive. This will move it over to the archive folder on the left-hand side. I
can always click into here if I want to get back to the message and I can even search for it if I
need to reference it again, but I've already read it and I've consumed that information.
Down below, here Nestor is asking me a question, and this is something I need to
follow up on. I'll have to pull the Q1 numbers, so it's going to take me a little bit of time, so I
can't just respond right away. So instead, I'll hover over this message and then I'll flag it.
Now that it's flagged, it'll add it to my task list or my To Do List,
and now I want to get it out of my inbox. So, here I'll click on archive, and that's
now moved it out. Now that I finished triaging my inbox, I could shift over to the task view,
so I just focus on the different messages that require response. I'll go down to the bottom
left-hand corner and click into tasks. Here I see the e-mail from Nestor with the question.
Once I pull together the numbers, I can click into this task to respond to him. One of the really
nice things about flagging e-mail in Outlook is it also brings it over to Microsoft To Do,
and if you use To Do as a task manager, this works especially well. Over here on the left-hand side,
I'll click on flagged e-mail and here I see that message that I flagged, and let's say that
today I'm pulling together a list of all of the different action items that I want to focus on.
Here I could right click on this message, and I can add it to my day. Over on the left-hand side
now when I click into my day, I can see all the different tasks that I want to finish up today.
If you've never heard of the My Day view before, this is a really nice way to stay productive
every single day. Every day the My Day view resets, so you'll have a blank list that you
can build up of the things you want to get done today, and then tomorrow you'll have a blank slate
where you can then start again. This brings us to tip number six. Oftentimes you'll ask a question
of someone, or maybe you have a request, but then they never follow up with you. You can set
a flag on a message to make sure you don't forget, and then you can ping them again in the future.
Here I have a message that I'm sending out to Diego with a request, and I want to make sure
this gets done. Right up above, I can click on this follow up flag and I'll set it to no date.
My message is now all ready to go, so I'll click on send. Within my task view, I can now see the
e-mail that I flagged as I sent it out, but here it mixes it in with all of my other tasks. I want
to make sure I add a new category where I can see everything that I'm waiting on. Here I'll right
click on the task, and right down here, I'll click on categorize and I'll go down to all categories.
Within categories, here I'll add a new category and I'll call this waiting for response. Here I
can pick a color. I'll go with red just to show some urgency, and then I'll click on OK. Then
I'll click on OK again. Back on the main view, up on top, I'll click on view and here I can switch
to categories. So, right here I can see all of my different emails where I'm waiting for a response,
so maybe at the end of every week, I could go through all of my messages where I'm waiting
for a response, and if I didn't hear back from the recipient of the message, I could just ping them
again to see if they have an update. Tip number seven. You can respond with a meeting instead of
emailing back and forth. Here I'm in an e-mail thread where we've had a few back and forths,
and I could imagine that this thread would go on for a while if we tried to discuss it over e-mail.
Instead, I could set up a very quick meeting. Up here under the home tab, there's a button right
here that says reply with meeting. Let's click on this. This opens up a new meeting invitation
and here it pulls in the subject from the thread. It also pulls in everyone who is involved in the
e-mail, and here it has all of the context of the e-mail thread, so I don't have to retype any
of that. I could simply say, let's discuss. Here I'll choose a time, and once I'm all ready to go,
I'll click on send and my meeting is now set up. This brings us to tip number eight.
Outlook is constantly trying to distract you from getting work done. When you receive a new message,
you'll hear a sound. You'll see an alert. You'll see a notification. I recommend turning that off,
at least that's what I always did any time I set up a new version of Outlook.
Up in the top left-hand corner, click on file and then go down to options. Within options,
let's click on mail and then scroll down just a little bit to the section that says message
arrival, and here you'll see what happens when a new message arrives. Now you could imagine
if you're getting 250 to 300 messages a day, you're going to be hearing the beeping sound
a lot throughout the day, so let's uncheck this. Let's uncheck this one, this one, and this one,
and this should help you focus a lot better. Once you're done unchecking all of those, click on OK.
This brings us to tip number nine. When you have a message that let's say you want to respond to
or forward, you can come right up here and click on reply, reply all, or forward, and when I click
on that, that'll open it up directly in line. Now the one problem with this is over on the
left-hand side, you'll continue seeing all of the messages that are flooding into your inbox
and that will distract you from the message that you're trying to compose. Maybe a more enticing
e-mail comes in, so you click over onto that over here and then you've lost track of where
you were in your message. Instead, you can focus by opening your reply in a new window.
To do this, let's go up to the top left-hand corner and click on the file menu. Then go down
to options and within options click on mail. Here within mail, let's scroll down just a little bit
to the section that says replies and forwards, and here we have the option to open replies and
forwards in a new window. Then let's click on OK. Back in the message, when I click on reply all
this now opens up a brand-new window and I'm no longer distracted by my inbox. And this brings
us to the last tip of today. I know, so sad that we're near the end, but this is a pretty good one.
I don't know, let's say that you're on an e-mail thread where all of your coworkers are
making fun of you. Maybe you no longer want to see any of the responses that are coming
in. Right up on top on the home tab, there's a button called ignore, and when you click on this,
you can select to ignore the conversation. Any additional message that comes in as part of this
conversation will automatically go to the trash bin and you no longer have to look at that. So,
yet another way to help clean up your inbox. All right. Well, let me know down below in
the comments, did you learn any new techniques that you're going to implement to help control
your inbox? To see more videos like this, please consider subscribing, and I'll see you next time.