Top Outlook 2007 Tips

I get 1000 or more e-mails every day for my day job as an IT manager, and I use Outlook 2007 all day, every day to manage my e-mail, my calendars, and my contacts. I think I do it pretty well, as I don’t get complaints that I’m not responding to email fast enough. And I need to respond to much of what is in my inbox. Don’t judge or hate, just enjoy the tips :)

1) Colors and larger font on anything sent only to me – If you go to Tools and Organize offers lots nifty things, like being able to use special colors and a larger font for things sent only to me. Usually if something is sent just to me it requires my action and attention, so this gets my highest attention.

2) Use a special color for e-mails from my manager and anyone in my chain of command – I have all messages sent from my manager and my manager’s manager set with red so I can work on them right away and I leave the message there until I close the request out. This is also in the Tools and Organize section.

3) Use follow-up flags – I use follow-up flags for a number of reasons: I set them to pop up immediately if I want you to read something right away (just type now in the time to quickly set that), I set them to pop up by a certain date when I need a response by a certain date, and I flag things for myself so I remember to follow-up on them.

4) Archive emails by topic and month – I save a LOT of emails. Each important message I get from each person on my team, and each kudos message about them, and each weekly review sheet, goes in a separate archive folder called “Team Folders” with each of you having your own sub-folder. Below that goes an “Older Stuff” where I put all prior year important stuff. I also archive all my sent items by month for the full year, in an archive folder called 2009 (or whatever year) Sent Items. To make sure it stays in the right order, instead of using the name of the month (January) I use the number of the month (01) and then the year (2009) separated by a hyphen (01-2009). In April of every year I disconnect the previous year’s archive and keep the current year’s active. This keeps stuff out of my inbox, and off the server, because we only get to keep 100 MBs of email in our inbox (and I get TONS of attachments every day!)

5) Anything that comes from an automated distribution list goes to a certain folder – I love the Rules in Outlook 2007! They allow me to put automated messages into a folder for review later. When I get enough items in the folder, I look at them.

6) Add items to favorite folder – I keep my inbox, my sent items, the team’s inbox, and the team’s sent items in my favorite folders so I can, at a glance, see if anything is gummed up in our team mailbox and in case someone says something wasn’t sent, I can get it quickly.

Are these helpful for you? Do you have tips that are even more helpful for managing your e-mail in Outlook 2007?

Please share your best tips in the comments below.

Outlook inbox courtesy of tomeppy