These still apply to today’s world but have been lost in the flurry of digital organizing. "Working less" means you touch each piece of correspondence one time only. Whether it’s an actual paper envelope with a letter or whether it’s an email. "Correspondence" means Incoming Information, not necessarily "follow-up tasks". In this article, we’ll give you some of the best Outlook hacks for digital office management, along with some awesome Outlook tips and tricks featured in the recreate Outlook profile step by step program. I told my boss I'd like to give a (voluntary) company-wide training in something someday as a self-development goal and he suggested Outlook/inbox management.

How can I manage complicated tasks?

As time goes on, you will likely receive more and more messages. You can’t read every message you receive — nor should you try to. Rather, just read the messages that are important for you to read. Rules will help you prioritize important messages and minimize distractions. Corporate-level messages with important news (for example, from the CEO) and messages from your IT department about server downtime should not go into a folder.

I have 10 minutes: What should I read first in my Inbox?

• It’s considered best practice to set your Quick Click flag to Today (which is the default).
• It’s liberating to depend on Outlook instead of your overtaxed brain to keep track of your tasks.
• Outlook’s Calendar Reminders feature helps users keep their calendars in order so they don’t miss any crucial appointments or meetings.
• If you have more than three messages to discuss, don't flag each one because they will pollute your task list.
• If you are short on time, for example, between meetings, you can read the messages in blue – messages sent directly to you.
• There a tons of postings listing tons of errors, but Microsoft didn't fix any of them and will release it anyways.
• Now is your turn to apply them daily and improve your productivity.
• As the meeting date approaches and discussion points come up, add comments, bullets, and thoughts to the task as they occur to you.
• To do this, select the Recurrence button and change the end date.

For example, if you have only a few minutes, make all of your phone calls (if you have just a few). Tackle energy-intensive tasks (for some, that might be responding to messages) when you have more energy. Deal with your low-energy tasks, such as reading status messages, later in the day or whenever your energy is lower. By "bulk processing" your tasks, you will make progress on all of your projects simultaneously. Sometimes you receive a message that you don’t need to act upon, but which you might need at a future date.

Fix Tech Issues Fast

Create Contact Groups (formerly known as personal distribution lists) in Outlook when you want to make it easier to send messages to a group of people outside your corporation. For all groups inside your corporation, create a public Contact Group (ask your IT administrator about how to do this). Send your calendar in a message when you set up meetings with people who can’t see your free/busy reset cached Exchange mode information, such as people outside of your company.

Advanced: How do I create a Search Folder for email messages?

Outlook and Office 365 sync issues can be frustrating but are almost always fixable. Start with basic network checks, enable Cached Exchange Mode, and repair your data files if needed. For persistent problems, rebuild your Outlook profile or use FixTechGuide’s free diagnostic tools to automate detection of authentication and FixTechGuide login issue guide IMAP errors in seconds.

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This is a simple feature that is perfect for any professional who is constantly in and out of meetings every day. If possible, keep your personal and business tasks in one place. Keeping one list reduces the number of places that you need to look for what needs to be done. Even if you already have only one list, use categories to sort your personal from business tasks and manage your list effectively. Your personal tasks will be stored on your company's Exchange Server and could be visible to your IT department, so only put appropriate personal tasks on your list.



Rules help this process by moving messages into folders based on criteria that you set. Rules filter the messages coming into your Inbox for must-read items only. Favorites, a subset of your mail folders, appear at the top of the navigation pane. Outlook’s Calendar Reminders feature helps users keep their calendars in order so they don’t miss any crucial appointments or meetings.