Goodwill Community Foundation creating
opportunities for a better life
once you've used outlook for a while
your inbox may start getting cluttered
so we're going to go over some ways to
keep your emails organized one way to
organize mail is to move your messages
into different folders by default you'll
have a few folders but you'll probably
want to create a few more based on the
types of emails that you get in this
example let's say that I get a lot of
office memos and I'd like to create a
memo folder start by clicking on the
folder tab and then click new folder and
type a name for the folder you can then
select where you want it to appear and I
want it to appear in my inbox then click
OK the memos folder appears below my
inbox and if you don't see your folder
you can click the arrow next to the
inbox to expand it to organize your
messages you can just click and drag
them into the folders you've created now
it may take a long time to move all of
your messages this way but luckily
outlook can do it automatically using
rules before you create a rule you'll
need to select an email I'll select one
that's about a conference that I'm going
to then go to the Home tab click the
rules command and select create rule
then you can select one or more
conditions to look for in this case I
want to look for emails where the
subject contains the word conference to
keep the role as simple as possible you
may want to delete any extra words then
you can select one or more actions that
you want Outlook to perform I want to
move the messages into my conferences
folder you may have to expand your inbox
to find the folder that you're looking
for then select it and click OK
click OK to create the rule this rule
will automatically be applied to any new
messages that you receive if you want to
apply it to your existing messages you
can check this box and then click OK
another way to keep track of different
types of messages is to use categories
and these are a little bit like folders
except you can put an email into more
than one category in the Home tab click
categorize and you'll see a list of all
of the categories that you have right
now each category name is a color but
it's going to be much more useful if we
rename these before we start applying
them to our messages go to all
categories and then select the one that
you want to change click rename and type
the new name if you want you can go
ahead and customize all of the names
when you're done click okay now when you
choose a category from the menu it will
be applied to the selected email if you
want you can add more than one
this color coding can be really helpful
because you can just glance at your
inbox to see what types of messages you
have but there's an even more powerful
way to use categories you can filter
your messages to only show one specific
category to do this click the filter
email command then go to categorized and
select a category now it's only showing
emails in the sales team category to
remove the filter click close search so
outlook gives you a lot of options for
managing your mail and you can tailor it
to fit your own organizational style