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.
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.
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 rule 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.
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 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 OK.
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 E-mail 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.