FREE Computer Tips & Tricks, Shortcuts, Time-Savers

You’re busy, and have no time to waste. So let’s get right into the meat of the material, shall we? Outlook is such a vast and powerful program, and there are so many screens to wade through that it can be frustrating to get exactly where you want to be. In this first technique we are going to look at how to get around the program quickly and easily.

Here’s the quick and dirty way to get around to all of the major areas of the program; these are keyboard tricks that once you learn you will use over and over again:

To get to:	Press:
Inbox	Control + 1
Calendar	Control + 2
Contacts	Control + 3
To-Do List	Control +4
Notes	Control + 5

            

  

            

             

         

Now these are pretty easy, and not hard to remember! What? Don’t like keyboard shortcuts? Tsk tsk. They are like potato chips. Just have ONE; learn ONE; use ONE! Use Control + 1 this week to always get to your inbox. By next week you’ll be craving the other shortcuts in short order

In Outlook, everything is called an “item,” whether it’s an appointment, email, note, or task. So to easily find any item, you can use a powerful built-in search feature called Search Folders. Search Folders are virtual folders – that is, they do not actually contain the items that appear in them; rather, they collect for you those items for easy retrieval.

For example, to quickly find all your unread emails just click the "Unread Mail" Search Folder and there you will see all the emails you have yet to read--no matter whether they are buried 2, 3, or more levels deep under other folders!

Wondering why your inbox is getting so large? Use the Large Mail search folder to quickly find all emails larger than 100K by default.

Another super technique is that you can actually customize a search folder, or even create your own.

To customize the size of the "Large Mail" search folder, for example, right-click the Large Mail search folder and choose “Customize this Search Folder…”

You can also create your own Search Folders from search criteria of your choosing, such as collecting all emails from a certain individual or that contains a particular word in the body or subject, such as “Alpha Project” or “Team Evaluations.” I’ll leave this more advanced functionality for you to discover as needed.

Let’s finish this mini-tutorial with the final technique for today, Favorites Folders

At the top of your inbox is a list of “Favorite Folders.” If you don’t see it, then make sure you have clicked the “Mail” button or have done a Control + 1 (remember?)

You will see a small list of “favorite” folders which stays pinned at the top of your inbox list. You can make any folder a “favorite” by right-clicking it and choosing “Add to Favorite Folders”; this is perfect for keeping track of important folders at-a-glance that may otherwise be buried deeply into your folder structure.

That’s it for today. You can read the second installment in this series, How to Sort Your Emails Instantly, Automagically, when you're ready to add your own personal digital assistant to your Outlook arsenal.

I’ll continue to add more articles to this series in the coming weeks so you can start mastering your inbox, instead of letting it master you. Until next time, we’ll solve our problems Bit by Bit.