Making Outlook Work for You – Learn The E-Mail Secrets

…but there are a few tips you can follow to get up to speed with professional users.

• Make Folders- Chances are your mailbox will fill up very quickly, if you have a number of clients or contacts, create archive folders on the left to store e-mails in as they are dealt with. It is worth having a subfolder to store sent e-mails for each as this can also fill up.
• Use ‘Mailbox Cleanup’- A nifty tool that helps you find e-mails by size.
• Think about others- If you are sending out a mass e-mail try to ensure the attachment is as small as possible.

• Next to the subject you can flag e-mails for follow up using different colours.
• Try linking a colour to importance to keep on top of those urgent tasks.

The Outlook calendar can be a real saving grace, don’t forget that it doesn’t just have to be full of meetings- stick in there reminders to follow up with people and anything else you can think of. There is also a handy option which allows you to add in another time zone, great for contacting overseas clients. Note it is possible to look through other peoples calendars (with permission) to track down those elusive mangers.

Outlook has a useful ‘To do’ list which at time of writing can be accessed by selecting this icon located on the bottom left of the screen. Using this can be very helpful if you are required to complete the dreaded ‘timesheets’ if you jot down how long each task has taken.

Choose which suits you the best, I find that having 3 vertical columns is the most efficient; the first displaying my folder, the second email subject sorted by date and email content displayed on the third column. Give different setups a go and see how your get on.

Having one with ‘If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact us’ or simply ‘Kind Regards’ can cut down your e-mail writing time. Some people use images similar the one above, however it is always best to follow the majority of your office.

Check out About.com’s guide to archiving your messages, this helps to speed up your inbox as well!

Slightly off topic but it always a great idea to keep updating those who delegate work to you on where you are with things. This shows that you are proactive and in control meaning they won’t worry or chase up as much!