Millions of businesses use Microsoft Outlook to access and organize business email on a daily basis. However, many people are unaware of Outlook features that can make a significant impact on how you manage your email. With that said, here are five seldom-used tricks that can help you and your organization boost your efficiency.
First, it is easy to get a cluttered mailbox within your email. In Outlook, you can use the “Clean Up” feature to tidy up your inbox. From your Inbox, click the “Home” tab and choose one of three “Clean Up” options:
- Clean Up Conversation
- Clean up Folder
- Clean Up Folder and Subfolders
Clean Up Conversation reviews email threads or a conversation and deletes redundant messages. Clean Up Folder reviews conversations in a selected folder and deletes messages that are repeated. Clean Up Folder and Subfolders reviews all messages in a selected folder and any subfolders and deletes repeated messages.
Second, you can ignore conversations. Group conversations that do not pertain to you can fill up your mailbox. The “Ignore” button helps you organize your inbox and focus on relevant emails. However, you must first activate this feature in Outlook. This can be accomplished by selecting a message, then clicking Home > Ignore Conversation. You can also ignore conversations by opening a message in a new window and clicking “Ignore” under the Delete function.
Third, you can send links to files rather than attaching the file itself. This is very useful when sending large files to your peers or clients. You have the capability to send a link to the file as opposed to sending a large document via email. You can also set permissions to allow recipients to edit and work together on these files.
Fourth, you can schedule a Microsoft Teams meeting. From our previous blog posts, you will know that Microsoft Teams is a useful collaboration tool that includes an Outlook add-in for meeting creation. You can schedule a Teams meeting directly from the calendar view in Outlook. Once Teams is installed, you will notice a “New Teams Meeting” button. You can then add individuals, or contact groups, to the various fields within the calendar.
Finally, you can tag your contacts. When you need the specific attention of a contact within a message, you can use the @Mention function. This is good practice for emails sent to more than one recipient or if you have an urgent matter. This function is used by typing the @ symbol followed by the name of the person you would like to tag.