In the early days of the World Wide Web, pundits and academics spilled a fair bit of ink about getting lost in cyberspace. Much less ink was devoted to a topic that continues to haunt most of us: getting lost in our email inboxes. Forget spam; the frequency of incoming messages and the ability of our ISPs and hard drives to store gigabytes of them means that we need some serious tools to navigate the vast email sea.
Efficiency experts may tell you to follow up on messages within 5 minutes, but some of us live in the real world. We need flags for reminders and categories to help organise.
STEP #1 FLAGS: SETTING BASIC REMINDERS.
On the far right side of each message header in Outlook 2007’s Message pane is a small flag symbol. To help you keep track of which messages need a follow-up, set their flags. By default, clicking the flag icon changes the flag colour to red and causes Outlook to place a “Follow up” note just below the sender’s name and e-mail address in the header.
There are more flag shades—Today, Tomorrow, This Week, or Next Week; right-click to choose—and options to set.
For a better selection of labels, choose Custom and click the down arrow to reveal a menu of options ranging from For Your information to Reply to All. If you want Outlook to place a reminder for this follow-up action in the To-Do Bar, check the Reminder box and choose the date and time.
STEP #2 CREATING CATEGORIES.
Immediately to the left of the flag icon for each message header in the Message pane is a (usually) greyed-out box. This is the Categories box, and you can change its colour to provide a visual clue about the message, the sender, or something else entirely. Right-clicking the box reveals your choices, which are a list of coloured icons with labels. You can assign multiple categories to each message, and you can use categories as simple visual cues or, more helpfully, to sort your messages according to their categories.
STEP #3 CUSTOMISING CATEGORIES.
By default, category labels include such useful but obvious choices as Crucial, Urgent, Semi-Urgent, and important (raising fun questions about the gradations of meaning among these terms), but unlike the flag labels, category labels are customizable. Right-click the Category icon and choose All Categories to get the Color Categories dialogue. Here you can rename the existing categories, reassign the icon colours to different categories, and create new categories. If you use a category regularly, you can also assign it a shortcut key.
STEP #4 FINDING WHAT YOU NEED.
One of the best reasons to assign flags and categories to your remail messages is that Outlook lets you use them as search criteria. You can use these in standard searches, or you can create a Search folder for classes of mail you need to find regularly. Right-click the Category icon and choose Create Catego Search Folder. Scroll to the bottom of the resulting dialog box and highlight Categorized Mail, then press the Choose button beside the Category field to select which category you want to base your search on. The context menu for flags contains no such search option, but the New Search Folder dialog box, available from the Category icon, does in fact let you perform a search among flagged messages. Go figure.
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Organise and Follow Up on Email
In the early days of the World Wide Web, pundits and academics spilled a fair bit of ink about getting lost in cyberspace. Much less ink was devoted to a topic that continues to haunt most of us: getting lost in our email inboxes. Forget spam; the frequency of incoming messages and the ability of our ISPs and hard drives to store gigabytes of them means that we need some serious tools to navigate the vast email sea.
Efficiency experts may tell you to follow up on messages within 5 minutes, but some of us live in the real world. We need flags for reminders and categories to help organise.
STEP #1 FLAGS: SETTING BASIC REMINDERS.
On the far right side of each message header in Outlook 2007’s Message pane is a small flag symbol. To help you keep track of which messages need a follow-up, set their flags. By default, clicking the flag icon changes the flag colour to red and causes Outlook to place a “Follow up” note just below the sender’s name and e-mail address in the header.
There are more flag shades—Today, Tomorrow, This Week, or Next Week; right-click to choose—and options to set.
For a better selection of labels, choose Custom and click the down arrow to reveal a menu of options ranging from For Your information to Reply to All. If you want Outlook to place a reminder for this follow-up action in the To-Do Bar, check the Reminder box and choose the date and time.
STEP #2 CREATING CATEGORIES.
Immediately to the left of the flag icon for each message header in the Message pane is a (usually) greyed-out box. This is the Categories box, and you can change its colour to provide a visual clue about the message, the sender, or something else entirely. Right-clicking the box reveals your choices, which are a list of coloured icons with labels. You can assign multiple categories to each message, and you can use categories as simple visual cues or, more helpfully, to sort your messages according to their categories.
STEP #3 CUSTOMISING CATEGORIES.
By default, category labels include such useful but obvious choices as Crucial, Urgent, Semi-Urgent, and important (raising fun questions about the gradations of meaning among these terms), but unlike the flag labels, category labels are customizable. Right-click the Category icon and choose All Categories to get the Color Categories dialogue. Here you can rename the existing categories, reassign the icon colours to different categories, and create new categories. If you use a category regularly, you can also assign it a shortcut key.
STEP #4 FINDING WHAT YOU NEED.
One of the best reasons to assign flags and categories to your remail messages is that Outlook lets you use them as search criteria. You can use these in standard searches, or you can create a Search folder for classes of mail you need to find regularly. Right-click the Category icon and choose Create Catego Search Folder. Scroll to the bottom of the resulting dialog box and highlight Categorized Mail, then press the Choose button beside the Category field to select which category you want to base your search on. The context menu for flags contains no such search option, but the New Search Folder dialog box, available from the Category icon, does in fact let you perform a search among flagged messages. Go figure.
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