Tip of the week # 507
3 February 2017


Park your thoughts (Microsoft Outlook) *

Did you ever have a random thought when you were in the middle of reading an email message? Perhaps you remembered an issue you wanted to bring up at the next departmental meeting. Or something to add to your shopping list. You could obviously stop what you're doing and scribble it down, risking to get side-tracked and derail your productivity. So why not use Outlook's Notes functionality to park your idea for easy reference once you've read your message.

  1. Press CTRL + SHIFT + N.
  2. Type your thought.
  3. If you want, click on the note icon in the upper left corner of the form and assign a colour category or contact name to the note.
  4. Continue your work as normal. No need to close the note.

By the way, if you want to use this when you are in the middle of writing an email message, you need to make sure your cursor is in top half (the message form), not in the message area itself.

The Notes folder containing your personal reminders and other messages you sent to yourself can be found at the bottom of the Navigation Pane. The quickest way to open it is by pressing CTRL + 5. (It's the fifth item in the Navigation Pane, underneath Mail, Calendar, Contacts and Tasks.) From there it will be easy to print the notes or forward them as attachments. Simply use the right-click menus.

Related tip:
Tip # 259: Quickly jump between the various Outlook components : tip_259.php


* Unless stated otherwise, these tips were written for Microsoft Office 2010.