Clever Clogs tip # 718
13 October 2022


Is your Outlook inbox an overstuffed, out-of-control beast? *

Morning everyone! Yep, an unexpected tip in your inbox ..."unexpected" if you read last week's PS:

Well, I was a week ahead of myself ..."next Thursday" wasn't the 20th but the 13th ...so a tip, as normal.

But the bit that was correct was that Thursday 20th October is Information Overload day. The day is for taking a step back from the amount of information we're faced with on a daily basis, which no doubt leads to your Outlook Inbox being an overstuffed, out-of-control beast. So can you find what you're looking for?

One way to help you and your colleagues would be to agree on an action in the subject line, such as For information, For action, For approval, For review etcetera. You can even set up a one-click Quick Step that can save you time and remind you of what you agreed upon.

There are various ways to do this and all of them work equally well, but this is my preferred method:

  1. Click the dialog box launcher (the tiny arrow, as circled below) in the Quick Steps group on the Home tab.
  2. Click New followed by New email to:
  3. Give your Quick Step a suitable name (which - in future - you will see in the Quick Steps group, as shown at the start of this tip) and click the Options button.
  4. Click the Show Options link.
  5. Type your one-click subject line.
  6. Click Save followed by OK or New if you want to set up a few more. You can also right-click your Quick Steps to tweak or duplicate it.

Finally, here's my top ten tips to search in Outlook:

  1. Find that needle in a haystack: tip_292.php
  2. Find even more needles in that haystack: tip_294.php
  3. Reduce irrelevant search results: tip_376.php
  4. Search for messages sent to a particular person during a certain period of time: tip_406.php
  5. Display your flagged messages in a "For Follow Up" folder: tip_443.php
  6. When replying to a message that is not in the Inbox, save the reply in same folder: tip_459.php
  7. What to do when no search results are found: tip_484.php
  8. Find email messages sent or received between certain dates: tip_524.php
  9. Organise and find email messages in your shared mailbox: tip_580.php
  10. Refine your search by sender, date, attachment, subject and more - from one box: tip_656.php

As always, I'd love to hear how you get on with these.

Related tips

  1. One-click Quick Steps: tip_346.php
  2. Create and modify Quick Parts to insert frequently used text, tables or pictures (Word and Outlook) - tip_605.php

This week's CleverClogsTipTime on LinkedIn

Separate a column of full names into separate first and last name columns - even if there are double-barrelled surnames

K.


* Unless stated otherwise this tip is written for Microsoft 365 desktop apps and Windows 10 users, but might also be useful in Office 2010, 2013 and 2016.