If you want to see the tasks that you have pushed out for next week on Monday, arrange by Start Date. If you want to see tasks on the day that they are due, arrange by Due Date. Favorites give visibility Fix Outlook and Office 365 Errors 2025 to folders that are otherwise buried in your mail folder list. Search folders are useful for gathering information from across different mail and RSS folders.

• Search folders are useful for gathering information from across different mail and RSS folders.
• This action will delete old tasks and remove the flag from flagged messages and contacts without deleting the items.
• Treat these streams of information much as you would a large newspaper — there might be a useful or interesting article, but reading the whole paper would take considerable time.
• Sometimes you receive a message that is really meant for someone else to deal with.
• Otherwise, consider using an online meeting app such as Microsoft Teams or meeting by phone.
• Collapse the top-level Contact Group folder so that you aren’t distracted by the unread messages in the folders beneath it.
• This becomes even more complicated if there is more than one appropriate folder per message.
• Rather than using Bcc to inform a third party of an issue, forward the message after you send it.
• We also used CiraSync to sync and update Outlook contacts to iPhone and Android devices.

Delete it

Corporate-level messages with important news (for example, from the CEO) and messages from your IT department about server downtime should not go into a folder. Messages to a Contact Group that only occasionally contain useful or interesting content, regardless of frequency, should have a rule and a folder. It’s a best practice to have a central repository for your messages, so that you can refer to them after you've "dealt" with them. The Navigation Pane folder list should be reserved for folders you use often.

Which Contact Groups should go to a folder instead of my Inbox?

If you aren’t actively using tasks or flags for any purpose, select all of the items, right-click and then select Delete. This action will delete old tasks and remove the flag from flagged messages and how to fix Outlook not opening today contacts without deleting the items. Reducing the number of places where you read messages doesn’t mean that you should mix your work and personal messages. A best practice is to use separate mail accounts for work and personal communications. You should, however, reduce the number of email addresses that you have to deal with. Fortunately, with Outlook, you can view multiple accounts simultaneously.

Daily review: Managing your time and tasks

If you just want to remember a few related tasks, list them in the body of the task. If you have more than 20 items in your Inbox, process the last week of messages and then select the remaining messages and move them to your 1-Reference folder. As time goes on, you will likely receive more and more messages.

When to create a Contact Group in Outlook

For example, there might be a lengthy series of messages where the last one simply states, "Thanks, that answers my question," so you can just delete the whole conversation. Sometimes you can’t find a message by only searching in your reference folder alone — it could be a message that you sent or it could have been misfiled. In these cases, start by searching in any folder (Inbox, 1-Reference, etc.), then select the drop down menu from the search box, and then select Current Mailbox. The reality is that if you have a day filled with meetings, you have less time to complete tasks and write messages, so move tasks to other days. The goal of organizing your Outlook is to reduce the amount of unnecessary "noise" in your Inbox and to make the most important items bubble to the top.



Search folders can be especially useful when you need to gather information that is saved in different folders — for example, when preparing for a quarterly meeting. Set your Contact Group folders to auto archive every six months or more frequently if they are time sensitive — for example, a Contact Group for finding carpool rides should be archived daily. Sentences prefaced with the Microsoft 365 logo are references to other diagnose Office activation conflicts Microsoft 365 products, such as Microsoft OneNote, and Microsoft SharePoint Server. Sentences that mention AutoArchive and Outlook Data Files (.pst) are marked with an icon of a folder and file . If your organization doesn’t deploy these products or features, these sentences can be disregarded without impacting the overall document and work flow.

View the calendar and inbox side by side

For example, many messages can be responded to in two minutes or less. But if a message takes longer than two minutes to deal with, defer it. To get a sense of what two minutes feels like, try timing yourself. If you never want to receive another message as part of this conversation, ignore it.

What if I have retention policies or an Exchange Server Online Archive?

However, the read and unread states of messages can be easily be triggered by clicking around your messages so they aren’t a perfect record — just a tool. Create Contact Groups (formerly known as personal distribution lists) in Outlook when you want to make it easier to send messages to a group of people outside your corporation. For all groups inside your corporation, create a public Contact Group (ask your IT administrator about how to do this). Send your calendar in a message when you set up meetings with people who can’t see your free/busy information, such as people outside of your company. Create a single task, mark it with the @Meeting category, and set the Start Date or Due Date to the date of your meeting. As the meeting date approaches and discussion points come up, add comments, bullets, and thoughts to the task as they occur to you.