If you are taking notes or minutes for the meeting, you can also use OneNote to insert meeting details from Outlook into more about zelexi.com your notes. After the meeting, you can send your notes to the attendees as a message. If you want to collaborate in a more ad hoc fashion, you can use OneNote to take notes together in a single notebook.

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Delete it

Your calendar should be treated as your real plan for your time — if you have scheduled it, then that is what you are committed to doing at that time. After you finish processing your messages, you should have a clean Inbox and can switch your focus to your calendar and tasks. If you find that you are repeatedly applying the same categories and flags, create a new Quick Step that flags, categorizes, and files.

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

This guide represents our advice on how to get the most out of Outlook. A few core scenarios are covered clear Outlook credentials manager to help you leverage Outlook into your information management needs. Go to File → Office Account → Update Options → Update Now. Jon Harris is a Technical writer with experience working for cybersecurity and tech related companies. He has a bachelor's degree in computer science and likes to read, hike, and fish in his spare time.

Daily review: Managing your time and tasks

Learn how to unlock AI-powered presentation creation and boost your productivity. Use your organization’s solution in place of AutoArchive, and as always, follow your corporate policy. If your corporate policy dictates that you have multiple folders for each type of item, follow that policy. Create a SharePoint calendar for group activities that everyone has access to, rather than sharing your calendar.

When to create a Contact Group in Outlook

Sometimes you receive a message that is really meant for someone else to deal with. In these cases, reply and include the person you're delegating the message to on the To line. If you find you're doing this often, consider creating a Quick Step that replies and adds the delegated person to the To line. If you need it as reference (even if you have decided to defer it), move it into your reference folder. The goal is to reduce the number of times you touch each message. Once you set up your system, you are ready to begin managing incoming messages.



The second file system was contained in the old and dreaded "4-Drawer File Cabinets". (I still cringe at the memory of those heavy, metal drawers slamming shut.) Well, these have essentially become the Inbox folder system which automatically alphabetizes the folders. These are your active customers, the most urgent vendors, you name it. So we don’t file them into the A-Z folder system; instead, we keep them handy in the "Favorites" folder at the tip-top of the Outlook Navigation fix MFA prompts not working Pane. To apply the "Work Less" theory, have Outlook automatically file an email. Then you can read them all at one time without distraction.

View the calendar and inbox side by side

Once an item has been flagged, it will appear in the To-Do Bar. By flagging it and filing it into your reference folder, you have processed it, and now you can move it out of your view. But because it’s in your task list, you can move on to your next message, knowing that you will return to your flagged items later. If you receive a large volume of messages (more than 200 messages a day), search folders might be a good way for you to parse mail from different senders. If you are short on time, for example, between meetings, you can read the messages in blue – messages sent directly to you. Often these messages are waiting on you for the next step and are the most important.

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.