10 Microsoft Outlook Hacks To Change The Way You Use Email At Work [Infographic]

Shane Dobbing https://www.silverdoor.co.uk 4m 946 #outlookhacks

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Hacking Your Way To Better Email

There are certain pieces of technology and software which just about every industry cannot cope without.

Take portable devices as a great example. There was a time in the not so distant past where we came to work, used our desktops and that was it. Now, the notion of this in many jobs is pretty prehistoric.

As this post from The Absolute Security Insider discusses, the average person now owns 3.64 devices which include smartphones, tablets, laptops, consoles and wearables.

The majority of these devices are usable in the work environment and enable us to be productive from more actions than our office desk. It also says that in the US alone, the average employee uses at least three devices per day!

Another vital tool for any employee in any industry is email. While this too seems about as prehistoric as a desktop computer, it is something which has moves with the times and continued to be as important as it ever has been.

In fact, we are now able to do much more with email apps than ever before. However, the only issue with this is that many of us lose way too much of our working day reading and replying to them.

Thankfully, there’s now an infographic to help you speed up the process. It has been created by silverdoor.co.uk and it’s called ‘10 Microsoft Outlook Hacks To Change The Way You Use Email At Work’.

It offers up tips ranging from all the most helpful email keyboard shortcuts to how to schedule emails and much much more. Take a look below for yourself.

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10 Microsoft Outlook Hacks To Change The Way You Use Email At Work

Many of us spend a large portion of our working lives sending emails and it can be tedious at the best of times. Luckily for us, Microsoft Outlook provides us with all sorts of tricks to make our work lives easier with email and, if you’re interested in revolutionising your work life, keep reading for 10 Microsoft Outlook hacks for Windows.

Schedule emails

If you want to write an email now but send it later, you can do so with Outlook, where you can schedule individual emails to be sent whenever you want. With the email open, go to Options > Delay delivery > Do not deliver before, and then you can select the time and date which you would like your email to be sent.

Add web page shortcuts

If you have a handful of web pages which you frequently reference when writing emails, this hack is perfect for you as it allows you to save web page shortcuts into Outlook. First, go to the web page which you would like to save to Outlook, drag the icon in the left hand side of the search bar and drop it in your desktop. Then, open Outlook and press CTRL + 7 to open the favourites pane. Once you drag the icon into the favourites pane and it is saved and you can easily reference the web page in your emails.

Quick Steps

Quick Steps is a useful tool which allows you to shorten and simplify the repetitive tasks that you carry out in Outlook by creating shortcuts so that you can complete them quicker. To use Quick Steps, just go to the Home tab.

Use email templates

If you seem to be writing the same emails over and over again, you can save the email as a template so that you can re-use it. To do this, simply go to File > Save As… > Outlook template. Then go to New Items > Choose Form… and go to User Templates in File System to find your saved template.

Create a folder for common searches

If you regularly carry out the same search in your emails, you can use the Search Folder feature to quicken your searches. To use this feature, go to the Folder tab and select New Search Folder and select the most relevant template for your needs, such as emails from a specific person, then click on your new search folder to find the emails which match your requirements.

Quickly flag messages

To quickly flag a message, select it and press the Insert key.

Show emails as conversations

With Outlook, you can view emails as conversations so that you can view all connected messages together. To do this, go to your emails and go to View and tick Show as Conversations.

Block all emails from a sender

To block all future emails from a particular sender, go to Home > Junk email options. This opens a new window which allows you to identify which emails you count as junk. You can even block countries as well as senders with this hack.

Save emails as files quickly

Instead of saving emails as files through the File > Save As… menu (options: text, HTML, Outlook Message format or .msg, HTML, .mht) route, you can save them even faster by dragging them to the desktop. This method will save the email in Outlook’s .msg format.

Learn the keyboard shortcuts

Ctrl+R allows you to reply to the email.

Alt+R allows you to reply to all in the email or go to the work week calendar view.

Alt+W allows you to forward the email or go to the weekly calendar view.

Alt+S allows you to send the email.

Ctrl+G allows you to open ‘Go to date’ so that you can go to any date in the calendar.
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