/
Organizing Your Outlook

Organizing Your Outlook

This article will overview the different tools for managing your email. Additional Tips are also included for best practices.

Tools Available

Folders

These are the categories for where you can move emails. To create them, go to the left hand drop down of your outlook and right-click on the account email or press the three buttons next to the account name. From there, press the option to Create new folder. Options for renaming and color coding the folder are also available by right clicking the new folder.

Folders can help sort all of the academic, extracurricular, personal, and other categories of emails. Here are some of the best practices with your folders:

  • Create your categories based on each subject.

  • Sort your folders alphabetically.

  • Make rules to automatically place emails into folders.

  • Put recurring emails into folders early or, if unwanted, unsubscribe.

Rules

Rules filter out emails into selected folders. They can also delete or forward incoming emails. To create a rule from your message, follow these steps:

  1. Right-click on a message and select Rules.

  2. Select from the list of options for what you want to happen to the message.

  3. Click OK after creating your rule.

  4. Press Run this new rule now on messages already in your current folder so that your rule is used then.

Within the Settings of your email, the Rules section allows you to make ongoing filters for your email. In this example, emails from UConn Athletics are being moved to a specific folder based upon the sender.

Additionally, to manage all your rules or to create a rule not based on a sender, follow this guide:

  1. Go to the Settings of your Outlook and select the Rules category.

  2. Press Add Rule or click Edit on an already existing rule.

  3. Name your rule before selecting the Condition (what kind of message do you want to filter) and an Action (what you want done to the messages).

  4. Save your rule after you are done.

Sweep

This automates most of the process of creating a rule. By selecting a certain email and pressing the Sweep button at the top of your screen, you can move messages from a specific sender to another folder.

There are four different choices for messages from the sender when using the sweep tool. Those options are simply moving all messages from the inbox, moving them alongside future messages, moving every message except the latest one, or only moving messages older than 10 days old.
Four different options are available when Sweeping

Schedule Send

Oftentimes you may need to draft or respond to a person that is after their normal working hours. Sending your emails using the Schedule Send feature can automatically send your email at a certain time. To do this, after finishing your draft, press the dropdown option next to the send button and select the Schedule send option. Afterwards, pick the time that you want the email to go out and the message will be sent then.

For help and things to consider when writing emails, reference the Do’s and Don’t below.

  1. Don’t write an email when you are angry or upset. Instead, return to drafting the message later.

  2. Don’t Reply All to a message sent to a large group of people. Instead, email the specific person you want to talk to separately.

  3. Do greet your professor professionally unless indicated otherwise (i.e., Good Morning Professor __ instead of Hey)

  4. Do introduce yourself if it is an irregular conversation. If it is not someone you see often (no less than once a semester), make sure to clarify who you are.

  5. Don’t overwhelm your reader with a large amounts of text. Try to condense your email into a shorter message or schedule a meeting with the person if that is not possible.

  6. Don’t message too late in the evening unless urgent. Instead, schedule the message for earlier in the morning during working hours.

  7. Do reply to a direct message within a few days if not the same day.