Outlook’s Calendar Reminders feature helps users keep their calendars in order so they don’t miss any crucial appointments or how to fix Outlook not opening today meetings. This is a simple feature that is perfect for any professional who is constantly in and out of meetings every day. If possible, keep your personal and business tasks in one place. Keeping one list reduces the number of places that you need to look for what needs to be done.

• As you go through your task list and your calendar, do similar tasks together.
• If you receive many messages that go back and forth among several different people, change to Conversations view.
• The default arrangement for tasks is by Due Date, but you might consider changing the arrangement to Start Date, depending upon how you use flags.
• The Quick Steps feature lets users automate repetitive email tasks with a single click.
• And as projects change, update your Quick Steps so that they are only the things you really do.
• 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.

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 repair corrupted OST in Outlook 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

"Working less" means you touch each piece of correspondence one time only. Whether it’s an actual paper envelope with a letter or whether it’s an email. "Correspondence" means Incoming Information, not necessarily "follow-up tasks". In this article, we’ll give you some of the best Outlook hacks for digital office management, along with some awesome Outlook tips and tricks featured in the program. I told my boss I'd like to give a (voluntary) company-wide training in something someday as a self-development goal and he suggested Outlook/inbox management. I don't manage his inbox but I did help him get the Stack method set up and he's blown away by how awesome it is, so now thinks I'm an Outlook wizard.

When to create a Contact Group in Outlook

If you have a busy calendar, this might be the only way you can get dedicated time to do your job. Reading a longer column of narrow text is easier than reading a shorter, wider section of text. This is because it’s easier to move your eyes down than left to right over long distances, which can cause you to move your head and neck and lead to fatigue. It’s better to have the Reading Pane on, so that you don't have to open each message to read its contents.

Repair Outlook OST File Not Working in Office 365 – Complete Fix (

And as projects change, update your Quick Steps so that they are only the things you really do. For reference messages that you have responded to or otherwise dealt with. Your Quick Click category should be the category that you apply most often. It’s considered best practice to set your Quick Click flag to Today (which is the default). Rebuild Outlook Data File Quickly The default arrangement for tasks is by Due Date, but you might consider changing the arrangement to Start Date, depending upon how you use flags.



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.