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Archive for Outlook as a Business Tool
As you type a few characters of an email address or name in the Outlook email TO/CC/BCC field, Outlook automatically provides suggestions of contacts/email addresses that match what you have typed.
With hundreds of other things on mind, it is difficult to remember each contacts email address so the Auto-Complete feature does a great job of remembering this for you.
BUT… People’s email addresses change or you may have stopped communicating with certain people – yet their old email addresses keep showing up in the list.
Even worse, if you typed the wrong email address of the contact and sent the email, outlook saves this address and it appears as a suggestion every time you type characters that match it.
So here’s a quick tip on how to maintain Outlook’s Auto-Complete list:
Deleting Single Entries
It’s easy to delete individual items from the list. Say you want to delete the email address which you mistyped previously, simply type the first few characters matching that address in the To: field to display the list. Then use the arrow keys on the keyboard to move to the email addresses and click Delete.
Deleting the Whole List
Use with Caution because there is no way of getting the list back!
You can also completely delete the list to start from a clean slate by following the steps below: (Instructions apply to Outlook 2013/2010 unless specifically stated)
- Click the File tab
- Click Options
- Click Mail.
- Under Send messages, click Empty Auto-Complete List.
This should now clear all email addresses.
I hope you find this tip useful.
Related Post
Have you ever mistakenly sent out an important/confidential email to the wrong person as a result of using Outlook’s Auto-Complete list?
It happened to me once, so here’s how I ensure that I always send the email to the right person.
Wednesday,
May
15th,
2013
Do you use Outlook to send out sales and marketing emails to your customers? Here’s a few tips to help your emails reach customers and not get blocked as SPAM
1. Send SEPERATE INDIVIDUALLY ADDRESSED to each person
Don’t send one email with a big list of recipients… or worse to undisclosed recipients. That’s a red flag to junk mail filter software.
Instead send separate emails so that each recipient should only see their own name in the To field of the email that they receive.
Creating separate emails for each person can take time. If you have a big list of prospects or customers you can use an Outlook addin like Email Merge PRO which will create and send separate emails to each customer.
2. Don’t use words that Spammers use.
This means avoid words like free, discount, guarantee, special offer, best price, bargain etc.
But… how can you sell something without using those word… use them… but use them once or twice only where it makes sense.
Don’t make your whole email a sales promotion. Spam filters look at how often these trigger words are used so make sure you also have other (relevant) content.
3. Send emails from your own email account.
If you’re using Outlook, you probably don’t need to worry about this one. This applies to people who try and use unknown servers or web services to send out emails.
If the recipient’s ISP detects that your email is coming from an unreliable server or if the email is coming from a different domain then your email will be blocked.
Even when your email has gotten through to the user’s Inboxes, your job is still not done. You still need to get past the main Junk Mail filter… the person reading this email.
1. Make sure that the email is individually addressed (in the To field) only to him (or her).
When I see a big list of recipients from someone who is not a personal friend (I still get some joke emails etc from friends), I assume that someone is trying to sell me something.
2. Personalise the email at the start (something like Dear Sanjay) but don’t get carried away and personalise it too many places.
3. Send the email only to people who are actually interested in what you are writing about selling etc. If you have a big list of people, you may want to segment it into smaller lists. Not everyone is interested in everything you have to offer.
(If you are using Email Merge PRO, you can group your lists into smaller segments directly from the Wizard)
4. Make the Subject line interesting enough that the user wants to open the email.
I hope that these tips help your emails deliver better results for your business.
You may also want to look at Email Merge for Outlook which has an easy-to-use Wizard that helps you send out personalized individually addressed emails. It works from inside Outlook (your recipient list can be inside Outlook or Excel…) and also has advanced features to help you segment your list etc.
How many times have you not responded to an email from your Boss or an important client because the email got buried under other 100’s of emails in your Inbox?
You can easily solve this by using a feature built directly inside Outlook called Search folders.
For those who do not know what a search folder is, it is like a virtual folder in Outlook which you can use to view all emails that match a particular criteria for example:
- All unread emails2
- Mail from and to specific people
- Mail from specific people
- etc
In this post we will show you how to create a search folder for emails received from a specific person like your Boss/Client.
Follow the steps below to create the search folder: (Instructions below are only for Outlook 2010/2013)
- Open Outlook
- Click the Folder tab on the ribbon > click New Search folder. The following screen will be displayed:
- Select the option “Mail from specific people”
- Click the Choose button > select the contact and click OK
- Choose the mailbox in which you receive your email
- Click OK
This will now create the new search folder with emails from the specific contact that you selected.
To easily access the search folder, you can also add it to your favorites list, simply:
- Click on the new search folder which you created
- Click the Folder tab on the ribbon > click Show in Favorites
This will now show the search folder on the top left corner with your other favorites list.
I hope you find this tip useful.
If you have other ways of filtering your important emails, let us know by leaving a comment below.
Related Post
Outlook Email Alert for Important Emails Only!!!
Outlook 2010/2013 has a Conversation view which groups all related emails sharing the same subject together. Although this seemed like a great idea, there have been mixed response to this feature.
I personally did not like the conversation view as it was frustrating finding and responding to emails quickly.
But there are a lot of users who seem to like the Conversation view and I may have not given myself enough time to get used to it…
Here’s how you can turn on or off the Conversation view in Outlook (The instructions below are for Outlook 2013 unless specifically stated):
To Turn on Conversation View:
- Open Outlook
- Select the folder to which you want to apply the conversation view, for example your Inbox
- Click on the View Tab
- In the Messages ribbon group > tick the check box for Show as Conversations. The following message will be displayed:
- Click All mailboxes If you would like to apply the conversation view to all mailboxes or click This folder if you want to apply it to the current folder only.
This will now change your selected folder to conversation view with all related emails grouped together.
To Turn off Conversation View:
- Follow the exact steps above and untick the checkbox for Show as Conversations
- On the prompt that appears, select whether you want to remove the conversation view for the current folder or all mailboaxes.
This will now return your selected folder to normal view.
What are your thoughts about the Conversation view?
Let us know by leaving a comment below.
Outlook’s Junk Email folder is fantastic as it helps keep your inbox SPAM-FREE so that you are spending time working on real emails rather than deleting SPAM.
The Junk email filter automatically checks all your incoming emails but you can take more control of what is considered SPAM and what is not.
Here are some of the filters which you can apply to make it more effective:
Safe Sender List
Outlook has a Safe Sender’s list.Outlook knows that anyone who is on your Safe Sender’s list is authorized to send you email.
It makes sense (most of the time) that anyone you actually write to should automatically be put on your safe sender’s list.
To turn it on…
- Go to your Inbox
- Click Home > Junk > Junk Email Options
- Click the Safe Senders tab
- Tick the checkbox Automatically add people I e-mail to the Safe Senders List.
- Click OK
Safe Recipient List
Bulk emails normally have a higher chance of getting marked as SPAM due to its content etc, but if you belong to a mailing list which you regularly follow-up, you might want to add the list sender to your Safe Recipient list so that emails sent to this email address or domain is not marked at SPAM regardless of the content.
To add Recipient to the list:
- Go to your Inbox.
- Click Home > Junk > Junk Email Options
- Click the Safe Recipient’s tab
- Click Add
- Type the email address or domain in the box that appears
- Click OK and then OK again.
Blocked Sender List
Getting to many unwanted emails from a particular sender? You can easily add their email address to the block list so Outlook automatically moves email from that address to the Junk folder.
To add Sender to block list:
- Go to your Inbox.
- Click Home > Junk > Junk Email Options
- Click the Block Senders tab
- Click Add
- Type the email address or domain in the box that appears
- Click OK and then OK again.
I hope you find this tip useful in keeping your Inbox SPAM-FREE.
Do you have your own tips to manage Junk/Spam emails?
Let our readers know by leaving a comment below.
Last week we had some tips on searching Outlook emails. Here’s how you can tweak things further by controlling where Outlook searches by default.
Outlook 2013
Type anything in the Search Box and Outlook will search the current folder except if you’re in the Inbox. If you’re in the Inbox, Outlook searches all folders in the current mail box.
Since I have started using Email Tags, I now organize my emails by Tags instead of folders. As a result I prefer for my Searches to be in ALL MAILBOXES and not just the current mail box. Here’s how you can change the setting in Outlook 2013 to search All Mailboxes.
- Open Outlook
- Click File > Options
- Click the Search tab to display Search Options.
- Select All Mailboxes and click OK
Now when you do a search, Outlook will search in all mailboxes by default.
In Outlook 2010/2007, there is not an option to search all Mailbox but you can search all “All folders” by default.
Here’s a quick setting changing that will force Outlook to search all mail items by default.
In Outlook 2010:
- Click File > Options
- Click the Search tab to display Search Options.
- Click All folders and then click OK
In Outlook 2007:
- Click Tools > Options
- Click the Search Options button on the Preferences tab to display the Search Options box.
- Click All folders and then click OK.
It’s a small tweak but it could save you a lot of clicks.
Do you have any other Search tricks that you find useful. Share it with other readers by leaving a comment on the blog.
Every morning, the first thing we normally do is download all our received emails in Outlook and quickly look through all emails to see which ones need our immediate attention and which ones can be dealt with later BUT…
As you are clicking through your emails, Outlook is marking them as READ, which means they will no longer appear BOLD for you to clearly identify which ones are still left to be ACTUALLY READ or dealt with.
Here is a simple setting in Outlook which lets you set a minimum time that you need to be on an email before it is marked as read (I have set mine to 5 second):
For Outlook 2013/2010:
- Click on File > Options
- Click on Mail from the left side column
- Click on the Reading Pane button on the right
- On the Reading Pane dailog box, tick the checkbox for “Mark items as read when viewed in the Reading Pane“
- Enter a time in the box beside “Wait XX seconds before marking item as read”
- Click OK and than OK again
For Outlook 2007/2003:
- Click Tools on the menu > Options…
- Click the Other tab
- Click on the Reading Pane… button
- On the Reading Pane dailog box, tick the checkbox for “Mark items as read when viewed in the Reading Pane“
- Enter a time in the box beside “Wait XX seconds before marking item as read”
- Click OK and than OK again
I hope you find this simple tip useful.
If you have your own tips for better managing emails and your time in Outlook, share it with our readers by leaving a comment on this blog.
Tuesday,
April
23rd,
2013
In the old days, finding an Outlook email meant wading through folders and manually searching for the correct email. Finding emails now is EASY particularly if you know some tricks to help you get more accurate search results. Here are a few of my favourites.
THE SIMPLEST SEARCH
To look for words anywhere in your email (or contacts, calendar or task lists), simply click in the search box at the top of your emails and type the words that you are looking for.
In Outlook 2013, you can also change where the Search is done (current folder, current mailbox, all mailboxes etc) directly from the same screen.
In earlier versions of Outlook, the Search is done on the current folder but you can click the hyperlink at the bottom of the search results to search all folders.
ADVANCED TRICKS
The following are some of the tricks that I use to get much better search results.
From: This makes it easy to find emails from a particular person. For example if I want emails from John than I type From:John in the Search box.
To: If I am searching for an email that I sent to someone (say John), I type To:John
CC: In order to find an email that you CCed to someone (say John), type CC:John
OR: Maybe I sent the email to John or maybe I CCed it to him. In this case I can use the OR keyword (OR must be in capital letters). I can type To:John OR CC:John
AND: What if I want to find all emails that I have sent to James and John. I can type To:John AND To: James. The AND has to be in capital letters. This will return all emails that have both John and James in the To field.
I can also use AND to find all emails to James that have the word golf in them by typing TO:James AND Golf.
Exact Phrases: This comes in use where you want to search for words in particular. I may know too many Johns. When I want to find emails from John Smith with the phrase Microsoft Outlook in them. I can type From:”John Smith” AND “Microsoft Outlook”
These tricks have made it much easier for me to find emails. I hope that you find them useful too.
If you have tips of your own, please share it with other readers by leaving a comment on the blog.
Did you know that Outlook is configured (by default) to eventually corrupt itself and lose some and maybe even all your e-mails?
In this post we will cover few essential tips that will help you to ensure that your Outlook data is safe and protected from software corruption or data failure.
1. Find out where your Outlook E-mails are saved and backup regularly
When you first install and start using Outlook, it creates the data file (PST) on its own and saves it in a location that you are unlikely to include in your regular backup plan.
You can read our earlier post on how to backup your Outlook Data file to locate where your data file is saved and include the location to your regular backup routine.
It is a good idea to back up on regular intervals (I tried to restore from a backup CD a few years ago to find that the backup was corrupt too. I lost more than 12 months of e-mails)
2. Outlook may corrupt itself unless you split your data into at least two files.
By default, Outlook saves all your e-mails in one file. There are a number of problems with this:
- As the Outlook data file gets filled up, Outlook will get slower
- There is a physical limit to the size of your Outlook data file. You can get instructions on how to check the size limit of your data file in our post “How to maintain Outlook data (PST) Files”
- If you reach this limit, Outlook will suddenly stop working and there is a great risk that you could lose some if not all of your e-mails.
The solution is to split your data into more than one data file.
Step-by-step instructions on how you should split your data file is provided in our free e-book “The Professional’s guide to Email Management in Microsoft Outlook”. Refer to Tips 3 and 4.
3. Use QuickFile to simplify shifting e-mails out of your Inbox and Sent Items folders
QuickFile for Outlook is an inexpensive, easy-to-use Outlook add-on that greatly simplifies the filing of e-mails.
- It works inside Outlook by adding two buttons to your toolbar
- It does not require you to change the way you use Outlook
- It will dramatically reduce the time and effort required to file your e-mails.
Click Here to learn more about QuickFile and download a fully functional trail version.
Hope you find this tips useful in keeping your Outlook data safe and protected.
Do you have some tips of your own to protect your Outlook data?
Share it with us by leaving a comment on this blog.
Wednesday,
April
17th,
2013
Microsoft Outlook is the most common email client used by thousands of users around the world.
For most users, it is the central place for storing all your emails, appointments/tasks, contact details etc so… how often do you remember to maintain and backup your datafile?
Very few Outlook users know until it is too late that… Outlook does NOT by default save your email, task and calendar data in a folder that you would ever think of backing up.
Unless you are in a corporate network using MS Exchange, all your Outlook data is stored in one Personal Folder file called PST (Personal Storage Table).
- This file has a .pst extension and is saved somewhere on your computer.
- This one file probably contains all your Outlook folders, e-mails, contacts, tasks, calendar items, journal entries and notes inside it.
- (Unfortunately) This file is NOT saved to your Documents folder (at least not by default) so chances are you are not backing it up.
If this file becomes damaged or corrupted, this could hamper the normally operation of Outlook and even cause data loss, therefore it is important that you make regular backups.
So where is this file on your computer?
The exact location depends on the version of Outlook and Windows. To find out where your Outlook data is:
- Go to your Inbox and make sure that the list of folders is displayed
- Right-click the top-level folder and select Properties
- Click the Advanced button. The full path to the data file will be displayed in the box labelled FileName.
- Just make sure that file is part of your computer backup plan.
If you are using more than one PST (e.g. a separate file for archives), then you need to do the above for each of your Outlook data files.
I hope that this little tip helps keep your Outlook data protected.
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