Is your In box out of control?

Now mind you I am not the most organized person in the world, I would say I am middle of the road and by that I mean, if you look at my desk, you would think "I don't know how he finds anything", but trust me I know where everything is.

I typically have folders for clients, projects and individuals setup in my outlook. This allows me to quickly and easily access emails and with quick glance see if an email needs my immediate attention.

Luckily for us all, if you have a few minutes, you can organize your in box in a few easy clicks! So lets get started!

Outlook contains a Wizard that walks you through the steps. You need only decide what you want to happen and make the appropriate choices as you go through each panel of the Wizard.

Lets say you want to move all emails from a specific person to a folder. In this case, a friend of mine (Rob Robson) likes to send lots of emails (just kidding Rob!).  So I have setup a rule that will move any emails from him to a folder called Rob Robson.

Click Tools > Rules and Alerts to open the Rules dialog box. Click New Rule to get started.

Next Click Move messages from someone to a folder and then Click Next.  In the bottom of the pop up window click on the "people or distribution list".

You can now either select a contact from your address book, or enter the email address in the From field. Then click OK.

Now Click "specified folder". You can select an existing folder, or you can click New and create a new folder for the emails you want moved.

Click Next, and then click Next again.

Enter the name for this rules. In my case I called it Rob Robson, that way I know at a glance what each rule does.

Make sure "Run This rule now on the messages in the in box" and "Turn on this rule" are checked. and Click Finish.

Click Apply.

Your all done! Any messages already in the in box will be moved to the new folder and all future emails will automatically be moved to the Folder you created/Selected.

Now when ever a new message is received, the folder will show a number inside parentheses of new unread emails in that folder.

Tech Tip.  If you want to move all emails from a certain domain (i.e. petland.com) to a folder then check the "with specific words in the senders address"  and enter the domain in the "specify a word or phrase to search for in the senders address".

The outlook rules feature is very powerfull feature. This is just one way to organize your email, but gives you an idea of what can be accomplished with a little time and effort.