10 Tips to Get the Most Out of Outlook
1. Keyboard shortcuts
To make things faster, there are a range of keyboard shortcuts you can use in Outlook. Some of the most helpful ones include:
- Ctrl + Shift + M to write a new email
- Ctrl + Shift + Enter to send an email
- Ctrl + Shift + Q to create a meeting
- Ctrl + Shift + C to add a contact
- Ctrl + B to access your address book
- Ctrl + 2 to open your calendar
2. Limit notifications
Email notifications can quickly become distracting if you receive large amounts of messages per day, many of which will spam. But you can actually limit notifications to important people.
It’s a case of stopping message alerts in mail options, before setting up a new rule to get notifications from specific people who email you.
3. Use folders
Your inbox can quickly become confusing to navigate and manage if you’ve not organised your emails, contacts, calendars and to-do lists. Luckily, you can easily and quickly do this with Outlook folders. To create a folder, simply click “new folder” in the “folders” section of the left side of Outlook.
4. Get email signature templates
If you want a professional email signature and don’t know where to start, you shouldn’t worry as you can download templates from Microsoft. You can then just paste the one you want into an email and add your details.
5. Read and delivery receipts
If you’re conscious about whether someone has received or read your email, we’d recommend setting up delivery and read receipts. In an email, click Options > Tracking > Request a Delivery Receipt or Request a Read Receipt.
6. Curb junk mail
Junk mail is one of the most annoying things in the digital world, but you can curb this problem by blocking certain senders. All you need to do is head over to Home and click Junk email options.
7. Clean your emails
Sorting through old emails is a mundane task, but Microsoft’s Conversation Clean Up feature makes this easier. It analyses emails and works out which can be sent to the Deleted Items folder.
To do this, click Home > Delete > Clean Up.
8. Encrypt emails
For sending important and sensitive information, you can set up encryption for emails and attachments. This means that the recipient will only be able to access them using a security key.
Head over to Trust Center Settings and select Email Security.
9. Backup Outlook
There’s nothing more annoying than losing an important email or having to start from scratch if you change email accounts, which is why you should definitely back up your Outlook account.
10. Delay Delivery
If you want to write an email to send in the near future, Outlook gives you the option to delay delivery. After you’ve drafted an email message, go to Options and select Delay Delivery.
When you click on this, you’ll see a field that says “Do not deliver before”. Here, you can set a date and time. Then hit send, and the email will go out on the selected date.
