Organize your email in Outlook

Just because your software is not doing what you want it to do does not mean that it needs lots of programming to make it work better. Most of the software you use every day can be modified in some small way that will make a big difference.

Here is a an example. I have a client who receives way more email than they want – sound familiar? So, the last thing she wanted to do was to have to scroll through all the new emails in her inbox in order to find the ones that are most important to her – typically from a select group of contacts. To make life easier for her, I created a folders in her Outlook Inbox, one for each of the 6 people she wanted to hear from.

Okay, so now she could drag all their emails into the appropriate folders and be able to find messages that she had already read. The next step was to create a rule for each sender so that their emails went directly into their folder.

You may be thinking, “Great, now I have to check 6 folders and all the incoming email in the inbox.” Well, that’s true, but just like when you get new email into your inbox and the work Inbox becomes bold, so did the name of each folder when it received a new email. The result was that she only had to check the folders that alerted her to new email, and since she checked them first, she was able to read her most important emails before anything else distracted her. This also prevented these emails from getting lost in the rest of the less-important emails.

The whole process took only a few minutes, yet saves her time throughout the day as new emails arrive. It has also prevents her from missing important messages.

So, what is it that you want your software to do? Let me know.

Ellen DePasquale – The Software Revitalist™