Once you’ve been using e-mail for a while, you’ll find it piles up really fast. Luckily, Outlook has a lot of tools for organizing messages so you can find what you need quickly. These features include:

 

-       Junk e-mail control

-       Rules and alerts

-       Flagging messages

-       Colouring messages

-       Adding reminders to messages

-       Search folders

-       Favourite folders

-       Predefined and custom views

-       Custom folders

 

 

We’re not going to get into most of those options because some of them are pretty complicated. A few of them, though, are pretty easy to use and can come in handy.

 

The first is using flags. In any mail folder, you can right-click on an e-mail message, choose Follow Up and you’ll see the menu that’s pictured on the right. It has the following options:

-       The first six options mark the message with a different colour flag. (Behind the menu, you can see that the message in the inbox has a red flag. A message can only have one colour flag)

-       You can also mark the message as done with the “Flag Complete” command.

-       With “Add Reminder” you can tell Outlook to remind you to attend to the e-mail at a certain time. (This will only work while the message is in the inbox, although it will turn red once the reminder time has passed no matter which folder the message is in.) There are also options in this window to select a flag colour, clear the flag, or set it as complete.

-       The “Clear Flag” command does just that: removes any flag that was attached to the message.

-       “Set Default Flag” changes what colour your default flag is.

   

 

The second easy way to organize messages is by using views. At the top of the inbox, you’ll see two columns. One is “Arranged By:” and the other is “Newest on top.” “Newest on top” isn’t very interesting; when you click on it, it changes to “Oldest on top.” But when you click “Arranged By” you have a lot of options. You can see these options in the picture on the right. Most of them are pretty self-explanatory: you can sort by date, by conversation, from, to, etc. You can only pick one view at a time, and that view will be checked in this menu.

 

Another option at the bottom of the screen is “Show in Groups.” This is a neat feature that is new to Outlook 2003; when it’s checked Outlook will show your mail in groups. For example, if you have your view arranged by date, Outlook will sort your mail into groups with labels like the days of the week, plus time-sensitive labels like Today, Yesterday, Last Week, Two Weeks Ago, Three Weeks Ago, Last Month, and Older. This is a great way to see your messages at a glance.

 

The last way to organize messages (the last way we’re going to discuss, anyway), is the Organize tool under the Tools menu. (You have to be in a mail folder for this option to show up.) When you click the Tools menu and choose Organize, you’ll see a window like this:

 

 

Here’s an overview of the options in this window:

 

- The “Using Folders” tab: This is a way to move the selected message to a folder. Other ways to do this include using the “Move to a folder” button on the standard toolbar, or right-clicking on the message and choosing “Move to folder.”

- The “Using Colours” tab:  When you click on this tab, two options will appear in the box to the right.  The first option is to colour messages sent from or to a specific person (you have to fill in the box with an e-mail address) with a certain colour. The second option is to mark messages sent only to you with a certain colour.

 

- The “Using Views” tab: You can choose to view unread messages, messages sent in the last week, all messages, or a number of other choices.

 

To close the organize pane, just click the X in its top right hand corner.