10 tricks to get control over your inbox
Danielle DavisRoe, senior consultant at Affinity Consulting
The average lawyer's inbox is overflowing with emails. Emails from clients, opposing counsel, support staff, and others make it difficult to find important messages quickly. These 10 tricks will help you get control over your inbox and ensure that you are responding to messages as quickly as possible.
1. Use Rules to automatically sort incoming and outgoing email
Through Outlook Rules, you can automatically sort email into different folders. From the Home tab, click on Rules. From here, you can create rules based on various criteria, such as the sender, the subject, or specific words in the body of the email.
2. Create Quick Steps to process email with a single click
The Quick Steps feature combines multiple actions into a single click. For example, you can create a quick step that forwards an email to your assistant, moves that email out of your inbox, and marks it as read with a single click. On the Home tab, click on the dropdown arrow in the Quick Steps gallery. From here, you can create and manage your Quick Steps.
3. Search for emails
Outlook's search function helps you quickly find specific messages in your inbox. Once you click in the Search Bar, you can take advantage of all the options on the Search ribbon, such as searching by sender, subject, whether the email has attachments, and more.
With Outlook’s robust search functionality, you might be able to stop organizing emails into subfolders all together.
4. Use AutoText to insert commonly used text
AutoText entries are pre-written (and pre-formatted) snippets of text that you can insert into your emails with just a few clicks. They can be used for answers to commonly asked questions, instructions, lists of attached documents, and more.
Start by typing and formatting the new entry in a new email. Select the text. On the Insert ribbon, under Quick Parts, select AutoText, and Save the Selection to the AutoText Gallery. Then, you just need to select the entry from the gallery to insert it into a new email.
5. Use Flags to remind you to follow up on emails
You can use flags in Outlook to help you remember to follow up on emails. Right-click on the email in your inbox. Under follow up, select when you plan on following up. You can then filter or sort your inbox by flags to quickly see emails you flagged.
6. Use Categories to organize emails
Categories can help you organize your emails into different groups and color code them. This can be helpful for quickly sorting and filtering email. You can create custom categories to meet your needs. Categories are also useful for color-coding calendar appointments, tasks, and contacts.
Right-click on the email in your inbox. Under Categorize, select the desired Category. To edit the existing Categories, select All Categories.
7. Filter your email
Filters are a great way to quickly show only unread emails, email categorized in a certain way, or flagged emails. From the View ribbon, click on View Settings. Then click on Filter to set up a filter. You can save a filter from the View ribbon, by clicking on Change View, and Save Current View as a New View.
8. Customize your view
Outlook allows you to customize the way that your inbox is displayed. Decide which columns to show, sort your email in a variety of ways, and add your calendar or tasks to your inbox. All the settings related to how your inbox appears can be found on the View ribbon.
9. Work faster with keyboard shortcuts
Keyboard shortcuts can help you work more efficiently in Outlook. Commonly used keyboard shortcuts include:
Delete key – deletes the selected email/appointment/task
Ctrl + F – forward
Ctrl + R – reply
Ctrl + N – new email
Ctrl + 1 – switch to email
Ctrl + 2 – switch to calendar
10. Clean up your inbox automatically
Your mailbox has a limited amount of space. (Go to Info under the File menu to see how much space you have remaining.) If your mailbox is starting to fill up, you can free up some space by archiving old emails. Archived emails are stored in an Outlook data file (.pst) on your computer and are no longer visible in your inbox.
You can set up automatic archival rules on a folder-by-folder basis. Right-click on a folder and go to Properties to access its AutoArchive settings.
Taking control over your inbox is key to a productive and stress-free workday. Take a deep breath, grab a cup of coffee, and get ready to take control of your inbox. Once you have control of your inbox, you’ll be able to even better serve your clients by focusing on more important tasks at hand.