Communicating Effectively with Outlook 2013 – Workbook

Communicating Effectively with Outlook 2013

Workbook


Task 1 – Tags and Flags

  1. Create a new category: Training. Assign it a colour of your choice.
  2. Categorise the two emails from Joe Train as Training emails.
  3. Sort your mailbox by category.
  4. Flag the email “New training session available soon” as Next Week.
  5. Add a reminder to the flag to alert you to look at the email on Monday.

/ Extension Idea

Think of and create one or two categories that might be useful to you when organising emails, calendar entries and tasks.

TIP: Remember to change the sort order back to Date

Task 2 – Email Quick Steps

  1. Use the Folder tab on the ribbon within Outlook to create a new folder within your mailbox. Entitle it: Training.
  2. Return to the Home tab on the ribbon. Create a new Move To Folder Quick Step entitled Move Training. Create it so that the message is:
  3. Marked as read.
  4. Moved to the Training folder.
  5. Use your new Quick Steps to move the emails from Joe Train that you categorised as training messages in the previous exercise.
  6. Modify the Training Quick Step (right-click on the quick step and choose Edit) as follows:
  7. Rename to Training Tag & Move
  8. Add an action to categorise message as Training.

The Quick Step will now categorise the message, mark it as read and move it to the training folder, in one step.

  1. Test the new quick step on a new message sent by the Training mailbox.

/ Extension Ideas

·  Create a New Email To Quick Step to email a group of colleagues that you contact frequently.

·  If you have email folders that you frequently move emails to, create a Move To Folder Quick Step to quicken this process.

Task 3 - Creating Rules

Cardiff Met has an anti-spam filter mechanism in place on our email server. Messages suspected as spam have SUSPECTED SPAM inserted into the subject field. Outlook rules can be setup to automatically delete these emails:

  1. Choose Rules à Manage Rules & Alerts from the Home tab on the ribbon.
  2. Click New rule to initiate the
  3. Rules Wizard.
  4. Under Start from a blank rule choose Apply rule on messages I receive.
  5. Next, specify the condition as with specific words in the subject the words are:

SUSPECTED SPAM

  1. Choose the action for this rule to be Move to Junk E-mail folder.

/ Extension Ideas

·  Setup a rule to move emails automatically based on the sender or the subject. Choose a condition that is relevant to you. For example if you would like to automatically move all messages from your line manager or colleagues into a specific folder, set up a rule for that.

·  Setup a rule to automatically move Automatic Replies (Out of Office) messages.

Task 4 - Outlook Search Tools

Spend a few minutes exploring the search facility in Outlook. Use the refinement options to narrow down your searches.

  1. Search for emails that contain a keyword of your choosing (examples, presentation, research, lunch!).
  2. Use the Has Attachments refinement to find emails that have attachments.
  3. Use the Important refinement to find messages that have been flagged as important.
  4. Combine the From and Subject refinements to find messages from a specific colleague on a specific subject.
  5. Change the scope of the search to All Mail Items and combine with the sent refinement (found under +More) and the Sent To refinement to find messages sent to your line manager, last month.

Task 5 – Search Folders

1.  Locate the Search Folders in the folder pane. Explore the existing search folders: Categorized Mail, Larger Than 100KB and Unread Mail.

2.  Create a new Search Folder, choose Mail from and to specific people then select a colleague you email frequently.

3.  Create another new Search Folder, this time choose the Old mail search folder type.

4.  Customise the new Search Folder; change the Criteria and Name to Older Than 6 Months.

/ Extension Ideas

Create a custom Search Folder – Old Msgs I’ve Sent. Specify the criteria as follows:

·  From: yourself

·  Size: greater than 2MB (2000KB)

·  Sent: on or before 01/01/2014 (Use the Advanced tab to specify this).

Set the folder to be included in the Search Folder as your Sent Items folder.

Task 6 – Scheduling a Meeting

Schedule a meeting with three attendees – Joe Train and Gareth Johns and yourself for a half hour slot (work hours only) tomorrow. Use availability scheduling to ensure you, Joe and Gareth are available.

Task 7 - Tasks and the To-Do Bar

1.  Create a new task as follows:

  1. Subject: Book my leave for the summer
  2. Due Date: Next week.
  3. Category: Admin.
  4. Reminder: Friday.

2.  Sort the To-Do Bar by categories.

/ Extension Idea

·  Experiment with the Assign Task option that can be used to assign a task to an individual or group of people.

·  Try assigning Joe Train a task of your choosing.

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