When you look at your inbox in Outlook do you see hundreds of emails? Are some new and lots old? This can make looking for a particular email that you received some time ago quite difficult. Yes, you can use the search feature to do this. But I believe organising your inbox so that it is empty for receiving new emails every day is far preferable. If you have a cluttered inbox you may well miss that important, time sensitive one that you have been waiting on. Will a little bit of preparation of creating folders and in the future rules, (see my next tip) your life will be far less stressful.
This is probably what you see at the moment. The default setup in Outlook 2019.
I suggest that you create as many folders as you feel you need to help organise your work life. They will display in alphabetical order when you have finished. You can also have subfolders to segregate even more.
How to create a folder
- Right click on the Inbox at the top of the folder tree.
- From the list that appears select New Folder.
- Type the name for this folder and press Enter.
The folder will slip into alphabetical order. Complete the list of new folders in this way and the left side bar may look something like this.
Now you have created the folders we can move the emails you have already received into those folders. This also gives you the chance of deleting ones that are not needed. Think of it this way. Your physical post comes through the letterbox in your front door. This lands on the mat. What would happen if you opened the post and just leave it there on the floor. Eventually you would not be able to get out, or anyone get into your home. The same is true of your inbox. You have a finite storage capacity. So organising a few folders is the same as creating boxes to hold your post in another room.
How to move an email out of Inbox
There are two ways you can achieve this. One is the drag and drop the other is selecting from lists.
Way One
- Use the right button on your mouse to click, hold and drag one of your emails from the right side of the screen to the folder you have just created sitting on the left side of the screen.
- When you are over the correct folder let go of the mouse.
- You will be presented with a short list.
If you use the left mouse button it will move the email to the folder you hover over, there is a chance of slipping over a different folder and then your email has been placed in the wrong folder. This is why I love the right mouse click. You can choose if you want to move the message or have a copy of it or indeed cancel the move because you slipped over the wrong folder. Easily done in my opinion.
Way two
- Right mouse click on the email you wish to move.
This list appears.
- Select Move and another list pops out.
- Select the first in the list “Other Folder…
You are presented with the full list of folders you have in your outlook Inbox.
- Select the one you wish to move this message to.
Both ways are good.
How to move several messages at one time
You can select several messages at one time by holding down the CTRL key on your keyboard and you click on several emails.
If you move messages out of your inbox on a regular basis, say every day, you will find that opening outlook at the start of your workday will not be the sinking feeling it has been up to now. You are presented with just a few emails that have come in that day.
In a future tip I shall be showing you how to create rules to automatically move new emails into their respective folders.
