Microsoft Outlook 2003 Users: Follow these tips to make your Inbox more efficient.
Overview
Ask anyone and they’ll agree – an overcrowded email Inbox is downright inefficient.
And in a world where time is often our most valuable commodity, any time spent searching for messages in a cluttered wasteland of old emails can be much better allocated elsewhere.
For those who are on the verge of losing the battle with their inbox or those who have already lost the war, don’t despair just yet. Taking back control of your Inbox can be as easy as following the five steps you’ll find here.
Delete unnecessary messages
The first step in preventing Inbox clutter is an obvious one: delete messages that are unnecessary to keep, whenever possible, sooner rather than later. Of course, that’s easier said than done. But having a deletion strategy like the one below can help.
- Plan to take a few minutes each day, week or month to scroll through your Inbox and find messages that you no longer need. The key here is being consistent because putting it off indefinitely will only make the problem worse.
- To help target messages for deletion, you can configure your Inbox to display your oldest messages on top. To do so make sure your Inbox is arranging your messages by date, then click “Newest on top” which is located in the right-hand corner of the Inbox. Clicking again will switch it back.
Time-saving tip: If you have many messages to delete at once, you can select multiple messages and delete them as a group:
- For adjacent messages, hold down the SHIFT key while you click the first and the last message.
- For non-adjacent messages, hold down the CTRL key while you select each message to delete.
Save sent messages only when necessary
By default, Microsoft Outlook saves copies of all outgoing messages in the "Sent Items" folder. For some, a thorough "paper trail" is a useful thing. For others, it is yet another chaotic, time-consuming mess when it comes time to locate a specific email, which undoubtedly will occur eventually.
To prevent this, it can be helpful to de-activate this storage feature by following these steps.
- Under the Tools menu, highlight (or click) "Options."
- Click the "Email Options" button.
- Un-check the box marked "Save copies of messages in Sent Items folder."
Helpful tip:
- Instead of having Outlook automatically save copies of all sent messages, "carbon-copy" yourself on the important emails you send. In other words, type your own email address in the “Cc” line of an outgoing message. That way you’ll still have a record of the sent messages you need to store.
Use personal folder files
Organizing your Inbox might seem like a daunting task at first but it’s as easy as knowing the difference between emails that contain reference information and those that contain action information. Here’s how you can tell the two apart.
- Reference information is information you don’t need to complete an immediate action. In other words, you don’t need it now, but you want to keep it in case you need it later. For example, a family member sends you a reminder about a family event that’s more than a month away.
- Action information, on the other hand, is information you need now to complete an immediate action. For example, a group member sends you an email regarding the project due the next day.
Once you can tell the difference between the type of information contained in a given email, organization is easy: keep action information in your Inbox and file reference information in easily-accessible personal folder files. And if an email doesn’t contain reference or action information, delete it.
To set up a personal folder file, follow these steps.
- Under the File drop-down menu, highlight (or click) "New."
- Select “Outlook Data File” from the drop-down menu.
- You will then be prompted to create one of two types of personal folders:
- The first type, Office Outlook Personal Folders File (.pst), provides more storage capacity but is only compatible with Outlook 2003.
- The second type, Outlook 97-2002 Personal Folders File (.pst), provides less storage but is compatible with Outlook, 97, 98, 2000 and 2002. NOTE: If you intend to access this personal folder from a computer operating a version of Outlook older than 2003, then be sure you select the second type.
- After you’ve selected the appropriate folder type, click “OK.”
- Next, you will be prompted to give your .pst personal folder file a file name and to select the location where it will be stored.
- It is recommended that you give this folder a descriptive name (e.g. Cal Poly Emails or Work Emails) so that it will be easy to recognize.
- To clearly mark your different personal folders and group them together you can also give them easily-recognizable prefixes such as “PF-” (e.g. PF-Cal Poly Emails).
- After you’ve named and chosen a storage location for your personal folder file, click “OK” to advance to the next screen.
- You are given the option of selecting your personal folder file’s encryption setting and assigning it a password or leaving the default settings in place. After you have made your selections, click “OK” to create your personal folder file.
- Now that your personal folder file is created (you’ll now see it listed with your other mail folders, as shown below), you can begin to store messages in it. To do so, simply select and drag messages from your Inbox into your new personal folder file.
Use the AutoArchive feature
AutoArchive is a feature that will automatically move old emails (or emails with other characteristics that you can manually set) out of your Inbox and into special archive folders. These emails can be reclaimed from the archive folders should you need them. In essence AutoArchive is a less-personalized alternative to using personal file folders.
AutoArchive can be set up one of two ways: you can use the same AutoArchive settings for all of your folders (this is the simplest approach) or you can set different settings for each individual folder (this approach is more complex as it requires many repetitions of the same steps).
To activate the same AutoArchive settings for all of your folders follow these steps:
- Under the Tools drop-down menu, highlight (or click) "Options."
- In the “Options” screen select the “Other” tab.
- Click the button labeled “AutoArchive.”
- Select your AutoArchive settings.
- AutoArchive can be set to either operate according to Outlook’s default settings or you can customize it according to your own tastes.
- Click the button labeled “Apply these settings to all folders now.”
To activate AutoArchive settings for an individual folder follow these steps:
- Right-click the folder for which you’d like to set up AutoArchive and choose "Properties" from the drop-down menu.
- Select the “AutoArchive” tab in the window that appears.
- Select your AutoArchive settings.
- AutoArchive can be set to either operate according to Outlook’s default settings or you can customize it according to your own tastes. To utilize Outlook’s default settings, select “Archive items in this folder using the default settings.” To utilize your own customized settings, select “Archive this folder using these settings:” and create your settings.
- Click “OK” to save and activate your settings.
NOTE: Follow these steps for each of the folders for which you’d like to activate AutoArchive.
Make sure messages you delete really are deleted
When you delete messages, they don’t automatically disappear; instead, they are stored temporarily in the "Deleted Items" folder. By default, the “ Deleted Items ” folder has AutoArchive turned on, and, after 2 months, messages are truly deleted – so deleted messages shouldn’t back up. However, cleaning out the “Deleted Items” folder manually from time to time is an easy process. To do so, follow this step:
- Under the Tools menu, click "Empty Deleted Items Folder."
Alternatively, you can set the “Deleted Items” folder to be emptied whenever you close Outlook (this will be done automatically, but you’ll be prompted to accept the deletion – so just in case you change your mind about something you’ve deleted, you can undelete it during the same use session of Outlook). To turn on automatic deletion, follow these four steps:
- Under the Tools menu, click "Options."
- Click on the "Other" tab.
- Check the box marked "Empty the Deleted Items folder upon exiting."
- Click “OK” to activate automatic deletion.
Resources
Material in this article was obtained in part from Ken Bonner, Coordinator of Information Systems for Cal Poly Pomona’s University Advancement Division and in part from Microsoft.com.
Should you need additional Microsoft Outlook 2003 Inbox help, more detailed information can be accessed via the following links:
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