Module 5 of StartCloud's Microsoft 365: Everyday Skills learning pathway, in five short units with a knowledge check: mail rules and categories so the sorting happens without you, the three filters that make Outlook search find things first go, calendar habits that protect your day including declining properly and blocking focus time, and the right way to share a mailbox or a calendar, which is never by sharing a password.
Making Outlook Work for You
Rules and categories, so the sorting happens without you
Most people sort their inbox with their hands, several hundred times a week, and have never been shown that Outlook will do it for them. That is not a failing on your part. Nobody ever sat you down and explained it, and the settings are not exactly waving at you from the front page.
A rule is just an instruction you leave behind for Outlook, in the same shape you would use for a person: when a message arrives that looks like this, do that. Rules run when the mail lands, in the order you put them in, so the sorting is already done before you look.
There are two versions of Outlook in circulation, so here is where the rules list sits in each. In the new Outlook and Outlook on the web, click the gear icon at the top right, then Mail, then Rules, then Add new rule. In classic Outlook, it is the Rules and Alerts dialog, reached from the ribbon or from File. In either one, right-clicking a message first and choosing Rules is the quickest way in, because it fills half the details for you.
Quick sanity check if you cannot find it at all: rules are a feature of Microsoft email accounts. If your mail is not a Microsoft 365 or Outlook.com account, you are not missing a setting, the feature is not there for you.
The newsletters and the notifications
Every business has a handful of senders that email constantly and almost never need you today. Software update notices, the industry newsletter, the system that emails a receipt for everything. They are not junk, so the junk filter leaves them alone, and they quietly eat your attention twenty times a day.
- Send them straight to a folder called Reading, or Notifications
- Read them when you choose to, not when they arrive
- Nothing is lost, it just stops interrupting
Everything from one system, in one place
The accounting software, the booking system, the job management tool. If a sender always means the same kind of work, a rule can file it the moment it lands, so the folder becomes your queue instead of your inbox being everyone's queue.
- Match on the sender's address, not words in the subject, it is far more reliable
- Give the folder a name you will actually recognise in a hurry
- Check it at set times, the same way you would check a physical in-tray
The messages where you are only in Cc
Being in the Cc field usually means someone wants you to know, not to act. Most mail rules can tell the difference between a message sent to you and one where your name is only in Cc, which is one of the quietest and most useful splits you can make.
- Route Cc-only mail to its own folder and skim it once a day
- Anything genuinely urgent will be addressed to you, or someone will ring
- Warn your team first, so nobody thinks you are ignoring them
This is the trap, and almost everyone falls into it once. Three or four rules you actually use are worth more than thirty you have forgotten about. Start with one, live with it for a fortnight, then add the next. If a folder has not been opened in a month, either put a reminder in your day to check it, or delete the rule and let the mail come back to the front.
Make a rule in the new Outlook or on the web that assigns a category, marks mail as read, or sets an importance level, and classic Outlook cannot display it. You get a warning saying rules made in a different version are not shown. The rule is still there and still running on your incoming mail. You just have to go back to the new Outlook or the web to change it, which is Microsoft's own advice. Worth knowing before you spend twenty minutes hunting for a rule that is working perfectly well.
A category is a coloured label you stick on a message, and it is the opposite of a folder in one important way. A message can only be in one folder, but it can carry several categories and still sit right there in your inbox. That makes categories perfect for the state something is in rather than the topic it is about: waiting on someone, needs the boss, do this week. Colour does the work, your eye finds it in a second, and nothing has to move anywhere.