5 Outlook Productivity Tips You May Not Know About

Outlook may be such a mundane part our our daily work life that we often forget it is a tool built for way more than email and calendar, and there are may hidden features that can help us be more productive at work.

Here’s a 5 Outlook Productivity Tips You May Not Know About

1. Create Tasks from Emails for Quick Note Taking

You may be aware that Outlook allows you to create and maintain a to-do list (or “Task as it’s called in Outlook) with reminders, as well as the Follow-Up feature that you can add to an email in your inbox.

But what you may not know is that rather than simply adding a Follow-Up to an email, you can create a task with a due date and add notes for future reference.

To create a task directly from an email, all you need to do is drag an email inside your mailbox into the task icon on the bottom left side of your Outlook window.

2. Organize multiple Email Chains with OneNote Integration

If you are a fan of very organized note taking, I don’t have to tell you how great Microsoft OneNote (which you have access to through Microsoft Office) can be to not just keep notes well organized in one place, but integrated across the Office Suite.

(If you are not familiar with OneNote, check out our previous post “Use Microsoft OneNote as Your Productivity Superpower“)

A neat feature of Outlook’s integration with OneNote is that you can save multiple emails into OneNote’s notebook page for your reference and add notes as you need to.

To send an email from Outlook to OneNote

• Select the email you’d like to save on One Note
• Click on the Home ribbon (tab) in Outlook
• Click on OneNote in the Move section across the top
• Select the section or page within your OneNote notebook where you want the email to be saved

3. Create Microsoft Teams Meetings From Outlook

With Microsoft Teams becoming THE workspace collaboration and communications platform in Office 365 (and replacing Skype along the way), it is only fitting that it also integrates with Outlook.

As your organization’s internal communications transition from primarily email into a unified chat, voice and video experience (aka. Microsoft Teams), you will often find yourself needing to schedule a Teams meeting directly from Outlook

To schedule a Teams meeting directly from Outlook:

• Go to our Outlook Calendar
• Select the Home ribbon (Tab)
• Click on New Teams Meeting

4. Use Mailbox Rules To Automate your Inbox

Mailbox Rules allow you to configure Outlook to take automated actions on incoming and outgoing emails based on specific triggers, helping you with repetitive tasks without having to move a finger.

For example, you can automatically move emails you receive from a particular sender to a folder, or flag them for follow-up.

You can get as creative as you want with rules or simply use templates provided in Outlook. The Rules Wizard includes templates for the most frequently used rules and guide you through setting them up, or you can create your own.

Watch this video for a quick tutorial on setting up mailbox rules:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbrT5u9jjo0&w=560&h=315]

5. Schedule Delivery Of An Email To A Later Time

Ever found yourself writing an email but wishing it was delivered at a later time when recipients are more (or perhaps less) likely to see it?

Outlook allows you to easily delay email delivery to a day/time that you specify. To schedule the email all you need to do is:

• When you’re done writing your email, go to the Options ribbon (tab)
• Click on Delay Delivery – A window will open
•  Select the date and time when you want the email delivered

Please keep in mind that for Delay Delivery to work you must have Outlook open at delivery time