When studied, the average professional spends one third of their work day sending, reading and (attempting to) organize their email. With that much time spent on email alone, you can easily imagine the impact of learning a few quick time saving tips for Microsoft Outlook!

Here are the top tips and changes to implement in 10 minutes or less:

1. Receive desktop notifications to only the most important emails

   To many notifications is overkill but alerting you to emails with high importance, with a specific subject or from a particular sender, regardless of the application you’re working in, can prevent you from relentlessly going back to check your inbox and thereby distracting you from your work. This can be accomplished through the use of rules. Here are detailed instructions from an attorney who decided to take control of his inbox and minimize distractions.

2. Use Templates

   If you find yourself writing the same email multiple times, rather than start from scratch each time, create a template. This will not only save you time but also spare you from the monotony of typing the same follow up or confirmation email, hundreds of times.

3. Save searches

   Think about what you search for the most.  Is it based on subject, sender or a specific type of attachment?  Rather than type in your search terms each time, have a list of common searches at your fingertips.

4. Get emails not sent directly to you out of your inbox!  

   Drowning in a tidal way of cc and bcc’s? Using the rule function again, make sure that all emails where you are not the recipient get routed into a separate folder.  This is a frequent problem we hear from managers and project leads who are often cc’d on everything related to their project or department.  By sequestering those “FYI” and “keeping you in the loop” cc’s, your be able to focus and prioritize your work more efficiently.

5. Use Keyboard Shortcuts

   Here are a few to get you started but for a full listing click here.

Ctrl+R: reply to email

Alt+R: reply to all in email or switch to the workweek calendar view

Alt+W: forward email or switch to the weekly calendar view

Ctrl+M: F9 to Send/Receive all

Alt+S: Send email

Ctrl+G: open the “Go to date” and jump to any date in the calendar

For more Time Saving Tips don’t forget to check out my posts highlighting ways to get on the road to mastering efficient while using Microsoft Office, iOS and Google products.

Teltek is a Certified Avaya Business Partner, NEC Dealer, Zultys, and Microsoft Partner with two locations in the Baltimore Metropolitan area. We specialize in providing one call technology support for small to mid-sized businesses and nonprofits in Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia and Pennsylvania.