Use color to identify messages from specific senders

Expecting important mail? Identify it as soon as it comes in by displaying it in a distinctive color. Start by select an existing message from the sender in question, if you have one. If you don’t, that’s okay; you can enter the sender’s name manually. Now follow these steps:

1. Go to the Tools menu up on top and click Organize
2. In the Ways To Organize Mail pane, click the Colors link on the left side.
3. In the first condition statement (we won’t use the second), choose From in the first drop-down list.
4. If you chose a message before starting, the sender’s name will appear in the text box to the right. If it’s the wrong name, enter the right name or the person’s e-mail address.
5. Choose a color from the second drop-down list.
6. Click Apply Color and close the pane.

Afterward, Outlook will display all messages, existing and new, from the person you specified in step 4 in the color you selected in step 5.

Force “Reply to All”

Sometimes you need to talk to your entire team at once and have everybody be in the loop on the conversation. You may be working on a common project or trying to organize an office function of some sort – so you need people to “reply to all”  to make it easy. Then some knucklehead doesn’t follow protocol. Well, good news! You can configure your message to automatically “Reply to all” before you send it. Here’s what you do:

1. When composing the message, click the Options button on the Formatting toolbar.
2. Choose Options from the resulting drop-down list.
3. In the Message Options dialog box, check the Have Replies Sent To option in the Delivery Options section, which will automatically enter your e-mail address.
4. Next, click the Select Names button to the right and select all the appropriate recipients.
5. Click Close to return to your message.

When any recipient responds to the message, regardless of which reply choice they click, the reply will go to everyone you specified in the Have Replies Sent To option.

Show two time zones in your calendar at once

If you work with people from all over the country or all over the globe, scheduling meetings can be a challenge. Yes, their Outlook calendar will automatically display your meeting request in their time zone, but but what if that happens to be 2am their time? I think some modern armed conflicts started this exact way… Anyway, there a way to have Outlook display multiple time zones in your calendar:

1. In your calendar view, right click the time bar on the left side of the calendar, and choose “Change Time Zone”
2. Under this menu, check the box for “Show additional time zone” — and select the one you want to add.
3. Label your time zones and click “ok”

Cool, huh?

Gather your reference items in your Outlook calendar

I looks like not everybody knows about this one. I think everybody should — it’s SUPER convenient. If you have a big meeting coming up – or a business trip to, say, Maui (work with me here..), you’ve probably accumulated many documents and emails in preparation for the event. How to organize them all?  When you create a calendar entry, you can drag and drop a whole lot of things right into the “description” pane — like in the screen shot below. Try it out, it works great!

Use shortcut buttons to get things done faster

Don’t worry, I won’t give you the list of 200 seven-button combinations Microsoft felt it necessary to include (unless they did it before the mouse came out..) — but there are a couple that I use every day and find useful.

• Switch to Mail: CTRL+1
• Switch to Calendar: CTRL+2
• Switch to Contacts: CTRL+3
• Send: ALT+S
• Reply: CTRL+R
• New message: CTRL+N
• Find a contact: F11