Welcome back folks to the final tip of the 8 simple tips for email management in Outlook series.
We started of this tips series to overcome a common problem… EMAIL OVERLOAD and I had promised to provide step-by-step instructions for a VERY SIMPLE email management system that will work for any businessperson who works with clients, projects or cases. Following this tips, you should be able to:
- Ensure that your Outlook data file does not get bloated, slow-down and eventually corrupt itself and die (causing possible loss of some if not all your e-mails)
- Backup the correct Outlook data files in case of hardware failure
- Organize your emails so that your E-mail Folders matches your paper filing structure
- File your e-mails in a way that lets you quickly see all correspondence (incoming, out-going, to and from anyone) for a project quickly and easily in one place
- Get some control over your e-mails and use your Inbox like a proper In-tray holding only the items that need your attention.
- Easily archive e-mails for completed projects with other electronic documents (Word files, Excel files etc) for the same project.
- Quickly find specific e-mails for a project.
Last week we looked at how to keep a clean and organized Outlook Inbox so it acts like a To-do list rather than a storage space.
Today we will look at organizing your Sent emails because this emails are as important and crucial as your incoming emails.
The e-mails that you write to your clients can be crucial for
clarification and dispute resolution later.
E-mails that you send are moved from the Outbox to the Sent Items folder after they have been sent.
You must move or copy the e-mails that you want to keep for future reference from the Sent Items folder to the appropriate folders in your E-mail Filing System. Any remaining e-mails can be deleted (or left in the Sent Items folder if you want).
Our customers tell us that they prefer to have a copy of the email filed in the relevant project folder and also leave a copy in the Sent Items folder. This enables them to fill in timesheets at the end of the day, quickly answer queries about something sent in the last few days etc.
How do you copy emails instead of moving them?
- Right-click (instead of Left-click) and then drag and drop.
- When you drop the email (release the right mouse button) you will get presented with the option to Copy or Move. Click on Copy.
In our experience, Sent e-mails are the Number 1 reason that E-mail Filing Systems fail so… set aside some time periodically (at the end of the day or week) to move these e-mails to the correct folder
This brings us to the end of this 8 Simple Tips for Email Management in Outlook series.
I do hope that you have found this tips useful and hopefully are ruling over your emails rather than the other way around.
This tips have worked for thousands of people and there is no reason why it shouldn’t work for you so if you still haven’t gone through this step by step, here are quick links to all the post.
Tip #1 of 8: Turn Off Auto-Archiving in Outlook
You should archive e-mails as projects are completed. Don’t disorganize yourself by archiving based on dates.
Tip #2 of 8: Think carefully before using Outlook Rules
Rules can cause you to miss taking action on certain e-mails and also filing them into incorrect folders.
Tip #3 of 8: Find out where your Outlook data file is and backup regularly
How can you be sure that your Outlook data is being backed up if you don’t know where it is?
Tip #4 of 8: Split your Outlook data into more than one file
This technique will stop your e-mail file from getting bloated, slow and eventually corrupting itself and dying.
Tip #5 of 8: File your e-mails using the same folder structure as you do for your paper files
Filing e-mails into folders makes it much quicker and easier to file, find and archive e-mails later.
Tip# 6 of 8: Setup Outlook so that it is easy to drag and drop e-mails to the correct folders
Tip# 7 of 8: File things out of your Inbox as soon as you have READ the e-mail
What’s Next…
A lot of our blog readers have requested for a PDF version of the tips so that they are able to recap the tips in one place and also keep a printed copy of it on their desk as a reminder to keep following this tips to manage their emails… as it is very easy to forgot this in our busy schedules.
I have started compiling all this tips into a PDF version and will have it available for download next week on our blog.
THIS WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR FREE SO DO CHECK IN TO GET YOUR OWN COPY
