When you’re at work, the last thing you want is for your digital organizer to become a distraction. In this chapter, you’ll learn how to customize Outlook so that it only shows what’s important to you. We’ll review the Outlook screen, explore each type of Outlook view and touch on how to save customized views for easy access. Since Outlook is so easy to customize, there’s little reason to leave it in the default view.

If you’ve used Outlook before, you don’t need an exhaustive list of all the items on your screen. However, there are some important Outlook screen features worth noting: the Ribbon and the Quick Access Toolbar.

The Ribbon, or the long toolbar at the top of your Outlook screen view, should be immediately familiar if you’ve ever used the Microsoft Office suite. The Ribbon includes familiar tabs like “Insert” and “Page Layout,” which allow you to perform basic word processing functions, as well as customized signature lines, a date and time function and other tools that may be useful for email.

The Quick Access Toolbar is a small compact and customized version of the Ribbon. It always appears in your Outlook screen view, ensuring that you have access to the tools you need and nothing more. Adding your most used commands to the Quick Access Toolbar will prevent you from having to click around on different tabs in the Ribbon.

Beyond the Ribbon and Quick Access Toolbars, your Outlook interface can be adjusted for a number of views.

This is known alternately as the “Table” or “List” view. It refers to the rows and columns of information that display in your email inbox and related items like Flag Status, Subject Line, From, and Date Received.

Outlook Icon View allows you to display functions and items as large or small icons. This view type is inherently customizable: You need to add each icon to the interface to create the view.

Card View creates a customized display in which each item is shown as an index card. You can select from an existing list of Card View objects or create your own.

The To-Do Bar allows you to quickly glance at your tasks or your calendar without actually toggling to them. Talk about a time-saver. Additionally, you may also choose to free up even more onscreen workspace and turn it completely off.

The Folder Pane sits on the far left side of the program window. This pane, as you might guess, displays different aspects of your folders. The Folder Pane can be collapsed to help free up onscreen workspace.

Regardless of the view type you’re using, you can customize and save your view.

The Outlook calendar is one of the most popular—and most maligned—features of the platform. This section will teach you how to set categories and availability, block of time, create recurring meetings and manage event templates. After reading, you should have the confidence to schedule or refer to any past, present or future obligation in Outlook.

By creating color-coded categories, you can quickly and logically group related calendar items like emails, appointments and events. There’s a default set of six categories, but Outlook lets you create and customize more as you see fit.

By default, Outlook Calendar defines your work availability—in the time zone you select—as 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday through Friday. It’s easy to change these hours or block off periods of the day during which you’re free or busy.

To denote other periods during which you’re not available for work, you can create all-day or part-day events and meetings to make this time unavailable to others. Blocking out time in advance can help ensure you have the time needed to complete projects or catch up on emails.

By using your Outlook Calendar to notify clients and colleagues that you’ll be unavailable, you won’t have to make multiple phone calls or field contact requests from people who didn’t get the memo about your availability. That’s definitely a time-saver.

You can use a similar sequence to create events, appointments and meetings that don’t—unfortunately—involve vacation time. In the next section, we’ll explore how to make calendar maintenance even less time-consuming with recurring meetings.

If you want a newly created meeting or event to be recurring from the start, follow steps 1 through 4 above. When prompted, set the event to “recurring.”

These instructions can apply to any meetings you create through Outlook.

If you regularly schedule the same types of meetings or events with a recurring cast of clients or coworkers, an event template can help you save time. These are especially useful for meetings and events that don’t always occur at the same time.

To create a recurring meeting invitation for colleagues or internal employees at your company, click “Appointments” in your Ribbon. In the box that appears, enter the recipients/parties to the meeting, the meeting’s name, text that you always want to appear in the message body and anything else that might be relevant. Save it as an Outlook Template.

The same basic principles apply to client meeting templates, tasks on your ToDo list and other important functions.

Sharing your calendar is critical to ensuring that you’re on the same pag e as your coworkers and clients. Just as you don’t want to field calls and emails while you’re on vacation, you don’t want to deal with requests for clarification about meeting times and events from people without access to that information.

Of course, you might not want everyone to know what you’re doing at every moment. To make an event or meeting private, click “Private” under the “Options” tab in the “Appointment” portion of the Ribbon. To further enhance security, make sure your Calendar and other Outlook features like Contacts and Tasks aren’t set to “Read.” Otherwise, it’s relatively easy for savvy computer users to see the information in them.

Used properly, Outlook is a powerful tool for organizing the tasks you need to do for your colleagues, superiors and clients. In this chapter, you’ll learn to master the ToDo bar, categorize tasks, create recurring tasks, prep for client interfacing and create task templates.

The ToDo Bar is the “headquarters” of your Outlook account’s task management system. It consists of four basic parts: the Date Navigator, the Appointments section, the Task Input Panel and the task list itself. Although the maximized ToDo Bar can’t expand any further, you can manipulate the size or display of any of these. For instance, you can turn off the Date Navigator or reduce the number of appointments displayed in the Appointments section—which allows between 0 and 25 appointments—to free up more space for displayed tasks in the task list.

To minimize the ToDo Bar completely, drop down the “View” menu and click “Minimized” under ToDo Bar. The keyboard shortcut to minimize the ToDo Bar is Alt + F12. This makes it easy to manipulate your ToDo Bar without time-consuming clicks and drags.

The ToDo Bar is super helpful, but looking at all the tasks contained within it can numb the eyes. Fortunately, Outlook makes it easy to color code tasks, making important obligations pop out from the bar.

Now you can see which tasks need doing—and when—with a single glance!

With recurring tasks, you’ll never have to worry about forgetting to schedule a task.

Outlook makes it easy to prep for weekly sales calls with clients and prospects. A tool called the Sales Call Log and Organizer basically functions as a pre-set template for each client, containing scheduled sales calls, information logged during previous sales calls, order information, client contact information and customized checklists that help you keep track of each client’s needs.

Creating a task template for common tasks is very similar to creating a task template for a meeting or event, which we described back in chapter two. Here’s how to do it: Click the “Task” button in your Ribbon. In the box that appears, enter the task’s name and any description or text that you want to make permanent. If there are other parties to the task, enter their emails as well. You can set “Status” and “Priority” as well. Next, save it as an Outlook Template.

Just like any other task, you can color code task templates. Every task template you create is one less task you have to make from scratch. That can be a huge time-saver for folks with cluttered ToDo Bars.

One of the most useful—and efficiency enhancing—functions of Outlook’s task templates centers around preparing for prospective client calls and meetings. If you routinely deal with new prospects, creating reminders of each meeting from scratch can quickly become cumbersome. Use a color code for prospective client tasks—or multiple color codes for different product lines or verticals—and take advantage of Outlook’s pre-set CC and BCC functions to notify others of each meeting.

The Beast cometh! Outlook’s inbox and email features can be intimidating, but you’ll leave this chapter with a clear understanding of how to use these tools to improve your working efficiency and minimize or cut out repetitive tasks. This chapter includes instruction on creating, foldering and flagging email, creating meetings and contacts from email, saving and printing email and producing powerful templates within your inbox.

Even the most inexperienced Outlook users probably know how to create and send a basic email, so we won’t hold your hand through that process. However, mastering the process of cataloging and organizing your mail—both incoming messages and messages that you’ve created and sent—can dramatically improve your efficiency and provide a less tangible but no less important sense of control over your Outlook account.

Even the most inexperienced Outlook users probably know how to create and send a basic email, so we won’t hold your hand through that process. However, mastering the process of cataloging and organizing your mail—both incoming messages and messages that you’ve created and sent—can dramatically improve your efficiency and provide a less tangible but no less important sense of control over your Outlook account.