Summary

Microsoft Office Outlook has a bunch of options to help you manage your Inbox — one of which is filtering. Filtering allows you to organize your incoming and outgoing messages based on a set of rules. Using filtering, you can apply one or more actions on all or specific messages that match a certain criteria.

Inbox Organization

Organizing your Inbox can have a significant impact on productivity. Not only does it help you place different items in logical arrangement but also provides for better searching.

Knowing what works for you is the first step to take advantage of filtering and eventually, a clutter-free Inbox. So, the key is to plan carefuly. Let's say, you receive a lot of messages from one particular sender, it's probably a good idea to store them all in a specific folder named on that sender.

Another example could be to move all messages that have their importance flag set to High to a folder, let's say, High Priority Messages.

After you have decided how you want the organization to be, the next step is to create folders and start the moving process. No, you don't need to go through those hundreds and thousands of messages and move them manually! You just need to follow the steps below and let Microsoft Office Outlook do the hard stuff for you.

Step-By-Step Instructions

Using one of the examples discussed above, let's see how you can set up filtering using Rules and Alerts. Suppose you want to automatically move all incoming messages from John Doe to a folder named John Doe's Messages. Follow the steps given below:

1. In Microsoft Office Outlook, click Tools menu and then, click Rules and Alerts....
2. Click New Rule... to create a new rule.
3. Under Step 1: Select a template, choose Move messages from someone to a folder.
4. Click Next and choose from people or distribution list under Step 1: Select conditions.
5. Under Step 2: Edit the rule description, click underlined phrase people or distribution list.
6. Look for and choose John Doe from the list, click From button and then, click OK.
7. Click Next and under Step 2: Edit the rule description, click underlined word specified.
8. Click New... and type John Doe's Messages in the Name field. Make sure the Folder contains field is set to Mail and Post Items. Choose Inbox under the Select where to place the folder field and then, click OK.
9. Click Next three times, give your rule a (meaningful) name and then, click Finish.

Easy, isn't it? Well, moving messages from someone to a folder is the most basic example. There's so much more you can do with this nifty feature. So, go ahead and play around with it. While learning, use an e-mail account which contains not-so-important messages such as Newsletters, etc.

And if you come up some general rules that you think would be beneificial for others too, post it in the comments.