hi. this is the mediocre life of Adam Wright.

How Outlook keeps me organized

Instead of using my inbox for emails that I still need to get to, and then either deleting them or moving them to a folder manually after they’re completed, I use email rules and the “Follow Up” feature to let Outlook keep my emails organized for me:

Whenever I get an email, Outlook’s rules (I explain how to set them up below) automatically moves the email to a specified folder and marks it with a certain color follow up flag depending on who its from.  As you can see from the picture above, if its from my boss Brian, it gets a red flag.

Outlook’s “Follow Up” folder (normally two folders below the “Inbox” folder) only shows emails with a follow up flag assigned to it.  By using follow up flags, I can now use my “Follow Up” folder as my todo list (notice I changed the name of my “Follow Up” folder to “To Do”).

So now as soon as I look at Outlook, I can tell exactly what I have left to do.  In the picture above, at a glance I see four red follow up flags, so I know I have four important emails to take care of.  I know green follow up flags are just .CSV files used for pricing that I can get to later.

Also, in Outlook, by clicking on the colored follow up flag of an email, you take off the follow up flag.  So whenever I complete one of the emails, I just click the follow up flag to the right of the email and the flag disappears.  And since the “Follow Up” folder only shows emails with a follow up flag, the email disapears out of the “Follow Up” folder and off my list of things to do.

How to set up rules to use the Follow Up folder as your todo list:

Step 1: Open the Rules and Alerts dialog box in Outlook

Step 2: Click “New Rule”

Step 3: Start a new rule that moves an email from someone to a specific folder

Step 4: Specify the sender(s) that will be affected

Step 5: Specify the folder the email will be moved to automatically

Step 6: Click Next

Step 7: Check the “Flag message with a colored flag.” checkbox

Step 8: Specify the color flag you’d like to use for the sender(s) you chose in step 6

Step 9: Click Finish

Step 10: Click OK

Step 11: Click OK

All done!  Now any email from myself will automatically get moved to the “Adam Wright” folder and get flagged with a blue follow up flag.

Repeat this process for any sender(s) you’d like and then you’ll be able to use the “Follow Up” folder as your todo list!

I haven’t tried this idea out using Mozilla’s Thunderbird, but if you can set rules in Thunderbird, you should be able to using the same idea. 

Questions/Comments: email me at blog@adamisageek.com