The average employee spends 13 hours a week reading and responding to email, a report by the McKinsey Global Institute found. That’s 650 hours spent on low-value work annually. Fortunately, with Microsoft Outlook, you can streamline email, contacts, tasks and more, all in one place. By learning helpful tips, you can get back in control of your inbox and boost productivity.
Forward emails as attachments
Sometimes you’ll want to forward an email to someone with an email as an attachment (this lets the recipient know you haven’t edited the message). Or, you may want to send an email as an attachment in order to provide someone with a record of a conversation. So, if you’re wondering how to attach an email to an email, you’ll be pleased to know it’s a fairly simple job. First, select the email you want to forward, and then click the “home” tab. Click the “respond” button, followed by “more respond actions”. You can then select “forward as attachment”. Or, alternatively, you can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+F. Then all you have to do is enter the recipient’s email address in the “to” box, and type your message in the body of the email before sending.
Use a focused inbox
Cluttered inboxes waste time and hinder productivity. Fortunately, with Microsoft Outlook’s focused inbox feature, you can easily create a focused inbox that lets you quickly find the most important emails you’re looking for. This feature lets you create two different inboxes (focused and other). You can then simply move between the two by using a button at the top of your inbox. Outlook automatically organizes your emails for you; important messages will be put in the “focused” inbox, while less important messages and junk mail will be moved to “other”. If necessary, you have the power to quickly move emails from one inbox to the other (for example, you can click “always move to focused” or “always move to other”).
Use Quick Parts
If you typically receive the same questions via email repeatedly, you can use Quick Parts to quickly reply with set default responses. This saves you from typing out the same answers again and again, or finding your set response to copy and paste. To save a typed response as a Quick Part, highlight the text, and click the “insert” tab. Then select “Quick Parts” and “save selection to Quick Part gallery”. Name your Quick Part and press “OK”. Now you have a Quick Part saved, you can insert this text into any email in two easy steps. First, click the “insert” tab in the body of the email. Then select “Quick Parts”, and click the Quick Part you want to place in your email. The prewritten text will automatically appear in the body of your email, and you can edit and customize it as needed for your new response.
Knowing how to use Microsoft Outlook efficiently is key to better email management. Learning how to forward emails as attachments, use a focused inbox, and use Quick Parts will help you organize your emails and drive productivity.
