Ask HN: How do you optimise your outlook workflow?

2 points by budafish 3 years ago | 2 comments

There not that much discussion on this on the internet as it is quite personal, but I am really interested to see what "hacks" people have added into outlook (or others) to optimise their workflow, more than just simple "move to folder" rules. A lot of the standard webpage's just seem to show "grouping" as advanced usage.

What do you do? Any advanced usage using things like columns, formulas, search folders or VBA?

For example: I have a separate search folder which mirrors my inbox, which I conditionally format using the following rules. -- Email just to me = Colour Red -- Email to me and others = Colour Blue -- Email with me in the CC = Colour Black -- Email to mailing lists = Colour Green

This helps me to visually quickly see what emails are important and what are just for information.

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I have a new search folder which just shows meeting invites, to show me what has been cancelled, created, passed, etc. So I can easily delete anything that has passed that I haven't accepted.

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I create a new column to humanize the time the email came in. e.g. "12 minutes ago", "1 hour ago", "3 days ago" etc.

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leokennis 3 years ago |

This enables you to simiulate a snooze function in Outlook: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-convert-your-inbox-to-do-...

But the best Outlook tip is to either stay on top of your mailbox by taking action on incoming messages immediately, or let go of that ambition and accept you do not read everything and need to be reminded by others now and again.

roflyear 3 years ago |

That's a good tip. How many emails a day do you get? I found that in healthy orgs, even if you're a higher-level employee, you probably should not be getting more than 50 real emails a day.