How does outlook work

In the details drop down menu you can select whether you want them to see availability only or full details you can still lock personal appointments if you wish - or even if you want them to be able to put items directly into your calendar. Finally click Send. The Recipient accepts your request and will have access to your calendar.

Tasks are definitely among the items that are seriously under-used. Similar to calendars, task lists can also be shared. Even better you can actually delegate tasks to people in your team. Everyone can see how close to completion they are and if any are yet to be started.

Enter as many details as you wish: subject, start date, due date, status and so on. On the menu bar select Assign Task and put the name of who you would like to assign the task to and click Send. Pro tip: Microsoft Office includes the 'To Do' app , this automatically includes any tasks you have in Outlook but also flagged emails and Planner too! All your tasks in one view with the ability to schedule and organise them. The rules element of Outlook helps you to prioritise and organise emails to suit you.

Examples of what you can do include: having emails from a particular person going to a separate folder. You might want to permanently delete emails from a particular person, that certain someone who sends blanket emails that you cannot unsubscribe from, perhaps. You can forward certain emails to someone else on the team or have folders specific to certain projects. You can also have an alert sent to your phone if you're waiting on something urgent for example.

From here you can select the type of rule you want to apply then click Next to add more details such as whether its a rule for certain people or subjects, click Next again and add the details of what you want to happen to those emails.

You can change the rules at any time by following the same process without clicking New Rule. Pro tip: Using Microsoft's Power Automate feature of Office AKA Flow you can add some clever automation to your emails, for example, if you get the daily office cake selection to your inbox you could create some automation to share it with the rest of your office via Microsoft Teams. Gone are the days of having to partition out all your emails into separate folders so you have any hope of finding them again.

The search feature in Outlook has improved a great deal and can help you find any content based on only a few words. How: You can just type your search criteria into the search bar at the top of your Outlook window, but if you want to get to the right result quickly, here are some top search tips:. This will gently let recipients know they should not expect to hear from you right away and can redirect them to one of your colleagues to address urgent situations while you are out of the office.

This function removes all messages that are replicated later on in an email thread or email conversations with multiple replies. This allows you to view a single, clean email thread rather than several emails from a chain individually, saving you time as you scan and work your way through unread messages.

This tool can be a bit intimidating at first if you are worried about losing messages, but the tool will not delete any message that is not replicated later on in a thread.

If you often find yourself rewriting the same message or responding to the same question over and over again, Outlook can help you save time by creating an email template. The template is now saved for future use. The pre-written text will then appear automatically in the body of your draft email. You can even customize the template text as needed in future messages.

One of the most under-appreciated features of Outlook is the ability to schedule emails for future delivery. This way, even if you write a message right when everyone else is leaving the office at 5 p. Or maybe you know that a colleague is on vacation and will not be in the office until the following week.

In that case, you can schedule your email message to arrive at the time that your colleague gets back into the office so your message will be at the top of their unread messages. From there, you can select the particular date and time you would like the email to be delivered.

Then close the box and send the email just as you usually would. Read more: How to End an Email. While most people think of email when they think about Microsoft Outlook, Outlook has many other features that can make your life easier and help make your day-to-day tasks more efficient. You can use the Outlook calendar feature to track appointments, meetings, work tasks and more. You can even use the calendar to create a to-do list to help organize your time.

Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Joli Ballew. Updated on June 05, Ryan Perian. Lifewire Technology Review Board Member. Article reviewed on Jul 14, Tweet Share Email.

Was this page helpful? Thanks for letting us know! Email Address Sign up There was an error. Please try again. For more cool attachment features, see Attach files or insert pictures in Outlook email messages. If you receive flight, hotel, or rental car reservations by email, Outlook will automatically add those to your calendar along with much of the associated information like your confirmation or tracking numbers, and even links.

Unfortunately, Outlook can't yet calculate travel time to the airport, so be sure to check traffic before you leave. Learn how to automatically add travel and package delivery events to your calendar. Have you ever found yourself on an email thread you want to ignore? If you work for a large company, someone might add you to a distribution list without your knowledge. For a humorous and somewhat painful anecdote about Microsoft's own experience with this situation, see the Exchange Team Blog.

Rather than delete every single message in the thread as they arrive, you can Ignore the entire conversation. All messages in the conversation will be moved to the Deleted Items folder and future messages in that conversation will bypass your Inbox entirely and go right to the Deleted Items folder. Want to know more? See ignore all email messages in a conversation. Don't worry about missing an important message. Perhaps you're waiting for a job offer or a concert pre-sale code, or a legal brief from your boss.

Yet, you also have work to do that doesn't involve staring at your Outlook message list for hours on end. Use Outlook's new item alerts to tell you whenever an incoming message meets specific criteria. This alert will display over any other application you're working on so you never miss that message. For more information on message alerts, see Turn new message alert pop-up on or off. Do you have multiple threads in your Inbox with dozens or even hundreds of messages in them?