How to Clean Out Your Inbox in Outlook

If you are bombarded with email daily, it's time to learn some steps you can take to keep it manageable.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Outlook

1. Outlook is a highly effective personal data assistant. You can use it to keep your email and schedule. Here are some ideas to keep your Outlook inbox in check.
2. Only visit your inbox 3-4 times a day. Once you implement a few techinques you'll see how this can work.
3. When you check your Outlook email plan to management your inbox using the 4 D's. Delegate, Delete, Defer and Do.
4. Delete any mail you do not need. Set your rules to auto delete anything you never want to see.
5. Defer to later items you need to address but don't need to stop your set goals for the day to do. Using Outlook's autocreate feature drag the email over the navigation pane, on the far left, and drop it into a task and give yourself a schedule for this task. The original text comes along during the autocreate. Delete the orginal email, if you do not need it.
6. Delegate emails by again taking advantage of Outlook's autocreate feature. Drag the email over the task section. You can then send the item as a task to the appropriate party. Delete the orginal email, if you do not need it.
7. Do any items you can address right then. Answer questions, send information. Then delete the email if you do not need it after that.
8. Create a few rules. These are easier to do then people think at first. Right click an email in your inbox, you'll see create rule on the short cute. Create a rule to send emails from certain people to folders you've set up for them. Also create a rule for the ones you want to have run automatically.
9. Autoarchive your inbox. Go to the Tools menu and Mailbox Cleanup and check it out! There is a great feature in Outlook where you can set up the timing of autoarchiving. You can keep an .pst folder on the company network in a private location and move your archive messages to that folder.
10. Make a point to keep your inbox down to 20 or less emails. If you are maintainimg more than that, it's a good indicator you are not effectively managing your inbox.

Tips & Warnings

• Color code the text on messages from certain people. You'll find this under the Tools menu and Organize.