Email Tips and Techniques

For every email you send, you are likely to receive 3 back! Check out these Email Tips and Techniques to help you process emails more effectively.

For more detailed training, see this Microsoft Office 2007 Tutorial.

Use tags in your subject title, for example:

FYI: changed travel procedures
ACTION: Respond by 23rd May
REQUEST: Q1 Budget Figures
FYI: Recent business offer
Ensure the subject is meaningful, for example instead of “INFO: Notes” you could put “INFO: Notes from Team Meeting 18/6/01 re Marketing Plan”
Avoid unnecessary use of distribution lists, CC and ‘Reply All’. Ask yourself if all recipients really need to know this?
Get yourself removed from old or irrelevant distribution lists
Ask yourself why you are receiving this?
Use Inbox Rules ..instructions overleaf
Summarise important points of attachments
Don’t converse via email — pick up the phone! Be sure that email is the right tool
Use your ‘Out of Office facility ….
Take time to understand Outlook functionality
Above all ….set an example for your team

Prioritise messages using colour coding

Click on the Organize button on the toolbar or choose Organize from the Tools menu Select Using Colours

Make messages from some senders stand out

Using Out of Office

On the tools menu, click ‘out of office assistant’ and then ‘add rule
Fill out the necessary conditions
If you would like this to be the last rule applied check the ‘do not process subsequent rules’ box

Use the Rules Wizard to reduce the number of messages in your Inbox

Consider setting up rules to automatically move certain messages into another folder. For example you could create a folder called “Weekly Finance Report” and automatically redirect all weekly messages from finances into that folder
From the Tools menu choose Rules Wizard and follow the steps through the wizard

Find messages using Advanced Find

From the Tools menu select Advanced Find
Type the word(s) you wish to search for and choose whether you wish to search in the subject or in the subject and the message body. You can also search for messages from particular senders

Get your Inbox under control with flags

Flags can be used to set action reminders for messages

You can also set a reminder date

Displaying the flag text

From the View menu choose View, Customise Current View
Click on the Fields button
In the list of available fields select Follow Up Flag and click on the Add button
Click OK

If you have any questions or suggestions about our Email Tips and Techniques, please contact us.