From the course: Outlook: Efficient Email Management

Use the Outlook Focused Inbox

From the course: Outlook: Efficient Email Management

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Use the Outlook Focused Inbox

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- [Instructor] All of the newer versions of Outlook have a Focused Inbox. This is something that was tried a couple of years ago and was so popular that Microsoft simply rolled it out to all users. You know, you have a Focused inbox because at the top of the information viewer, that's this section here, you have two tabs, one's called Focused and one's called Other. If you have something else here, go to the View tab because it's possible that Show Focused Inbox has been turned off by you or in your organization. And when Focused Inbox is turned off, what you have instead is you actually have all of your messages and then your unread messages. So it's a different way of thinking about how you use your inbox. I'm going to assume that you'll turn Focused inbox on because you're here to learn. And it's a great feature. Your important email messages and you have control over which ones those are, will go to the Focused tab, while messages that are less important will go to the Other tab. The idea here is that you can start your day by looking at the messages that are more important, those that are Focused. And then later on in the day, you can look at your other messages. But they're all just a click away, because if you go back to view and turn your Show Focused Inbox off, then you're back to All and Unread. So if at some point during the day I want to be able to see all of my messages and see my unread messages, focus on them more tightly, I can do that here. The Focused inbox is really something that you need to tweak, you do some setup on. So if you have a message that appears in your other list, and I have one, a message from Leslie Trew, this is actually a message that I want to see. It's sent only to me. I'm not exactly sure why it ended up here, but I'm going to right click on it and say, always move to Focused. That means always move messages from Leslie Trew to Focused. However, I could just move this one by saying move to Focused, but always move means the next time a message from Leslie comes in, Outlook will know to put it on the Focused tab. So it says, do you want to move all future messages from Leslie D. Trew to the Focused tab? Yes I do, that was my point. And now Leslie's message is here on the Focused tab. On the other hand, I have some other messages from Power Apps that I really don't need to see on my Focused tab. So I'm going to right click one of these and say always move to other. And the question is, do you want to move all future messages from Microsoft Power Apps to the other tab? Yes, I do. I'm happy to read those messages, I rely on them, but I don't want them to be taking up space on my Focused tab, that's where I need to look first. So by moving messages back and forth intentionally, and you really have to do it with the right click and either move to other, always move to other move to Focused, always move to Focused. You can't simply take a message and drag it to that tab, it just doesn't go anywhere. It acts like it will, but it really doesn't. And I was offered some help when I tried. By doing this, as I go through my messages, I notice, oh, I don't want this in my Focused tab, I want this in my other tab, or vice versa, you're actually training Outlook to put your messages in exactly the right place.

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