Introduction to Microsoft Outlook

Jason Moore

This is an introduction to Microsoft Outlook.

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Getting Started

Microsoft Outlook is an email application. You can have your work email, of course, but also connect your personal email and calendars too. You can organize everything with different folders and filters. There is a smart assistant to help you write emails. You can share files with OneDrive to make it even easier.

 

The calendar will organize your day. You can see as many as you need or add your own. The calendar will show your meetings and help you plan your next one.

 

To add an email account select File then Add Account. Enter your email address then select continue. Enter your password if prompted then hit OK. Hit Finish to complete the setup process.

 

Creating and sending email is easy. Choose New mail to start a message. Enter a name or email address in the To field. In the Subject line type what the email is about. Put the cursor in the body of the email and start typing. After you are done, you hit Send. Use @Name to get someone's attention.

 

You can manage your calendar in Outlook. To schedule an appointment, choose New Appointment. Then add a Subject, Location, and start/end times. Select Invite Attendees to turn the appointment into a meeting. Select Save & Close to finish or hit Send if it has turned into a meeting.

 

When you create a meeting, use the Scheduling Assistant to see when attendees and rooms are available. From a new meeting request, select Scheduling Assistant. The shaded area with vertical bars shows the meeting time. Drag the bars to adjust the meeting time. The grid shows when attendees are available. To the right of the meeting request, Outlook shows suggested times and the number of conflicts.

 

To add a contact, select the People icon. Select New Contact. Enter a name and any other information that you want to include for the contact. Select Save & New to create another contact, or Save & Close if you are done.

 

Collaboration is easily done in outlook. To share a file or collaborate on attachments, select Attach File and choose a file. If the file has a small cloud icon, it is already saved to the cloud, which lets you share and work on it with others. If it does not, click the drop-down arrow, hover on Upload, and then select OneDrive. Type a message and select Send.

 

You can also set up online meetings and share the notes. In the left pane, select the Calendar icon. To set up a meeting, attendees can join remotely, select New Teams Meeting. This inserts a link remote attendees can use to join the meeting. To set up a shared space for notes, select Meeting Notes. You can create a new OneNote notebook, or select an existing notebook. A link to the notebook appears in the meeting request.

 

Setup Auto-Reply for Out of Office

Microsoft 365 subscribers can set up automatic replies for when they are out of office or unavailable to respond to email.

      1. Select File…Automatic Replies
      2. Select Send automatic replies
      3. If you do not want the messages to go out right away, select Only send during this time range
      4. Choose the dates and times you would like to set your automatic reply for
      5. Type in a message. You can format the text using the tool bar, or cut and paste the text you have formatted, including hyperlinked text.
      6. Select Ok

To set an automatic reply for contacts outside your organization, select Outside My Organization…Auto Reply to people outside my organization, type in a message, and select Ok

 

The Ok button may be missing because of certain screen resolution and scaling settings. To resolve this issue, you can adjust the screen resolution and scaling settings, or use a large monitor.

 

Searching Email

Search is a powerful tool to help find email messages anywhere in outlook.

      1. Select the search bar, located above the Outlook ribbon
      2. Type a name, subject, or phrase which is included in the email message that you want to find. You can use quotation marks around a phrase to search on words in that exact order.

 

You can refine your search results.

      1. Select the search bar and type a name or subject.
      2. Select an option to refine or widen your search: All Mailboxes, Current Mailbox, Current Folder, Subfolder, or All Outlook items.
      3. You can also select a category within the Refine group to further filter your search results: From, Subject, Has Attachment, Categorized, Sent To, Unread, Flagged, Important, More
      4. Select Recent Searches to run recent searches again. Outlook saves only the recent search query, not the results.
      5. Select Close Search to close the Search tab

 

Ignore Email Conversations

If your inbox is cluttered with conversations or email threads you do not need to be a part of, use Ignore to delete the emails. And any future emails on the subject will automatically be deleted.

      1. Select the conversation or an email in the thread
      2. Select the arrow by Delete…Ignore
      3. If prompted, confirm by selecting Ignore Conversation

 

Clean Up your Inbox

Use Clean up conversation to tidy up your email conversations and reduce the number of messages in your inbox

      1. Select an email conversation that you would like to clean up.
      2. On the simplified ribbon, On the Home Tab, select the arrow next to Delete…Clean Up Conversation. You can also clean up entire Folders. On the classic ribbon, On the Home Tab, select Clean Up…Clean Up Conversation
      3. If prompted, confirm by selecting Clean Up. Emails are sent to the Deleted Items.

 

Set Categories, Flags, and Reminders

Categories, flags, and reminders can help organize your email, calendar, and contacts plus create a to-do list.

      1. To assign a category to an email, right click the message, choose Categorize, then pick a category
      2. The first time you use a category, Outlook asks if you want to rename it. Otherwise it is named for a color. You can create a category by selecting New…Name…Color…Ok
      3. To see all categories, select Categorize…All Categories. You can follow the same process for calendar events and contacts. When creating messages, select Categorize, then select your category. Categories are only seen by you, and you can add multiple categories to email, contacts and events.

 

For flags and reminders, select the flag icon in an email message to make it a to-do item. The flag turns red. Or for more details, right click the flag.

      1. Select Add Reminder to open the menu
      2. In the custom box, for Flag To, select Follow up or type a description
      3. Check the Reminder box, then pick the date and time. You can label the type of reminder you want.
      4. When you are finished, l select Ok. An alarm bell icon will appear on the message. Reminders show in the message list and reading pane.

 

To view all follow up flags: Select View…Layout…To-Do Bar…tasks. The To-Do bar pane opens and shows all flags.

 

To remove a follow up flag:

      1. Right click the email message
      2. Select Follow Up…Mark Complete. The Follow Up flag changes to a green checkmark and is removed from the To-Do Bar.

 

Create Folders to Organize Email

Create folders to organize emails, move messages, and add folders to your Favorites folder for easy access. Right click folders to see more options on how to organize.

 

To create a folder:

      1. Right click your name in the Folder Pane and select New Folder. Or right click Inbox to add a folder inside the inbox and select New Folder.
      2. Type a name for the folder and press Enter
      3. Select the new folder to open it

 

To move messages into a folder:

      1. Select an email message
      2. Drag and drop it into a folder. To do more than one email, select an email, hold down the CTRL key and select other messages, and click, drag, and drop them into a folder.

 

To add a folder to favorites:

      1. To add a folder to Favorites, right click the folder, and then select Add to Favorites. You can also select the folder and then drag and drop it in Favorites.

 

Setting Up Rules

Rules allow you to move, flag, and respond to email messages automatically.

 

To create a rule on a message:

      1. Right click an existing message and select Rules…Create Rule
      2. Select a condition, and what to do with the message based on the condition. For example, to move messages with a certain title to a specific folder, select the Subject Contains condition, select move the item to folder, select or create New Folder, and then select OK.
      3. When you are done creating the rule, select Ok
      4. To use the rule right away, select Run this new rule now on messages already in the current folder checkbox, and then select Ok. The message now appears in that folder.

 

To create a rule from a template:

      1. Select File…Manage rules & Alerts…New Rule
      2. Select a template. For example, to flag a message, Select Flag messages from someone for follow up
      3. Edit the rule description. Select an underlined value, choose the options you want, and then select Ok
      4. Select Next
      5. Select the conditions, add the relevant information, and then select Ok
      6. Select Next
      7. Finish the rule setup. Name the rule, set up rule options, and review the rule description. Click an underlined value to edit.
      8. Select Finish. Certain rules will only run when Outlook is on. If you get this warning, select Ok.
      9. Select Ok.

 

Contacts and Tasks

Use the people page to create, view, and edit contacts, contact lists, and groups. Create new contacts from scratch, or add someone as a contact from their profile card. You can create a simple contact list for sending email to a group of people, or create groups for group based collaboration.

 

New contacts are saved in your default Contacts folder, and you will also see them under Your contacts. If you want to save the contact in a different folder, select the folder before creating the contact.

 

To add a new contact from scratch in Outlook:

      1. Select the People icon at the bottom of the navigation pane.
      2. On the People page, on the toolbar, select New Contact
      3. Enter details for the contact. Select Add More to add more information, such as the contact's address and birthday.
      4. Select Create.

 

To add a contact from someone's profile card. When  you click someone's name or picture in Outlook or other apps and services, you will see their profile card with information about them. From their profile card, you can save them to your own contacts, for example, if you want to add notes or other information.

      1. In Mail, open an email message in the reading pane, and select the name of the sender or recipient you want to add to your contacts.
      2. On the profile card that opens, select…Add To Contacts
      3. Add more information if you want. Select Add More to add more information, such as the contact's address and birthday.
      4. Select Create. The note is automatically saved in your default folder on the People page.

 

We can create contact lists. A contact list is a collection of email addresses, and is useful for sending emails to a group of people. Contact lists are sometimes referred to as distribution lists.

 

For example, create a contact list and add all the members of any certain group to it. When you want to send an email message to everyone in this group, just enter the name of the group in the To line of the email.

 

By default, contact lists are created in the default Contacts folder, and you can also see them under Your Contact Lists. If you want to save the contact list in a different folder, select the folder before you select New Contact List.

 

Groups are something similar in Outlook. Create a group to give your team a space for conversations, shared files, scheduling events, and more. To create a new group:

      1. On the People page, on the toolbar, select the arrow next to New Contact, and then select New Group.
      2. Enter a name for the group, and add your information.
      3. Select Create

 

Transfer Contacts Between Outlook and Gmail

You can use the same contacts in both Google Gmail and Outlook, without adding them manually to both locations.

      1. Log on to google contacts
      2. In the left column, click More
      3. At the top left, click More
      4. Click Export
      5. Under Which contacts do you want to export, click a contact group or All Contacts
      6. Under which export format, click Outlook CSV
      7. Click Export
      8. When prompted to download the export file, click Save
      9. Choose a location on your computer to temporarily save the file. The default name is contacts.csv. You can delete this file after your contacts are imported into Outlook.
      10. Click Close
      11. Go to Outlook
      12. Click the File Tab
      13. Click Open
      14. Click Import
      15. Click Import from another program or file, and then click Next
      16. Click Comma Separated Values, and then click Next
      17. In the Import a File box, browse to find your file you downloaded in step 9, and then double click the file.
      18. Click one of the following: replace duplicates with items imported, allow duplicates to be created, or do not import duplicate items.
      19. Click Next
      20. In the folder list, click the contacts folder where you want the imported contact information to go, then click next
      21. To add or remove fields to determine the way the contact information is saved in the new imported file, click Map Custom Fields.
      22. Click Finish

 

To reverse the process and export your contacts from Outlook to Google Gmail, there are a series of steps for that too. Before you export contacts from Outlook, it is helpful to understand the difference between the Outlook Address Book and Outlook Contacts. Both are part of Outlook. However, the Address book is a compilation of the different address lists that you might store in Outlook, such as LDAP internet directories, the global address list, or other third party address books. Contacts is only one of the address lists included in an Address Book. Only contacts can be exported directly from outlook to Google Gmail.

      1. Click the File Tab
      2. Click Options
      3. Click Advanced
      4. Under Export, click Export
      5. In the Import and Export Wizard, click Export to a file, and then click Next
      6. Click Comma Separated Value and then click Next
      7. In the folder list, click the contacts folder you want to export, and then click Next.
      8. Choose a location on your computer to temporarily save the file. You can delete this file after your contacts are imported into Google Gmail.
      9. Type a name for the exported file, and then click next
      10. To add or remove fields to determine the way the contact information is saved in the new imported file, click map Custom Fields
      11. Click Finish
      12. Log on to Google Contacts
      13. At the top left, click More
      14. Click Import
      15. Under Import Contacts, click Browse
      16. Select the file you exported in step 9, and then click Open
      17. Click Import

 

Create Tasks with To Do in Outlook

Microsoft To Do is a simple and intelligent to-do list that helps you manage all your tasks in one place. With To Do's integration with Outlook, you can use My Day to see your upcoming calendar events and tasks anywhere in Outlook, including Mail, Calendar, and People.

 

To Do uses smart lists that make it easy to track tasks and organize your day. With To Do you can quickly organize your tasks by adding them to My Day, marking them as important, or adding them to new lists that you create.

 

On the left margin of the new Outlook window, select the To Do icon, which opens the task pane. You can select different lists, or create  a New List here.

 

You can create a task from the Add a Task input field. Select the field, type the task's title, and press Enter. If you add a task to a smart list, the task list will be saved in Tasks and linked to the list you were in when you created it.

 

To rename a task, select the task to open its detail view. Once in the detail view, you can click or tap the task's title. A cursor will appear in the task title field and you will be able to rename or edit the title.

 

To delete a task, select the trash icon in the bottom right corner of the task's detail view.

 

Since your tasks are stored on Exchange Online and are also available in New Outlook Tasks, you can recover accidentally deleted tasks in new Outlook.

      1. From your new Outlook folder list under Mail…select Deleted Items
      2. Locate the deleted task, select and hold, or right click, and then select Restore. The deleted task will then reappear in its correct list.

 

With To Do you can quickly organize your tasks by adding them to My Day, marking them as important, or adding them to new lists that you create.

 

Use To Do and the My Day pane to access your upcoming calendar events and tasks anywhere in Outlook, including in Mail, Calendar, People, Groups, and more.

 

Calendar

Learn how to switch your Outlook calendar view between day, week, or month views, change the week displayed, and see different shared calendars. There are different views to choose from: month, week, work week, and day.

 

On the month-by-month calendar, select a week to change the displayed week in the calendar. Days in bold indicate a scheduled event.

 

To see different calendars side by side, select and open one under My Calendars. With different calendars open, select the arrow on each calendar to overlay them and see when everyone is available. Select Today to go back to the current day.

 

In your calendar, Appointments are just for you, Meetings are to invite people to.

      1. For a meeting, select New Meeting
      2. Add people in the To field, and then enter a Subject and Location
      3. Select a Start Time and End Time. Or select Scheduling Assistant to check the availability for attendees and pick a time. AutoPick selects the next available free time for the attendees and location.
      4. Select Teams Meeting to have an online meeting
      5. Add your notes or an agenda
      6. When ready, select Send

 

Schedule an online meeting in outlook to meet with others no matter where they are. To create an online meeting:

      1. Select New Items…Meeting
      2. Select Teams Meeting to make it online. Do not change the information below the line.
      3. Add attendees and a meeting name
      4. Type an agenda above the line.

 

To check scheduling:

      1. To see when everyone is free, select Scheduling
      2. Select a time when everyone is available

 

When you are ready to send the meeting invite, select Send

 

Share your calendar with others so they can view details about your schedule. To share your calendar:

      1. Select Calendar…Share Calendar
      2. Choose a calendar to share
      3. Select Add, decide who to share your calendar with, and select Add
      4. Select Ok and you will see the added people with a default permission level.
      5. Choose a name, select the access level to give, and select Ok

 

To open a shared calendar:

      1. Open an email with a shared calendar and select Accept
      2. In Outlook, select Calendar…Shared Calendars to view a shared calendar.
      3. Choose a calendar to open.
      4. Right click on the calendar's name and select Overlay to layer the shared calendar over your own.

 

You can add online calendars from Google and others right into Outlook. There are two methods.

To add internet calendars:

      1. You will need to find a link. In Google Calendar, select Options…Settings and Sharing
      2. Scroll down to Integrate Calendar and copy the Secret Address in iCal Format
      3. Open your Outlook calendar, and on the Home tab, select Add Calendar…From internet
      4. Paste the URL from your internet calendar and select Ok
      5. Outlook asks if you would like to add this calendar and subscribe to updates. Select Yes

Your calendar items appear and will synchronize. Any calendar can be turned on/off in the Folder pane. Select the arrow to overlay the calendar if you want.

 

To import an .ics or .vcs file:

      1. In Outlook, select File…Open & Export…Import/Export
      2. In Import and Export Wizard box, select Import an iCalendar or vCalendar, and then Next
      3. Select the calendar file from your PC and select Ok
      4. Select Open As New. These items are automatically imported into your calendar.

 

Use calendar search to find events and meetings in your Outlook calendar. Search will look for words in the subject, location, message body, attachments, organizer, and attendees of your events. To search your calendar:

      1. Select the Calendar icon
      2. In the Search box, type the keywords you want to search.
      3. A Search tab appears so you can refine the search by Organizer, Subject, and Has Attachments.
      4. Select the X in the Search box to close search and return to the previous view.

To narrow your search, type more keywords in quotation marks.

 

 

With color categories and reminders, Outlook keeps your calendar organized so you do not miss important meetings or appointments. To add or update reminders:

      1. Select New Appointment, New Meeting, or open an appointment by double clicking on the event. If it is a recurring event, you can change the reminder for a single event or the entire series.
      2. Select the Reminder drop down menu and choose how long before the appointment you want to be reminded. The default is 15 minutes. Or choose None if you do not want a reminder.
      3. If it is a new appointment, add a Subject, Location, and brief description.
      4. Select Save & Close to finish.

 

To add a color category:

      1. Select New Appointment…New Meeting, or open an existing appointment by double clicking on the event. If it is a recurring event, you will need to choose the series to add a color category.
      2. Select Categorize and then one of the preset colors
      3. If this is the first time using the color, you will be asked if you want to rename it
      4. After you have chosen a category, a color bar will go across the top of the event

 

To rename or create new color categories:

      1. Select any appointment or meeting
      2. Select Categorize…All Categories
      3. In the Color Categories window, you can choose rename, delete, color, or shortcut key.

You can also use the same categories in People, mail, and Tasks in Outlook

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