Microsoft 365: Manage your Outlook

Microsoft 365: Manage your Outlook

Table of Contents

Create Rules

Mark Senders as Safe

Create Folders

Accessing Outlook via the Web App 

Create Categories

Use Flags

Arrange Conversations by Thread

Create Rules

Outlook rules can streamline managing your emails. Some examples include:

• Moving emails to specific folders
• Categorizing an email
• Deleting unwanted emails
• Automatic forwarding of emails
• Flagging emails

Go to File in the upper left corner,

then to "Rules and Alerts".

On this pane you can choose to create, delete, copy and edit your rules.

Click "New Rule" to bring up the "Rules Wizard"

Mark Senders as Safe

Safe senders are people and domains you always want to receive email messages from. 

Safe recipients are recipients that you don't want to block, usually groups that you’re a member of. Messages received from any email address or domain in your safe senders and recipients list are never sent to your Junk Email folder. 

It is highly recommended that you add names to the Safe lists (to avoid false positives) and let the Junk Mail filter take care of the junk. 

To configure your safe senders and recipient lists click on "Junk Email Options".

Create Folders

Folders allow you to organize and group files in specific locations, so you’ll know where to find them.

To create new folders click on the "Folder" tab.

Accessing Outlook via the Web App

To access more Outlook settings, you may find using the web app easier. To open go to "File", then click the link next to "Account Settings".

Once logged into the web app, click on the settings cog, 

 then down to "View all Outlook settings". 

Create Categories

Categories are a way to visually Organize your Outlook inbox in order to help you scan for emails of a certain group. Outlook categories let you assign a color-coding and a label to specific emails to set them apart for special treatment or action.  

To create and edit categories go to "General" the "Categories" in the web app.

Use Flags

Flagging an email sets it as a reminder for something that needs immediate attention or a message that you might need to follow up on.

Flagged emails also appear in your Outlook To-Do Bar, your Tasks, and in the Daily Task List in the calendar. 

Each message should have a greyed-out flag that will turn red when clicked on. You can then right-click on a flag to change the date if you want to set the reminder.

Arrange Conversations by Thread

To keep your inbox tidy consider using Email Threads. What this does is remove duplicate emails that come from long conversations with multiple replies. This feature will group your conversation thread together to give you just one comprehensive thread.

To turn this feature on, go to "View", then tick "Group into conversations".