Outlook Advanced Training Course

Reading Efficiently with the Reading Pane

The reading pane is the view that allows you to read your emails. To change some of the settings for it, go to ‘File – Options – Mail – Reading Pane’. Here you can stop it from automatically marking an email as read when the selection changes.

To manually select an email as read, press ‘Ctrl + Q’. To mark it as unread, press ‘Ctrl + U’.

To switch the reading pane between the bottom and right of the page, go to ‘View – Reading Pane’. You can also change the look of the Folder Pane and the To-Do Bar in the same section.

Click on ‘Show Focused Inbox’ to toggle between the focused box and seeing all messages.

Managing Calendars and Meetings

Click on the Calendar icon at the right panel or press ‘Ctrl + 2’ for the calendar view.

On the ribbon, you can select the view for a day, week or month. You can see multiple calendars at once by selecting the tick boxes at the bottom left of the screen.

Meetings you are invited to are automatically added to the calendar with a checked outline. You must manually accept or decline them. Declining does not delete the meeting for others.

You can utilise categories to change the colours of each meeting and create your own reminders.

In the calendar view, you can also create your own meetings. Appointments do not have other people included, whereas meetings prompt you to invite people. Select a title, location and invitees.

Streamlining Work with Quick Steps

Quick Steps allow you to quickly do repetitive processes such as creating an email about a specific topic or categorising an email. You can access quick steps on the ‘Home’ ribbon. Click on ‘Create new’ or ‘Manage’.

When creating a new quick step, name it and then select the action that you want to perform. There are many actions available, and you can add multiple actions to each step. If you create a new email or reply, then you can specify the recipients, subject and the body of the email. You will see your new quick step in the home ribbon. Click on it to activate it or manage them to change the order.

Setting Helpful Automatic Replies

If you will not be at your desk for an extended time, then it is a good idea to turn on an out of office so that anyone who emails you will know when you will be back.

To do this, click ‘File – Automatic Replies’. Try to give helpful information such as when you will be back and who to contact in your absence.

You can write a different message to people outside of your organisation or copy the same message to both. You can even put rules on your out of office, such as to automatically forward anything that comes from a specific recipient.

Click the tick box to turn on your out of office. By default it will be on until you manually turn it off, but you can also give it timings to automatically turn off.