Clean up your Outlook! Quick tips to refresh your space

Topics

  • Delete your largest items
  • Delete your oldest items, and use filters to further narrow results
    • Filter for items you were CC’d on
    • Filter to items with attachments
    • Filter to unread/read
  • Delete unused folder contents, auto-email folders, or rule-based folders’ contents
  • Empty deleted items folder

Delete your largest items

Go to File –> Cleanup tools –> Mailbox Cleanup –> Set size filter and click Find

When the advanced search opens, add any additional filters and search. When you’re ready, click the top result, use Ctrl+A to select all results, right-click, and Delete. You may need to repeat the “Find Now, select all, delete” process depending on how many results you have.

Delete your oldest items

Similar to above, just change the “size” find option to the “days old” option.


Because you have delete in “batches,” it may be quicker to filter your main view as opposed to using the cleanup tool.

From your main Outlook screen, go to view –> view settings

Click “filter”

Configure settings for your filter, such as only messages you were copied on, or those with attachments. Click OK when ready.

Select all results (Ctrl+A), right-click and Delete.

Delete all of a certain folder’s contents

Click Folder –> Delete all to delete all items in a folder (perhaps you had a temporary project-based folder or a rule that sent generic or auto-emails to a specific folder).

Empty your deleted items folder contents

Now that you’ve filled your deleted items, let’s empty it too!

Go to File –> Cleanup tools –> Empty Deleted items folder –> Yes

5 ways to improve your efficiency using OneNote & Outlook

A colleague of mine from LMH Health, Andrew Brookens, and I set out to deliver an hour’s worth of efficiency hacks using OneNote and Outlook this week. It was the first time we’d tried such a thing, and it was a hot topic. We had 40+ show up in person, and a few people online have asked for handouts or recordings so I’m sharing it all here.

We knew we were setting out to share a lot of demo, and a lot of info from TWO products in FIVE topics in an hour or less. So we devised a handout that would help attendees along the way, and after. You can download it below. In-person attendees also got free access to my OneNote 101 7-day email course.

Because we don’t all have an hour to watch the recording, Andrew and I agreed that sharing smaller, digestible videos would probably work best for busy professionals on the go. Here are brief teaser videos introducing each of our five concepts:

Take and share meeting notes

Share categorized tag/to-do list

Minimize distractions in Outlook

Make your inbox work for you

Establish a task list in Outlook

The “new Outlook” in Outlook O365 looks a lot like personal Outlook online now

When you log into your Outlook online at work next time, you might be prompted to try the “new” Outlook. Here’s what you’ll see if you venture forth.

The first thing I noticed is how the original O365 Outlook looked like this:

But the new Outlook (when toggled on) resembles personal accounts (live.com, hotmail.com, etc.). Notice the change in the left pane, the top nav, and the “new message” and search bar locations.

I love this consistency across experiences and feel this will help users adjust more easily, recognizing a familiar layout across their personal and work accounts.

Two features highlighted in the “welcome tour” once activated include improved search and scheduling (including assistant ability of identifying available times).

The integration of your groups is still there, and you can easily drag your messages to your groups to share with relevant teams (very helpful in reducing data loss or “recovery” that occurs when employees leave a company and a lot of content still lives in their inbox).