10 Best Microsoft Outlook 2010 Hacks and Tips

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Microsoft Outlook 2010 comes with premium business and personal e-mail management tools to more than 500 million users worldwide. The new Outlook version has been designed to offer richer set of tools and features to meet the communication needs at office, home and school. With a revamped look, advanced e-mail organization, search and communication features. Outlook 2010 allows extended tools to increase productivity and to enhance your personal and business networks. We had already done with the 10 hacks and tips for Microsoft Office 2010.  This time we assembled a unique list of 10 Microsoft Outlook hacks and tips.

1. How to add more search criteria

Microsoft Office 2010 allows you to add criteria . Outlook 2010 presents a simple way to search the specific items, emails, files, calender events, tasks, etc immediately. When all the Outlook folders are indexed, you can search items for specific folders and archives.  Let’s have a look at different search options and search tools.
The search fields are also specific to the Outlook e-mail profile that you are currently.

Step 1: Click or type in the Instant Search box

Step 2: Search Tools tab

Step 3:Go to the Refine group and chose options for refined search. For instance on clicking the Flagged in Refine group you would show all the items and emails that have been flagged recently. You might also click important presents beneath Flagged button, from This Week button specify the timeline.

2. Using the Outlook 2010 Search Tools

You can see a new tab on the ribbon by the name of Search under Search Tools. It offers several options to filter-down the search results. Search Tools can be configured for different types of options such as Indexing Status, Location to Search(POP, and all IMAP account folders), Advanced Find and Search Options.

How to search the attachments in specific folder.

In order, to search attachments click the Has Attachment button. It would show all the items that contain attachments.

Search also changed the keyword with hasattachment. Just enter the file extension and it will show all the attachments with that extension. It will also show the emails and items that contains the extension name.

3. Using the Quick Steps

It provides the ability to perform single-step functions-things like Delete, Mark as read, Reply and so on. However, in case you need to perform multi-step function. Move it to an archived email folder. The new Quick Steps feature in Outlook 2010 can easily utilize a collection of built-in multi-step tasks. You might create your own.

Outlook 2010 offers users to create new Quick steps. Here’s how to create a new quick step

Step 1: Click on the down arrow in the quick steps box and click on the create new items

Step 2: When a new window opens you can create a new quick step and add a name for it.

Step 3: Create a new quick step

Step 4: In the next section you will need to select the action for the quick step. Outlook 2010 offers several pre-defined actions that you might add to your own.

In the meantime choose from one of the actions that already exists. Once you have chosen the action you can customize it.

4. How to insert reusable content using Quick Parts

Outlook 2010 offers a Quick Parts feature that allows users to save pieces of content to easily re-use. You can use Quick Parts for all those answers that you have to repeat again and again.

Step 1: Select the content you wanna reuse. For instance, you can select a table that you need to send repeatedly.

Step 2: After selecting the content click on the Insert tab in the Ribbon, choose Quick parts and click Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery.

Step 3: To insert your Quick Part click on the Insert tab in the Ribbon, choose Quick Parts and you will see a gallery with all your saved Quick Parts. You might see a gallery with all your saved Quick Parts.

Step 4: Click on the Quick Part that will insert it at the current cursor position.

Step 5: To insert Quick Parts click on the Insert tab in the Ribbon, choose Quick Parts and you can access all the saved Quick Parts.  Clicking on the Quick Part will insert it at the current cursor position.

You might also use the advanced options by right-clicking the desired Quick Part.

5. Outlook message templates

You might have Message styles for Christmas, birthdays and pretty much anything family-related that you have to send too often. Sending these type of messages will involve a number of steps. You can avoid that with the Outlook Message Templates. We’ll tell you how to use it.

Step 1: Open the new email to compose and add content and styles that you want to apply everytime you open the template.

Step 2: After creating your template content, click on the Office Button and choose Save As.

Step 3: Change the Save as type to Outlook template (*.oft).

Step 4: Open the template you have created and saved a template everytime you need to send that weekly status report. You can simply open the template that you want to save. Follow the Step 1 and re-save the template.

To Open the templates, open the file in Windows File Explorer or save it to the default location open it through the Tools>Forms>Choose Forms.

6.  How to schedule a meeting using Team Calender

Conveniently and efficiently schedule appointments, share your calender availability and manage your work schedule. With the email calender feature you might be able to

Step 1: In the Calender Navigation Pane you can select the people you wanna invite to the meeting. Now you can also select the conference room that includes the conference room resources.

Step 2: Schedule a conference room resources, select a conference room
Step 3: In the top row of the Schedule View displays a summary of the availability(free/busy) for all the people that you have selected. You can use this summary to find the best time for meeting.

Step 4: After selecting a time slot on the Home tab, in the New group, click New Meeting. The attendees and time enters automatically. Type the subject and click on Send.

7. Delete Trash Emails Automatically when Outlook 2010 is Closed

On deleting an email in Outlook 2010, the email is included in the deleted items folder and not removed to the Recycle Bin on the Windows desktop directly. The disk space is used by the trashed email. The system runs slower. To avoid this we have an easy work around that will automatically delete trash emails when Outlook 2010 is closed.

Step 1: Launch your Outlook in your computer

Step 2: Choose File > Options in the menu

Step 3: The Outlook Options window will appear. Choose Advanced in the left pane and find Outlook start and exit in the right list

Step 4: Select the Empty Deleted Items folders when exiting Outlook option. Then click OK to save changes.

Step 5: Next time, when you open Outlook 2010, you will find the trash folders are empty.

8. Exporting emails or Contacts from Microsoft Outlook 2010

Many a times you need to export files to Outlook. Here’s how you can do it in the best way

Step 1: Download the software Outlook Data Export

Step 2: Install it. And then open your Outlook. Click “Add-ins” and you can see Outlook data export added.

Step 3: Click the arrow and you will see some options in the list.

Step 4: Choose one option. Here we choose “Export emails”. And then a dialog box pops up. Click Select export directory.

Step 5: Select the export directory like this

Step 6: You can also set up other options, output format, file name options and so on. Then click Start exports

Step 7: Wait for a few minutes

Step 8: You can also click Show results to see the result.

Wait till the Export results appears

Finally you are done

9.  How to use Outlook 2010 as Twitter Client

Microsoft Outlook is widely used to send and receive emails. You might be one of them, who checks Microsoft Outlook too often. What about using Twitter directly from your Microsoft Outlook. If you wanna use Twitter and Outlook simultaneously here’s the process

Step 1: Download the TwinBox software

Step 2: Intsall it and open your Outlook

Step 3: This sets a Twitter toolbar in the Add-Ins

Step 4: Click TwInbox you will see some functions in the list

Now let’s how you can use Twitter in Outlook 2010

Choose Options option, The dialog box will appear. It contains account, receiving, sending, UI options and you can change the settings.  Now you can do the following

• Click on Display Status to see all the stats in Twitter
• Click on Post a New Update to send new status. A dialog box will pop up and you can click update to finish
• Choosing the Retweet you can change the status you have just updated
• You can choose Search/Track/Group in the tab
• In the dialog box, you can define groups of tweets, search them and do other things

10. Customize the To-Do-Bar

In order to customize your To-Do Bar you have a new To-Do bar Options available in the ribbon. Just follow the steps below

Step 1: Go to the View tab, in the Layout group

Step 2:  Click To-Do Bar, select the items you wanna appear. Click the options for additional customization.

Bonus

How to minimize Microsoft Outlook 2010 to System Tray

Microsoft Outlook is kept open during the work hours in most companies with new emails constantly being received at defined intervals. Since Outlook by default is set by default in system tray and also at taskbar, it might be taking up unnecessary space at the taskbar. To get a neater taskbar without an unnecessary software hogging the space, you need to apply a simple hack.

In order to minimize Outllook icon to system tray, simply right-click on the Outlook system tray icon and check the Hide When Minimized option.