How to Use Outlook Categories

Summary

In this Tuesday Tech Training video, Jennifer Stewart from Gateway Productivity teaches viewers how to utilize Outlook's categories feature for effective email organization. Categories, similar to tags on social media, allow users to assign colors and names to items like emails, calendar entries, and contacts. Stewart explains the limitations when syncing with non-Microsoft accounts and provides step-by-step instructions on setting up, assigning, and managing categories to streamline workflow and improve productivity.

Takeaways

• 📚 Categories in Outlook can be used to organize emails, calendar items, and contacts without the need for folders.
• 🏷️ Categories are similar to tags, allowing users to assign specific labels to items for easy filtering and organization.
• 🌈 Categories come with color-coding in Outlook, which helps visually distinguish different types of items.
• 🚫 Categories are not available for emails imported from non-Microsoft accounts like Gmail or Yahoo due to the lack of category support in these services.
• 📍 Categories can be found in the upper right of the Outlook interface, and they may be under a 'Tags' section or their own dedicated area.
• 🛠️ Users can create, rename, delete, and color-code categories through the 'All Categories' settings.
• 📝 Planning categories in advance can make it easier to organize and filter items based on their purpose or relevance.
• 🔍 Assigning multiple categories to an item allows for more granular organization and filtering.
• 👁️ Users can add the 'Category' column to their Outlook views to see the category information directly in the list of emails, calendar items, or contacts.
• ❌ Removing a category from an item can be done by selecting the category and choosing the 'Clear All Categories' option.
• 🗂️ Categories can be used in conjunction with Outlook rules to automatically categorize incoming items based on specific criteria.

Q & A

What is the main topic of the video?

The main topic of the video is teaching viewers how to use categories in Outlook for organizing emails, calendar items, and contacts.

Who is the presenter of the video?

The presenter of the video is Jennifer Stewart, the owner of Gateway Productivity, a tech and productivity trainer.

What is the similarity between categories in Outlook and tags on social media platforms?

Categories in Outlook are similar to tags on social media platforms in that they allow users to assign a label to items, making it easier to filter and view items associated with that label.

What is a limitation of using categories with non-Microsoft email accounts in Outlook?

A limitation is that if you are using Outlook to sync with non-Microsoft email accounts like Gmail or Yahoo, you won't be able to use categories in your emails because these accounts do not support categories natively.

How can categories be beneficial for a business owner?

Categories can be beneficial for a business owner by helping them organize their calendar items, emails, and contacts based on different aspects of their business, such as marketing, clients, and prospects.

What is the difference between categories and the colors associated with them?

Categories are the labels used to organize items, while the colors associated with them provide a visual cue to quickly identify the category of an item in Outlook.

How can users access the categories feature in Outlook?

Users can access the categories feature in Outlook by looking for the 'Categorize' option in the upper right corner of the Outlook interface, which may be under a 'Tags' area or its own section.

What is the purpose of the 'All Categories' option in Outlook?

The 'All Categories' option in Outlook allows users to manage their categories by creating new ones, renaming, deleting, or changing the color of existing categories, and setting up shortcut keys.

How can users apply categories to emails, calendar items, and contacts in Outlook?

Users can apply categories to emails, calendar items, and contacts by selecting the 'Categorize' option and choosing the appropriate category from the list. This can be done without having to open the item fully.

Can categories be used in the same way for emails, calendar items, and contacts in Outlook?

Yes, the process of applying categories is the same across emails, calendar items, and contacts in Outlook, allowing for a consistent method of organization.

What is the 'Quick Click' feature in Outlook categories?

The 'Quick Click' feature in Outlook categories allows users to assign a category to an item with a single click, based on a preset category chosen by the user for quick categorization.

How can categories be used in conjunction with Outlook rules?

Categories can be used in conjunction with Outlook rules to automatically categorize incoming emails based on specific criteria, such as the sender, reducing the need for manual categorization.

What is the effect of deleting a category in Outlook?

Deleting a category in Outlook removes it from the list of available categories but does not affect previously categorized items. Those items will still show the deleted category unless it is manually removed.

Outlines

00:00

📧 Mastering Outlook Categories for Email Organization

In this segment, Jennifer Stewart introduces viewers to the concept of using categories in Outlook to organize emails without resorting to traditional folders. She explains the similarity between categories and tags, as seen on platforms like Facebook, and highlights the visual benefits of categories with color-coding. Stewart also addresses the limitations when using categories with non-Microsoft email services like Gmail or Yahoo, due to the lack of category support in these services. She guides viewers on where to find the categorization options in Outlook and emphasizes the importance of planning categories in advance based on specific organizational needs.

05:01

🎨 Customizing Outlook Categories for Personal and Business Use

Jennifer Stewart continues the tutorial by demonstrating how to customize Outlook categories with personal and business examples. She shows the process of renaming and organizing categories, such as 'Microsoft', 'Clients', and 'Planning', to suit individual needs. Stewart explains the importance of choosing meaningful colors and names for categories to streamline email, calendar, and contact management. She also covers how to assign multiple categories to items and how to adjust the view to include category information, ensuring that the chosen color scheme is intuitive and functional for the user.

10:03

📅 Applying Categories in Outlook's Calendar and Contacts

This part of the tutorial focuses on applying categories to Outlook's calendar items and contacts. Stewart illustrates how to categorize appointments and contacts with the same ease as emails. She explains that the categorization process is consistent across different Outlook components, allowing for a cohesive organizational strategy. She also discusses the visual representation of categories in different views and how to adjust these views to display category information effectively. Additionally, Stewart covers the deletion of categories and the impact it has on previously categorized items, ensuring that users understand the permanence of their categorization choices.

15:04

🔍 Advanced Category Usage and Outlook Integration

In the final segment, Jennifer Stewart explores advanced uses of categories in Outlook, including the quick click feature for rapid categorization and the integration of categories with Outlook rules for automated sorting. She provides a step-by-step guide on setting up quick click for specific categories and demonstrates how to sort emails by category rather than by date. Stewart also encourages viewers to explore the use of Outlook rules in conjunction with categories for a more automated and efficient email management system. She concludes the tutorial by inviting viewers to share their experiences, ask questions, and subscribe for more helpful content.

Keywords

💡Outlook

Outlook is a personal information manager from Microsoft, which includes features such as email, calendar, task manager, and address book. In the video, Outlook is the main platform where categories are used to organize emails, calendar items, and contacts, enhancing productivity and making it easier to manage communications and tasks.

💡Categories

Categories in Outlook are a tool for organizing items such as emails, calendar events, and contacts by assigning them to different groups. They are similar to tags and are used to filter and sort items based on user-defined criteria. The script explains how to use categories to group like items without creating folders, which helps in maintaining an organized email system.

💡Tags

Tags are labels used to categorize items, and they function similarly to categories in Outlook. The script mentions tags as a familiar concept, like those used on Facebook, to help viewers understand the concept of categories in Outlook. Tags allow users to filter and view items that share a common theme or purpose.

💡Filter

Filtering in the context of the video refers to the process of viewing only the items that belong to a specific category. It is a method to streamline the view of emails, calendar items, or contacts by displaying only those that have been assigned a particular category, which is useful for quickly accessing relevant information.

💡Calendar

A calendar in Outlook is used for scheduling and organizing appointments and events. The video script discusses how categories can be applied to calendar items to easily identify and organize events by type, such as 'marketing' or 'planning,' making it simpler to manage one's schedule.

💡Contacts

Contacts in Outlook refer to the address book feature where users store contact information. The script explains that categories can be used to organize contacts, allowing users to quickly identify and access information related to specific individuals or groups, such as 'clients' or 'Microsoft'.

💡Gmail

Gmail is a web-based email service from Google. The video mentions Gmail as an example of an external email service that, when synced with Outlook, does not support categories within Outlook due to the lack of this feature in Gmail's native system. This is an important point as it sets expectations for users syncing non-Microsoft email accounts.

💡Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 is a suite of productivity software and services offered by Microsoft. The script mentions that if users have their email flowing through Microsoft 365, they will be able to use categories in Outlook without any issues, highlighting the compatibility and integration of Microsoft's own services.

💡Exchange Server

An Exchange Server is a mail and calendaring server developed by Microsoft. The video script notes that if a user is part of a large company using an Exchange Server, they can utilize categories in Outlook, indicating the server's support for advanced organizational features within the Microsoft ecosystem.

💡Categorize

To 'categorize' in the context of the video means to assign a category to an item in Outlook. The script provides a step-by-step guide on how to categorize emails, calendar items, and contacts, which is central to the video's tutorial on organizing items within Outlook.

💡Quick Click

Quick Click is a feature in Outlook that allows users to assign a category to an item with a single click. The script explains how to set up Quick Click for a specific category, such as 'clients,' providing a time-saving method for categorizing items as they are received or created.

Highlights

Outlook's Categories tool allows grouping of like items without using folders.

Categories are similar to tags in Facebook, allowing for easy filtering and organization.

Categories in Outlook have colors associated with them for quick visual identification.

Categories can be applied to emails, calendar items, or contacts, except for emails from non-Microsoft accounts.

For non-Microsoft accounts like Gmail, categories cannot be used due to lack of support in the email service itself.

Categories are accessible from the upper right in Outlook's interface.

All Categories section allows for creating, renaming, deleting, and color changing of categories.

Planning categories in advance can make email organization more efficient.

Categories can be used for different purposes such as sorting emails, calendar events, and contacts.

Examples of using categories for business purposes like marketing, clients, and prospects.

Renaming categories to specific business-related terms like 'Microsoft', 'Clients', and 'Planning' for better organization.

Assigning categories to emails can be done without opening the email, and multiple categories can be applied.

Categories can be added or removed from the email list view by using the 'Categorize' option.

Quick Click feature allows for automatic categorization of emails by simply clicking on an icon.

Sorting emails by categories rather than by date for better organization.

Outlook rules can be combined with categories for automatic categorization of incoming emails based on specific criteria.

The video provides a training on how to use Outlook categories for better email management and organization.

Transcripts

do you find yourself wishing there was a

way in outlook to group like items

but without having to put them into

folders

you have that option with a tool called

categories and it can be very helpful

for organizing your email i'll show you

how to use

outlook categories today on tuesday tech

training

[Music]

hello and welcome to today's tuesday

tech training my name is jennifer

stewart

i'm the owner of gateway productivity

and i'm a tech and productivity trainer

today i'll be teaching you how to use

categories in outlook

for those who aren't familiar categories

is similar to

tags you may have heard about tags

before in facebook and things like that

where you can assign a certain tag to

something

and then when you're ready you can

filter to just that

tag and see the things associated with

it categories work the same way

categories have colors associated with

them in outlook which makes it really

nice on a calendar

or even in your email to quickly see

things that you have and what category

they're in

but then you can also give them a name

and then when the time is right you're

ready to

filter by those categories in outlook

most people can put categories on emails

calendar items or contacts the one

exception to that

is if you are using outlook to bring in

a gmail account

yahoo account something like that

something that's not based in microsoft

then you probably won't be able to use

categories in your emails

the reason for that is the emails that

are being brought in from

other accounts don't have categories at

those accounts

and usually you're syncing between let's

say gmail

and outlook and if you're syncing then

gmail doesn't have categories and so

then categories are not available

if you're using microsoft 365 and you

have your email

flow through microsoft you'll have no

problem and you can categorize your

emails

this is also true if you're at a big

company and they

use what's called an exchange server

through microsoft

we'll start by seeing where categories

live as a reminder when you're in your

inbox

if you are someone who is pulling from

gmail say or yahoo

you may not be able to see these little

categorizing buttons here

let's see what that looks like this is a

gmail account

and if i go in there you see how the

categories disappear this one's in gray

so i don't have that as an option

again that's because it's coming in from

gmail and they're syncing back and forth

and gmail doesn't have categories so

you're not able to add them here in

outlook

if you're someone who has this situation

don't expect to be able to use

categories in your email but you can

certainly use them

in calendar and in contacts go ahead and

watch the whole video because

everything i show can be applied in each

area

so even though i'm showing how to

categorize an email

you'll be able to do that same thing in

the calendar items

and in your contacts now that we know

categories is up here in the upper right

and it may be in two places it may be in

one depending on how your

this is called a ribbon depending on how

this ribbon is set up

it may be in this tags area as i said

it's very similar to tags

or it may have its own section or it may

be in both you can use it in either

place it's exactly the same

when you click on that this will show

you all the categories you currently

have available

you can see that i have not set up my

categories yet that's why they have

the names of the colors instead of

actual categories that i would use

now let's take a look at what this all

categories is this is where you can

do all of your editing of categories you

can see here you can

create new ones rename the existing ones

delete ones that you don't want you can

change the colors of them

and you can also set up shortcut keys

you have a couple options when doing

categories you can set them

as you go or you can create them before

you start to put them on the emails

i find it easier to have a plan in

advance and know what categories i want

so i'm going to do that now some things

to think about

when you're planning your categories are

what do you plan to use these

for are you going to sort emails are you

going to use them

in your calendar to see what you have

coming up

are you going to use them in your

contacts to know where people are coming

from

any of these is fine but you want to

know in advance

what you're going to use them for

because you don't want to create so many

that it becomes cumbersome and use your

categories

as a business owner i like to use

categories

for my calendar items especially for

things such as

marketing and clients and prospects

so i can quickly look at my calendar to

see

what types of things i have going on in

the same way

i can use those in my email to see what

types of things are happening in my

email

if you're working at a large company you

might have one

for each department that would work

through all of the different parts of

outlook for instance if you had the

accounting department as a category

that would make sense in your email that

would make sense if you have

frequent meetings with them you could

have that in your calendar and it would

also make sense to have that for the

contacts that are in the accounting

department

as an example for a business owner using

my example that i talked about before

with marketing

i can have emails that have to do with

marketing i can have

appointments that have to do with

marketing say i'm having an appointment

with my marketing

contractor and then i can have the

contacts that have to do with marketing

i can drill down to all the contacts

that i know

that have to do with web development and

all the different types of marketing

that are out there

i'll do a couple different kinds of

categories so that you can understand

how to use them for my blue category

i will make this microsoft because i

have meetings with microsoft i have

people

in my contacts that are from microsoft

and i get emails from microsoft

so we will rename the blue category by

clicking the reno

rename button you have to pay close

attention because it then puts the blue

category

in blue and i can hit backspace to

delete it

and put in microsoft

once i'm done renaming i can click

anywhere in the white space

and it will save it i'll make my green

category

clients so again we'll click rename

it'll change this to blue so that i can

delete it

and i'll name this clients because green

for me means money

and for one more example i'll make my

orange category

be planning because i have planning

emails

planning meetings and then i have a team

for planning

so i'll rename this as planning and if

you don't want to hit backspace as you

saw i can just start

typing and it will replace it again

click in the white space

and that will save it at this point i

could choose to get rid of these other

categories and add them back later as

actual categories

but we won't worry about that at the

moment don't forget to click

ok when you're leaving this screen

otherwise you will lose

your changes now let's look

at how to assign a category to emails

calendar items and contacts

what's nice about outlook is you don't

have to have the email open

to get to these items you can do it when

the email is fully open you see

categorize up here

but then you also have that as an option

when you're in your inbox view

and even if you have the reading pane on

or off this will work

you can go to categorize and choose the

category that you had set

you see it gives a little blue icon here

and it also puts it right here in the

email

and if you're not in the reading pane

view

you can see here when i move my picture

it has the

icon and the label because it has more

space

if you don't have the categories column

and you would like to

you can right click in the bar at the

top

anywhere in here any it doesn't matter

where you are there

and you can use the field chooser and

find category click and drag it

up to where you want it in the list of

columns

you can also add multiple categories so

let's say this one here is both planning

and its clients you can see here

in this view you can see both labels and

the icons

we'll go back to our reading pane view

to see what that looks like

and now you can see they're labeled here

in the email but here you just have the

colored icons

so you'll want to make sure you use icon

colors

that resonate with you and make sense to

you so let's say you made a mistake

let's say i had put this in planning but

it actually wasn't

i can go here to categorize and all i

have to do is

click the option a second time to remove

it

lastly if you have multiple categories

set up and you want to remove them

all at once you can go to categorize and

at the very top it's kind of hiding here

is clear all categories that will take

them all away at once

let's see these steps in the calendar

when you're in the calendar and you

start a new appointment

your categorizing again is up here at

the top

and it works the same way click the one

that you want let's say this is a

planning meeting

it puts this here up at the top and

we'll call this a test meeting

and we'll have it be at 8 am once i save

this

you can see that that calendar item is

the color of the category

let's open that back up and see what it

looks like if we add multiple categories

we'll put clients on there as well again

save and close

and it puts the most recently added

category

in the month view let's see if we change

this to a different view

let's say just the week

what that looks like here you can see a

little bit cleaner

that it has the most recent category but

then it has a tiny little icon that

indicates that it's

also another category in the contacts or

people area

in outlook this all works the same way

when you have a new contact

you can go to categorize it may be small

or if it's

full size you can see it looks just like

normal

and you can categorize this as a client

and

with this one it goes all the way across

with the color if you have multiple

categories

it will break it up and show it in

blocks

when you save the contact what you see

will depend on your view

contacts has multiple different views so

here i have a list and you can see it

has the categories just like the email

but if your view is different let's say

it looks like

this or it looks like the business cards

you may not have those categories in

there so you can play around with the

views and get it the way you want if you

need to see those categories

to change and add categories it works

just the same

as it did in email and this is true for

the calendar as well

you can always go in here and unchoose

something that shouldn't be there and

then you can add other things that

should be

lastly we'll look at how to completely

delete a category

you'll go back to where we were at the

beginning where you click up here

and you go to all categories and here is

where you can choose one

and choose the delete it will ask you

once more if you would like to

and it says that deleting this category

removes it from the list but does not

affect previously categorized items

so yes i will remove that

and this category has been assigned to

something

that's why it says not in master

category list

so if i click ok and i go back up here

it does not give it as an option in my

list

but if i go to all categories i can see

it because it is assigned to something

there are a couple other neat things

built in with categories the first

is the quick click and so if we click

here

and go to set quick click that is if you

wanted to

just quickly click on an email and it

would automatically choose

a category so i'm going to set that

to be clients and i'm going to click ok

and that'll save it

and you see nothing changes here because

i haven't done it yet but if i go to the

categories and you see this

little tiny icon if i click there

you can see it chooses clients because

that's the quick click that i chose

in the reading pane view in order to use

the quick click

you need to make this area showing all

the emails

big enough to be able to see the

category column

you can see here there's no option that

little tiny

box does not pop up anywhere when i have

it shrunk like this

so if you grab this open it up to the

point where

categories has its own column right here

now you can do the quick click because

you've got this little

tiny box that shows up and i can click

on that

to assign the other great thing built-in

with categories and

usually the reason you want to use

categories is to sort your email

to do that you can click this section

right here that says by date

and you can instead change that to

categories

now you can see it has the ones with no

category then my clients category

and my microsoft category and it's doing

those it's doing the categories in

alphabetical order

another way you may eventually want to

use categories

is paired with the outlook rules now we

have another video that i will put the

link to about outlook

rules in there i don't say anything

about categories but it will teach you

how to use the rules and you can apply

categories instead of folders so for

instance

if an email comes in from a specific

person and you will

always have that categorized as a client

or as a certain department you can set

up a rule

that outlook will categorize those items

as they come

in so that you don't constantly have to

do it yourself

have you had a light bulb moment from

this training if so please let me know

in the comments below

and if you have a question you can put

that in the comments as well and i'll

get back to you soon as possible

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thanks for joining me and i'll see you

next time