How to Use Outlook Categories
Summary
TLDRIn 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
📧 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.
🎨 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.
📅 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.
🔍 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.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Outlook
💡Categories
💡Tags
💡Filter
💡Calendar
💡Contacts
💡Gmail
💡Microsoft 365
💡Exchange Server
💡Categorize
💡Quick Click
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
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
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
you can also give the video a thumbs up
or you can share it with someone you
think could benefit from the information
and be sure to subscribe by clicking the
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time a new video is posted
thanks for joining me and i'll see you
next time
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