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3.08, Folders and Search Folders - Exercise.docx
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Quick reference

Folders and Search Folders

Folders can be used to store related emails, but Search Folders are set up to dynamically collect related emails under certain criteria.

When to use

To help you stay organized, use both Folders and Search Folders, especially when you want to return to these messages again in the future.

Instructions

Create Your Own Mail Folder

Subfolders are ideal to provide a convenient storage area for related emails.

  1. Right-click on your Inbox and choose "New folder..."
  2. Name the folder
  3. Click and drag any messages you want into this folder for access at a later time

Search Folders

Search Folders act like Filters. Use these steps to create one to collect mail with Follow Up flags.

  1. On Folder Pane, right-click Search Folders
  2. Choose “New Search Folder...”
  3. Choose “Mail Flagged for Follow up”
  4. Optional: Click and Drag the folder to the “Favorites” Group at the top of the Folder Pane for easy access.

Use the same process to set up Search Folders of your own.

Office File Systems

  1. Active Files: Current and important clients, customers, vendors, or projects. Handy and within easy reach or stored in the paper file drawer closest to your work area. When the urgency is over, they cycle into the A-Z files below.
  2. A-Z Retention Files: The 4-Drawer-File-Cabinet. Purged and stored – archived – at the end of the year.
  3. Perennial Files: never purged, never mixed into A-Z files, usually items such as corporate records, contracts, or anything that needs to be available occasionally for important info.

In Outlook, these file systems translate to:

  1. Favorites (current Active working files)
  2. Inbox (A-Z files)
  3. Archives (Perennial Files, never purged, held here for safekeeping)
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  • 00:04 Let's take our prioritizing and organization up a level and
  • 00:07 talk about folders and search folders.
  • 00:09 We'll create those for the flags and the categories,
  • 00:13 and then we'll design some new folders as well.
  • 00:16 There's three types of office file systems, the active files would relate to
  • 00:21 the favorite folders on the left-hand side folder pane.
  • 00:24 And we will be creating folders and landing them in our favorites as they act
  • 00:27 as the ones we want in front of us all the time.
  • 00:30 We have the A to Z retention files,
  • 00:32 those are your ABC files under your inbox that we keep all throughout the year, and
  • 00:37 then we purge those into perennial file, which are in the archives down here.
  • 00:42 Only the ones we need to keep longer than a year.
  • 00:46 All right, let's go ahead and get started with this.
  • 00:49 We're going to create some search folders, first of all,
  • 00:51 to quickly view all the flagged emails.
  • 00:53 So notice I have some flagged emails here, some are checked off.
  • 00:57 So over in the folder pane on the very bottom of my list, it says,
  • 01:01 Search Folders.
  • 01:02 To create a new search folder, I simply right click.
  • 01:05 When I right click, I have a New Search Folder option.
  • 01:08 This dialog box comes up and gives me many options,
  • 01:11 one of them is mail flagged for follow up.
  • 01:14 Go ahead and click OK on that, and I have follow up emails and
  • 01:18 each of the three flagged emails that were in my inbox are now in this search folder.
  • 01:24 Now this is just a tidy place to have all my flagged emails show up so
  • 01:27 I don't have to scroll through my inbox to find them.
  • 01:30 I want this to be up in my favorites folders, I want it at the top.
  • 01:34 Notice it says, Drag Your Favorites Folders Here.
  • 01:37 I'm literally going to click and drag it up here and let go.
  • 01:41 Now it says Favorites for the first time, and
  • 01:43 there's my follow ups way at the top, I love it.
  • 01:45 Yes, I can turn these off here.
  • 01:47 They will vanish from the screen.
  • 01:49 They'll still be in my inbox, but they'll have a nice little check mark.
  • 01:54 Okay, let's create search folders for our categories.
  • 01:57 Coming right back down to the Search Folders, right click, New Search Folder.
  • 02:02 This time, looking for categorized mail.
  • 02:05 And notice at the bottom, we have to choose which categories.
  • 02:08 I want to make a folder for my handouts.
  • 02:11 Now this will look in any folder in my inbox and
  • 02:14 pull all the marked handout emails together, hitting OK, and there they are.
  • 02:20 Now my handouts are blue, but why did it pull in the red one?
  • 02:25 Because this particular email, I had them both marked.
  • 02:28 So it didn't show up with the red category as well.
  • 02:31 That's okay, I'm all right with that.
  • 02:33 I'll go ahead and put the handouts in the Favorites, but this time,
  • 02:36 I'm not going to click and drag.
  • 02:37 I'm going to right click, Add to Favorites.
  • 02:39 So now you can see they're right up there and handy, right at the top of my list.
  • 02:45 Let's create a brand new folder in the inbox.
  • 02:47 So I'm going to right click on the Inbox, choose New Folder.
  • 02:52 It was right there beside my mouse, beautiful.
  • 02:55 We'll call this New Client.
  • 02:57 Now the New Client automatically alphabetize into the list, but
  • 03:00 what if I add 100 folders here?
  • 03:01 It's going to go off my screen.
  • 03:03 So I definitely want my New Client up on my Favorites so
  • 03:07 it never drops off my screen.
  • 03:08 Right click, Add to Favorites, or click and drag it up there.
  • 03:12 At any time of course, when I'm done with the New Client,
  • 03:16 I can remove it from Favorites, right click, Remove.
  • 03:19 And then of course, to add emails into any of those folders,
  • 03:24 we simply click and drag and drop the emails into those folders.
  • 03:28 Whereas with the search folders, activating categories and flags
  • 03:32 automatically landed them into the search folders, which are basically filters.
  • 03:37 Okay, our next lesson, we're taking it up another step with rules and alerts.

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