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About this lesson
Contact Categories allows you to filter by color and control how you group the people you know.
Exercise files
Download this lesson’s exercise file.
5.05, Contact Categories - Exercise.docx67.1 KB
Quick reference
Contact Categories
Keep your contacts organized by using category colors rather than folders and groups.
When to use
On most (but not all) smartphones, only the main Outlook contacts folder is synced to your phone. A way to keep your contacts in one folder - but still grouped - is by applying categories to the contact files.
Instructions
Name your categories
- Click Home ribbon.
- Choose Categorize.
- Choose All Categories.
- Click Rename.
Note: This is the same Category list used for email and calendar categories.
Apply the categories
- Select a contact, click Categorize and choose a topic or color.
View the categories
It may help to watch the category groups build as you apply the color.
- Choose the List view, then the Home ribbon.
- Click Current View.
- Choose List.
Customize the list view
- To change the header columns in the list view, click the View ribbon.
- Click Add Columns.
- Choose from the available columns on the left, add them to the right, and reorganize with the Move Up/Move Down buttons.
- 00:05 We're going to set up categories and assign them to our contacts because it's
- 00:09 just another level of organization or prioritizing of your contacts.
- 00:14 First of all, let's take a look at our categories.
- 00:17 On the Home ribbon, I'm in my contacts.
- 00:19 Far right-hand side, we have a group that says Categorize.
- 00:22 This is the same category color system that we used in our calendar.
- 00:26 So you'll notice the same names.
- 00:28 At the bottom we can look at all categories and we can also set up our
- 00:32 Quick Click, which is the default color that applies on a single click.
- 00:36 I'll click on All Categories.
- 00:38 Now in here, we can click any one of these.
- 00:40 We can create a brand new one, we can rename the one that is selected,
- 00:44 delete the one that is selected, or change the color of the one that is selected.
- 00:48 Notice you do have 25 colors, but there is unlimited category names.
- 00:53 All right, I'm fine with the colors I have.
- 00:55 I'll hit Cancel on this.
- 00:57 Now let's apply some colors.
- 00:58 To my A Team group, they're pretty important, so I'm going to color them red.
- 01:03 So I'm going to right-click > Categorize, and Red.
- 01:08 Notice the color didn't show up.
- 01:10 This is concerning to me.
- 01:11 I want to make sure it worked.
- 01:12 A couple ways to do this, the fastest way is just double-click the thing.
- 01:17 Double-click, opens it up, and they're in red and green.
- 01:21 Notice Categorize up here.
- 01:23 The two they're in, the red and the green, are shaded gray.
- 01:27 If you want to turn one of those off, turn it off.
- 01:29 You can have a contact in as many categories as you want.
- 01:33 I'll hit Save & Close.
- 01:35 All right, now I would like to see the color on my screen.
- 01:39 That's in the Current View section.
- 01:40 Notice I have a gallery here, so when I hit that drop down arrow,
- 01:44 gallery shows up.
- 01:45 When I look at them on the People list, no color shows up.
- 01:50 When I choose Business Card, it just shows business card view, no colors show up.
- 01:54 The next option is just Card, no colors.
- 01:57 How about phone list?
- 01:59 Okay, take a look on the right-hand side.
- 02:01 This is the first time colors have shown up, and I like this view.
- 02:05 That's okay.
- 02:06 Now my last one is List.
- 02:08 This view provides expand, collapse arrows.
- 02:12 Now my categories, I already moved.
- 02:14 It's a simple click and a drag to move this thing.
- 02:16 I can move it over to the far right-hand side or
- 02:19 move it back over to the left-hand side, all of these headings can be reorganized.
- 02:24 So at this point, because I clicked on Categories,
- 02:27 they organized by categories, they separated into groups of categories.
- 02:32 If I want to sort by full name,
- 02:33 now I can see which ones have multiple colors on them.
- 02:36 But when I sort these by categories, there's one more thing that can happen.
- 02:39 Click on Categories.
- 02:41 Notice right down here I have quite a few in the purple category.
- 02:44 I'm going to click on the category name.
- 02:47 Take a look at my Home ribbon.
- 02:48 There's an Email button right here.
- 02:50 I can click the email,
- 02:51 and it's telling me whatever I do next is going to apply to everyone in that group.
- 02:55 Okay, I didn't have all these people in a contact group, but
- 02:59 I had them in that category.
- 03:01 Okay, that's fine with me, and I could send the email.
- 03:04 I'll go ahead and close this.
- 03:06 Notice I can do the same thing and
- 03:07 schedule a meeting with everyone in that color group.
- 03:10 If I want to apply a color, I can just click it once, and by default,
- 03:14 that landed me down here in the handouts.
- 03:18 What if I want to apply another color to it?
- 03:20 Simply right-click, choose another color.
- 03:23 See, it's separating them out into separate areas.
- 03:27 So that's why I kind of like to just click the full name so I can see how many color
- 03:32 categories they are in and who's not in one that needs to be in one.
- 03:37 That's the beauty of using the categories,
- 03:40 using your current view along with the categories.
- 03:43 And then when you're looking at the list and sorted by categories,
- 03:47 you have new options to email or create a meeting with the entire color category.
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