Locked lesson.
About this lesson
Never let another important email become visually lost in your inbox. Use Color Coding to make it stand out in a crowded list, and search for related emails.
Lesson versions
Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:
2016, 2019/365.
Quick reference
Search for and Color Code Emails
Quickly find or color code specific emails in order to get your work done faster.
When to use
Visually scanning a long inbox can be frustrating. Use these tools make important emails stand out (color coding) or find emails quickly (search box).
Instructions
1. Above your inbox is a Search area
2. Enter the text or name to find and the computer does the rest of the work.
3. A second search feature is on the Right Mouse button while on a particular email:
Color Code Emails
- Click the
ribbon and Locate the View Settings button:
- Select “Conditional Formatting”
- Click “Add”, name the Rule and choose your font style and click OK:
- Click “Condition” or none of this will work!
Type your preferences and click OK to finish the process:
The results should immediately appear in your inbox: 
- 00:05 Hello, in this video I wanna show you how to quickly find email messages,
- 00:08 there's a couple different ways.
- 00:10 So you're looking at my Inbox, and
- 00:12 right up here above the Inbox over here is Search Current Mailbox.
- 00:17 Now mailbox means your entire mailbox under your email name,
- 00:21 every single folder in the mailbox.
- 00:24 Now right over here we have an option instead of Current Mailbox we can
- 00:27 change it to Current Folder.
- 00:28 But let me show you what happens.
- 00:30 I'm gonna go ahead and click here and I'm gonna search the word test.
- 00:33 And notice it is looking through all my entire current mailbox.
- 00:37 Doesn't matter where that folder or
- 00:39 where that email is, in what folder over on the left.
- 00:42 It found it.
- 00:43 I'm gonna change that, from mailbox to Current Folder.
- 00:47 And now it only found a couple with the word test in it.
- 00:50 So I just wanna show you the difference, when you're looking for things.
- 00:53 If it's taking too long, make sure you've only got Current Folder marked here,
- 00:57 not Current Mailbox.
- 00:58 Now there's another way,
- 01:00 I can do a right-click on any one of these emails, and I can look at the list and one
- 01:05 of them says Find Related > Messages in this Conversation or Messages from Sender.
- 01:10 I often use Find Related > Messages in this Conversation
- 01:14 to pull them all together.
- 01:15 Some might be in my Sent files, some might be in my Inbox, some might be in separate
- 01:19 folders, it kind of nice just to do a right click and find emails that way.
- 01:25 All right I'll go ahead and close this.
- 01:26 The last way to find an email quickly is to actually color code it before it even,
- 01:32 or as it comes into your Inbox.
- 01:34 Now color coding is up on the View ribbon.
- 01:36 So I'm gonna go ahead and
- 01:37 click on View, I'm gonna come over here to this option that says View Settings.
- 01:41 When I click View Settings, we have all these advanced items in here but
- 01:45 one of them is Conditional Formatting right here.
- 01:48 When I click Conditional Formatting I'm going to go ahead and
- 01:52 create a new rule to color code.
- 01:53 So I am gonna go ahead and add this and I am naming the rule.
- 01:56 I am not giving it a condition.
- 01:57 I am simply naming it Test.
- 02:01 What color do I want the font to change?
- 02:03 So when I receive an email I want it to go bold,
- 02:07 I want it to go a little larger, and I want the font to be green.
- 02:12 So here's a sample of what the font color will look like when I get an email from my
- 02:16 boss, or an email about this topic.
- 02:19 And I'll go ahead and hit OK.
- 02:20 But now you've got to set up the condition.
- 02:22 If you don't set up the condition, nothing happens.
- 02:25 So I'm gonna go ahead and click the Condition, and
- 02:29 I'm going to tell it that anything in the subject field that is the word test.
- 02:34 It will come in screen or maybe anything from my boss.
- 02:38 I will put my boss's email on this line.
- 02:42 I will go ahead and hit OK and OK and OK and look at that.
- 02:46 This email has the word test in it.
- 02:48 How great is that?
- 02:50 So now you'll never miss an email from your boss.
- 02:53 Cuz the black and white inbox gets pretty busy but
- 02:56 all of a sudden a big green email stands out and it happens to be from your boss.
- 03:01 This is how you never miss an email.
- 03:03 All right, I hope that helps you.
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