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About this lesson
Learn how to find a contact and use the People Pane to find all related activities.
Lesson versions
Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:
2016, 2019/365.
Quick reference
Search Contacts and People Pane
Learn how to find a contact and use the People Pane to find all related activities.
When to use
If you find yourself digging through folders looking for an attachment from a certain person, turn on the People Pane, click on that person’s contact file (or an email from them), and all of the meetings, attachments, and emails they have ever sent you will appear.
Instructions
People Pane to find activities with a contact:
- Click on the email Inbox view
- Click the “View” ribbon
and Click the People Pane button and select Normal:
- Observe the results while clicked onto an email, then go to the People or Contacts view:
OR 
- While the People Pane is still on, Double Click to open a Contact
Observe the bottom of the Contact window:
Search Contacts:
- When on your contact screen, above the contacts list is a Search Box
- Type a portion of a name into the box and Outlook will search for and deliver the closest match
- To clear the search, simply click the “X” in the search box:
Search People:
- When on your contact screen, above the contacts is a “Search People” Box
- Type a portion of a name into the box and Outlook will search for the closest match
- The new window will have options to email, schedule a meeting, edit the info, link multiple cards as one
- It also has a pin feature to stick this contact card to your Task Bar (in case you reference it frequently and need it to be handy.)
- 00:04 In this lesson, I'd like to tell you a couple ways to search your contacts, and
- 00:08 then one way to find all the activities that have happened with that contact.
- 00:13 First of all, I'm looking at my contacts screen.
- 00:15 On the left hand side is a Rolodex.
- 00:17 I can quickly click through the Rolodex.
- 00:20 If I have hundreds, they're gonna show up here.
- 00:22 Right above my contacts is a search contacts or control E.
- 00:25 I click there and start typing a name.
- 00:28 It's going to search my contacts for those letters, and
- 00:30 when I find that, it will pull up the contact file, and
- 00:33 now I can schedule a meeting, or an email, or to look inside the details of contact.
- 00:38 Well there's another way.
- 00:40 Right above here is a box that says, search people.
- 00:43 Now something slightly different happens on this one.
- 00:46 When I type this name, and
- 00:48 double click on the contact that it found, I get this screen entirely different.
- 00:53 In here I can schedule a meeting, I can send an email,
- 00:57 I can look at the contact details, or I can link contacts.
- 01:00 Some people have two or three different business cards in your file.
- 01:04 You can link them all together under one business card.
- 01:07 I can edit the contact details.
- 01:09 But, right up here at the top, look here, is a little tiny pushpin.
- 01:12 Now, I'm gonna click that.
- 01:14 You can't see it off to the side, but it just pinned itself to my task bar.
- 01:17 Now I can unpin it and it will remove it from my taskbar.
- 01:20 Maybe you're working with that contact a few times, or all the time,
- 01:23 you want to push it onto your taskbar.
- 01:25 I'll go ahead and close that.
- 01:27 Now I want to find all the activities that I've done with a certain person, so
- 01:31 that is under the People pane.
- 01:33 Now I am in my Contacts screen, you're never gonna find People pane here.
- 01:36 It must be turned on over in your email, so I'll click on the email.
- 01:41 I'll come up here to my view ribbon, and
- 01:43 way off to the right hand side is People pane.
- 01:46 When I hit the drop down arrow mine is turned off.
- 01:48 I'll go ahead and click Normal, and here you can see all of a sudden I'm clicked
- 01:53 on Cecilia's email, and all of a sudden underneath it lists all the emails she has
- 01:57 sent me, all the attachments, all the meetings she's been in with me.
- 02:01 If want to just view the emails, there they all are.
- 02:04 Now this isn't just about one topic, this is all the emails.
- 02:08 And now the attachments, she hasn't sent me any.
- 02:10 And how about meetings scheduled.
- 02:12 We don't have any.
- 02:13 But everything will show up right down here.
- 02:15 This is a wonderful way to quickly find if oh,
- 02:19 I know that person sent me some attachments.
- 02:21 Where are they?
- 02:22 Well, you can just click right here and see.
- 02:24 Here's all the attachments that this person has sent me.
- 02:26 There they'd show up.
- 02:27 It is fabulous.
- 02:28 Now that I have turned it on here in my email,
- 02:31 I can now see those same things in my contacts.
- 02:34 So when I click on Contacts I'll double click my own contact, and
- 02:39 the people pane is still open.
- 02:41 I can see everything.
- 02:42 Just the single mails, just the attachment, just meetings.
- 02:45 And over here, I do have a button to toggle.
- 02:48 Maybe minimize or maximize.
- 02:50 If I close that and just look at Cecilia's, the contact, or
- 02:55 the people pane is still on.
- 02:56 Again I can minimize or maximize that.
- 02:59 And it's just very nice to go ahead and go through and
- 03:03 just see the activities at a glance you've done with certain people.
- 03:07 So that is how you search your contacts.
- 03:09 Through the search people or the search contacts.
- 03:12 Or open up your people pane and
- 03:14 just view everything that has happened with that contact.
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