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About this lesson
Keep your contacts organized by using Category colors.
Lesson versions
Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:
2016, 2019/365.
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.
- First choose the List view.
- Choose Home ribbon.
- Then 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.
- 00:04 All right, we're going to talk about categorizing our contacts.
- 00:09 And so, I can just click on any contact, and right up here, I have a button,
- 00:13 on my Home ribbon of my contacts, it says Categorize.
- 00:17 When I hit this drop down I can add any color I want.
- 00:19 Notice, if there's already color added to this person,
- 00:22 the little squares, there's little gray squares around that color.
- 00:26 That's the only indicator that there's color already on here.
- 00:29 So I can click another name, hit Categorize and
- 00:32 maybe they already have colors as well.
- 00:34 I thought for sure I had some that didn't have a color.
- 00:37 Okay, we'll put that color on here.
- 00:39 But notice the color isn't showing up in this view.
- 00:42 So check out this button right up here, the Change View, so
- 00:45 how about we click on People.
- 00:47 Does Bob have color show up?
- 00:48 No, how about we click on Card?
- 00:51 Does the color show up?
- 00:52 No, how about I double click that card?
- 00:54 Double click and open it, color showing up here.
- 00:57 going to go and close that card.
- 00:59 But if I change view to my phone list, okay, but it doesn't show any color there.
- 01:07 So we're going to go to List, now the reason I go to List is because I have
- 01:09 categories right here because I put it right there.
- 01:12 It started way over here on the far right hand side,
- 01:15 it was way over here at the end.
- 01:17 Well, I want these emails to be closer as well.
- 01:20 So you have total control over these headings.
- 01:22 You can click and drag, and if you move it down, see that x that means delete.
- 01:26 You can click and drag and
- 01:27 move that heading a little closer to where you want it.
- 01:30 Now I can just scroll over a little more, and I want to put,
- 01:33 let's see my emails right here, and my categories right here.
- 01:37 I'm just clicking and dragging, and moving these around, now I can sort by email.
- 01:41 I can sort by name, or I can sort by category.
- 01:45 Now let's ask a question, why would I bother to do this work?
- 01:48 Have you ever used a smartphone?
- 01:51 Possibly the answer's going to be yes.
- 01:53 Generally, I'm not going to say all smartphones, but
- 01:55 most smartphones will only sync to this one contact folder.
- 02:01 It will not sync to multiple contact folders.
- 02:05 So if you've got multiple people in all these folders,
- 02:08 you might want to start color coding your categories.
- 02:12 Because then on your phone, you can actually sort by category,
- 02:15 instead of sorting by folder, you can sort by category.
- 02:18 So this is a two-fold reason to do the all the work in your contacts with your
- 02:22 Outlook, so when you sync to your phone, you can sort still by category.
- 02:26 So you might want to create some good categories.
- 02:29 Well, let's go ahead and add Al Anderson here to a category.
- 02:33 Now, if I just single click it dropped him on to the red, okay,
- 02:36 you see down here at the bottom because my default color is red.
- 02:39 But I want to change that, how do I change it?
- 02:40 Right click, right click is always the answer to how do I?
- 02:43 So I'm going to right click on this category,
- 02:46 I'm going to add him to my Biz Category.
- 02:48 And then right click that red again and take him off the red category and
- 02:52 he's about to vanish so I'm going to uncheck the red.
- 02:54 So now he's off the red, but he's up here on the orange.
- 02:58 Okay, so let's do some more.
- 02:58 Instead of hitting the left click and
- 03:00 dropping the red on there I'm just going to right click.
- 03:02 I'm going to add a couple more to my Orange category.
- 03:06 Well, look what happens at this point.
- 03:08 I'm beginning to build up my Orange category Section,
- 03:11 I can collapse all these sections.
- 03:14 And I just want to look at my orange category and let's say I decide right now,
- 03:17 I'd like to send an email to everyone on my biz category.
- 03:20 I'm going to select the biz category title.
- 03:24 Get my eyes up on top, where it says Email and click.
- 03:28 There we go, yes, I'm saying yes, there we go.
- 03:31 One email to everyone on my biz category, kind of nice, okay?
- 03:35 It takes a little work, it takes a little work to set this up.
- 03:39 But it's well worth it,
- 03:41 when the time comes to organize these within your Outlook by category.
- 03:46 And then when you sync to your phone to organize them your phone by category,
- 03:50 kind of a nice feature.
- 03:51 Give that a try, thanks.
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