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.
Exercise files
Download this lesson’s exercise file.
Search for and Color Code emails.docx376.6 KB
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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