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Search for and Color Code emails

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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.

Exercise files

Download this lesson’s exercise file.

Search for and Color Code emails.docx
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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

  • Above your inbox is a Search area.


                                                                                

  • Enter the text or name to find and the computer does the rest of the work.
  • A second search feature is on the Right Mouse button while on a particular email.

Color Code Emails

  • Click the View 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.

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  • 00:05 All right, we're going to continue to stay organized by quickly finding emails two
  • 00:09 different ways, using the search box or color coding them so they stand out.
  • 00:13 First of all, let's take a look at the search box.
  • 00:15 Right above the inbox resides Search Current Mailbox with the magnifying glass,
  • 00:20 and then a little drop down over here.
  • 00:21 Now notice, I'm about to click into this box.
  • 00:24 When I click, you're going to see a brand new ribbon, click, here we go.
  • 00:27 Now I have all my search tools here, I can continue to work on this little line or
  • 00:32 I can come up here and work over here.
  • 00:34 So, do I want to search my Current Mailbox or All Mailboxes.
  • 00:37 Well, the mailbox is basically, that email account and the Inbox, Deleted,
  • 00:42 Sent, Sub Folders of that email account.
  • 00:45 Generally, you only have one,
  • 00:47 you might have multiple email accounts, they are all called mailboxes.
  • 00:51 All right so, when I'm clicking in search, let me go back to my inbox.
  • 00:55 Click into my search again.
  • 00:56 I want to click and find anything from Microsoft in this entire mailbox.
  • 01:03 It just search through all my sub folders and everything.
  • 01:05 Well, it went fast because this is a small mailbox but
  • 01:08 I have one mailbox that has about 80 different folders in it.
  • 01:11 It takes time to search through that.
  • 01:13 I don't like to waste time so I'm would hit, Current Folder which means just
  • 01:17 the current one I'm on, which happens to be my inbox.
  • 01:20 And now click Microsoft and there it is, there's all my folders.
  • 01:23 Take a look on the bottom left,
  • 01:25 it actually gives you a count of how many it found, at this point 175.
  • 01:29 All right, I can do those same settings over here to subfolders or
  • 01:34 just chose my main folder, it's up to you how you do this.
  • 01:37 Now, I could hit the Close Search button on my search ribbon or
  • 01:41 I can just click outside of it.
  • 01:44 Actually I can hit this x, there we go and that will close the ribbon and everything.
  • 01:49 All right, let's do this another way.
  • 01:51 I want the email from a certain person or
  • 01:53 a certain topic to stand out when it arrives.
  • 01:57 So that is found under the View ribbon, and
  • 02:00 on the view ribbon we have an item that says View Settings.
  • 02:03 When I click View Settings, we have a nice long list but
  • 02:05 the one I want you to focus on is right down here called Conditional Formatting.
  • 02:09 We're going to set up a condition so
  • 02:12 they light up when they land in my inbox, click that.
  • 02:15 All right, we first start by adding, we're going to add a brand new rule for
  • 02:20 creating a condition rule.
  • 02:22 Click Add, we're going to name the rule, I'm going to name this Microsoft,
  • 02:26 this has nothing to do with the condition, it's just the name I'm giving this rule.
  • 02:31 Now, I'm going to set up the font style, so for font,
  • 02:34 I would like anything from Microsoft to come in with this font to be bold,
  • 02:39 to be larger, and to be a different color.
  • 02:42 I'm going to go with a bright green.
  • 02:44 So anything with the word Microsoft on the subject is going to come in.
  • 02:49 Now, I haven't told it that yet, I'm just telling the color.
  • 02:52 Hit OK, now you have one last step, if you don't hit Condition, this won't work.
  • 02:57 You've got to hit Condition, so I'll go ahead and
  • 03:00 click Condition, and this is where I tell it.
  • 03:02 In the message, search for the word, and I'll type Microsoft in the subject field.
  • 03:08 Notice these drop down arrows, you've got to hit these drop down arrows and
  • 03:11 read them to give you more ideas of how you can search for things.
  • 03:15 Maybe your boss, maybe you don't want to miss an email from your boss,
  • 03:17 you put your boss's email address here.
  • 03:20 Maybe you've sent something to a certain person.
  • 03:23 Notice your background, we have more tabs in the back,
  • 03:26 at this point I'm not going to take the time to review these, but
  • 03:29 it might help you in the future just to know look there.
  • 03:31 All right, so at this point, anything with the word Microsoft in the subject field,
  • 03:35 hit OK, is going to turn into this color and font style, hit OK.
  • 03:41 Okay, one more time, and
  • 03:43 now I'm just going to scroll through my inbox to see if I have any green emails.
  • 03:48 My goodness, there's one right there with the word Microsoft and the subject.
  • 03:52 And here's another one.
  • 03:54 Now honestly, if this was a message from your boss, is that going to stand out?
  • 03:58 Absolutely, we've all lost emails because they blend into the black and white.
  • 04:02 Well, if you got email from your boss coming in this bright red,
  • 04:05 you're not going to miss it.
  • 04:06 I would absolutely take the time to set up your conditional
  • 04:11 formatting on the View settings.

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