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.
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.
- 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.
Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.