📎 This article includes 1 downloadable practice file ↓
Advertisement
Folders answer “where is it?”; categories and flags answer “what do I need to do?”. Use few of each.
| Category | Colour | Means |
|---|---|---|
| Do today | Red | Needs my action today |
| Waiting | Yellow | I asked; waiting for a reply |
| FYI | Blue | Read when free |
| Finance | Green | Invoices, payments |
| Delegated | Purple | Passed on; follow up |
Flags with dates
Right-click the flag: Today, Tomorrow, This Week, Custom. Flagged mail appears in the To Do bar and Microsoft To Do, sorted by date: your task list without copying anything.
Quick Steps (classic Outlook)
Home > Quick Steps > New: “Waiting”: category Waiting + flag This Week + move to Archive. One click, three actions.
The routine
- Daily: process new mail once or twice: do (under 2 minutes), delegate, flag with a date, or archive.
- Weekly: review Waiting and Delegated, clear old flags.
💡 Archive (Backspace in new Outlook, or the Archive button) instead of creating dozens of folders. Search (lesson 2) finds anything.
Practice
Set up the five categories and one Quick Step from the plan.
📎 Practice files for this article
- 📗Category planFive categories, colours, meanings and actions.⬇ XLSX · 5 KB
Free to use for learning. Files with macros (.bas) are plain text — import them with Alt+F11 → File → Import File, and always test on a copy.
Advertisement
✨ Ask AI about this article
Stuck on a step? Ask a question and the AI answers using this article.
Free · AI can be wrong