Tips and Tricks

Note: This is the first post from Productivity Guru Alex Mozes. Alex is the creator of our Microsoft Office Maximized classes, which help you get right to the most efficient way of doing things.

You probably use folders to organize your e-mail, right? You’ve got a folder for all the messages relating to that big project, and maybe a folder for all the messages from your boss, and maybe another 30 folders you used for once, for something, but now it just sits there mocking you. Folders are great, don’t get me wrong. They are a critical tool to let you get information out of your inbox and free up space for the onslaught of new and unread messages. Ideally folders give you a place to look for all the messages of a given category, like all the messages relating to Project XYZ, which in turn helps save scrolling and searching time. The problem is a typical folder structure has 2 inherent weaknesses, both of which can be solved with the use of a great Outlook tool: Search Folders.

First of all – with a typical folder, I need to move messages manually, often with a click and drag. With dozens of folders and subfolders, this action is a chronic loss of precious seconds, adding up to minutes and hours. A search folder is in essence a saved, constantly running search. It is a place I can go to see all the current results for a set of search criteria without having to manually run the search. This means if I have a regular folder for all the messages from my boss, to which I am manually dragging messages, a search folder would already have all those messages (with “boss” in the From line). No manual move required.

The second big obstacle to regular folders is the Organizer’s Paradox. I have to choose which folder should house a message (and remember it later!). Imagine you have one folder called “Project XYZ”, and another folder called “Invoices.” What do you do when you get an Invoice for Project XYZ? Whichever folder I put the message in, it will lose its association with the messages of the other folder. Now Invoices isn’t all invoices, nor is Project XYZ all of project XYZ. And what about the sent messages on Project invoices?! If you’re thinking “it’s ok, I’ll just make a copy or forward the message to myself” forget it. IT will come after you for your mailbox size, and if you were to reply or forward one of the messages, you wouldn’t see the indication of that action on the copy. The Organizer’s Paradox is a doozie.

Search Folders solve the paradox. They are not actual locations like a typical folder. Instead, they are like a magic window, showing all the messages that meet the specific criteria, but the messages still live in their respective location or folders. This means that if you have one search folder for messages that say “Project XYZ” in the subject or body (or for ’07 users has the Project XYZ category assigned) and another search folder for messages with the word “Invoice”, then that one message is visible in both locations! In fact, when a new message arrives in your inbox meeting the criteria of multiple search folders the single e-mail will be in the inbox AND all relevant search folders. It is not making a copy, just like the search results are not copies. If you delete it from the inbox or any of the search folders, it is deleted everywhere. If you reply, it shows the reply everywhere. The search folder is your answer to the Organizer’s paradox.

Next Monday, we’ll have a step-by-step instruction on creating your first Search Folder. For more information on this and other Outlook topics, try our Outlook, Outlook 2007, and Managing Your Everyday courses. Also, both Categories and Search Folders were referenced in an earlier blog post Five Outlook Tools You Should Be Using. I wasn’t kidding!

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