6 Best Outlook Hacks You Need to Know in 2025
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Outlook’s Calendar Reminders feature helps users keep their calendars in order so they don’t miss any crucial appointments or diagnose Office activation conflicts meetings. This is a simple feature that is perfect for any professional who is constantly in and out of meetings every day. If possible, keep your personal and business tasks in one place. Keeping one list reduces the number of places that you need to look for what needs to be done.

Companies that use Outlook also sync Outlook or GAL contacts to employees’ smartphones.There a tons of postings listing tons of errors, but Microsoft didn't fix any of them and will release it anyways.Use your organization’s solution in place of AutoArchive, and as always, follow your corporate policy.But if a message takes longer than two minutes to deal with, defer it.Each additional person you invite to a meeting adds to the complexity of the meeting, making it harder to control.Make sure to respond to the Contact Group after the issue is resolved with the resolution.This guide represents our advice on how to get the most out of Outlook.

Delete it

Your calendar should be treated as your real plan for your time — if you have scheduled it, then that is what you are committed to doing at that time. After you finish processing your messages, you should have a clean Inbox and can switch your focus to your calendar and tasks. If you find that you are repeatedly applying the same categories and flags, create a new Quick Step that flags, categorizes, and files.

Which Contact Groups should go to a folder instead of my Inbox?

If you aren’t actively using tasks or flags for any purpose, select all of the items, right-click and then select Delete. This action will delete old tasks and remove the flag from flagged messages and send/receive error 0x800CCC0E fix contacts without deleting the items. Reducing the number of places where you read messages doesn’t mean that you should mix your work and personal messages. A best practice is to use separate mail accounts for work and personal communications. You should, however, reduce the number of email addresses that you have to deal with. Fortunately, with Outlook, you can view multiple accounts simultaneously.

Daily review: Managing your time and tasks

Limiting the time you spend reading messages to once in the morning and once at the end of the day could significantly improve your productivity. The Quick Steps feature lets users automate repetitive email tasks with a single click. For instance, if you frequently move messages to a specific folder, you can set up a quick step to move them faster with one click. Rules allow you to move, flag, and respond to email messages automatically. For example, you can create rules that change the importance level of messages as they arrive, automatically move them to other folders, or delete them based on certain criteria.

When to create a Contact Group in Outlook

Sometimes you receive a message that is really meant for someone else to deal with. In these cases, reply and include the person you're delegating the message to on the To line. If you find you're doing this often, consider creating a Quick Step that replies and adds the delegated person to the To line. If you need it as reference (even if you have decided to defer it), move it into your reference folder. The goal is to reduce the number of times you touch each message. Once you set up your system, you are ready to begin managing incoming messages.

The second file system was contained in the old and dreaded "4-Drawer File Cabinets". (I still cringe at the memory of those heavy, metal drawers slamming shut.) Well, these have essentially become the Inbox folder system which automatically alphabetizes the folders. These are your active customers, the most urgent vendors, you name it. So we don’t file them into the A-Z folder system; instead, we keep them handy in the "Favorites" folder at the tip-top of the Outlook Navigation repair corrupted OST in Outlook Pane. To apply the "Work Less" theory, have Outlook automatically file an email. Then you can read them all at one time without distraction.

View the calendar and inbox side by side

For example, many messages can be responded to in two minutes or less. But if a message takes longer than two minutes to deal with, defer it. To get a sense of what two minutes feels like, try timing yourself. If you never want to receive another message as part of this conversation, ignore it.

What if I have retention policies or an Exchange Server Online Archive?

In addition to your work email account (Exchange Server), you can add other accounts such as Outlook.com or Gmail to the same profile in Outlook. As you go through your task list and your calendar, do similar tasks together. For example, if you have only a few minutes, make all of your phone calls (if you have just a few). Tackle energy-intensive tasks (for some, that might be responding to messages) when you have more energy. Deal with your low-energy tasks, such as reading status messages, later in the day or whenever your energy is lower. By "bulk processing" your tasks, you will make progress on all of your projects simultaneously.