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10 features of Outlook that most people don’t know.

features of Outlook

In your daily professional life, Microsoft Outlook is a basic need in terms of communication.  As we do not have get any training in Microsoft Outlook, it is very normal that all features of Outlook are not known to us. We have to learn through the internet by searching. Today I will let you know ten fantastic features of Outlook that most people don’t know.

If you are familiar with Microsoft Outlook, there are plenty of features, but I will discuss only those special features that most people don’t use.

  • Recall an email.
  • Schedule a Meeting.
  • Create Contacts Group.
  • Create Rules.
  • Set the importance of an email.
  • Add Signature.
  • Add Multiple accounts.
  • Task Management.
  • Export Email Contacts.
  • Backup Outlook emails.

1. Recall an email

Sometimes it may happen that after sending an email, we realize that an attachment is missing or adding a cc to a person is missing. What can we do then? Microsoft Outlook has a fantastic feature to avoid this type of incident. This option is called email recalling.

Recall an email

How will you find this feature?

Go to Sent item. Select the email you want to recall and double-click to open it in a window. Find the Actions button, click there, and you will find the Recall this message option.

2. Schedule a Meeting

Another necessary tool of Microsoft Outlook is scheduling a meeting. You can call/invite other people for a meeting via the outlook meeting tool. In a meeting email message, you can mention meeting time, location, attendees, etc. It is not only a meeting schedule tool but sets the alarm to the recipient’s outlook that will alert before meeting time. Recipients should accept/reschedule it once they receive the request.

meeting schedule

How will you find this feature?

Go to the Home menu and click New Items. A drop-down menu will appear. You can schedule a meeting from there. Just write down the date, time, and attendee’s email address and send it. You can also set meeting importance, local time, etc. to make your meeting email message more effective.

3. Create a Contact Group

It is normal to send email messages to the same group several times daily. In that case, you have to pick every email address. That may not be a problem, but it consumes time for you. You can create a contacts group to save time and mistakes or miss a contact. Everybody like this feature like it.

How will you find this feature?

Go to the navigation menu bar and click people. Go to the Home tab, the New Contact Group, and click. A new window will open. You can add members, remove members, and edit contact group names. It was named as the distribution list previously. A newer version of Microsoft Outlook named it a contact group.Create Contacts Groups

4. Create Rules

This is a fantastic feature of Microsoft Outlook. Using this tool, you can automatically store any specific email message in a specific folder when it arrives. This feature will easily help you to find any specific email message when your inbox is full of thousands of emails. You can make a project-wise folder to avoid mess when handling more than one project.

How will you find this feature?

rules and alerts

Go to the File menu> Info> Rules and Alerts to manage Rules and Alerts. You can create new rules, and change, copy, and delete any rules from here. The exciting thing is that you can create rules for any specific word in the subject line and any word in the body of an incoming email message.

5. Set the importance of an email.

You can set the importance of your email message while writing. It is a power tool, you can say. The recipient of your email also can see it in his inbox. So he can understand how much important the message is. If your email is very important for you or the recipients, please mark it as high importance; if it is low, then mark it as low.

high importance

How will you find this feature?

When you are in a new email message, check it in the Message menu shown in the image above. Click to mark your message as high or low importance. This feature makes your email more responsive to the recipient.

6. Add Signature

Adding a signature to your email message is a must-do. But you should not copy and paste your signature every time you write a new email message to someone. Outlook’s exciting feature is to create a smart signature for you. Why don’t you use this feature?

How will you find this feature?

Go to a New mail message> Message menu; you will find a signature option like the image below. By clicking Signature, a drop-down menu will appear. Select a New signature to create your signature. You can also create a signature with images, text, and hyperlinks. You can create different signatures for different types of recipients. For replying to emails you can create a short signature.

create a signature

7. Add Multiple accounts

You can create multiple inboxes in your Outlook application using multiple email addresses. It will help you avoid the hassle of logging in to every email server. If you have to check and respond to several email accounts, just add all accounts in your same Outlook application. It will make your daily life easier.

How will you find this feature?

Go to the File menu> Info > Add Account to add multiple accounts to your Outlook application. You will find all your inboxes when you go to the Navigation panel> Mail.

add account

Please remember that you have to select an account while sending every email from Outlook. You can set the default email address for sending an email message. Please check the below screenshot.

add account 2

8. Task Management

This is also a powerful tool of Microsoft Outlook. It makes a busy day to planned one. You can use a calendar and to-do list for this feature. You can make daily, weekly, or monthly task schedules with a mouse click. You can share your schedule with another person and assign any person for a specific task. It makes your professional life more effective and increases your efficiency a lot.

How will you find this feature?

You can find this feature in the Navigation bar of Outlook. When you add a new task, it will be added to the To-Do list under my tasks. See the below image for the screenshots.

My tasks

9. Export Email Contacts

This is also a power tool of Microsoft Outlook. To keep a backup of your contacts, you must export your contact folder to CSV, VCF format. CSV is a common file format is accepted by all email clients or webmail services. So, if you need to transfer all your contacts to another email client or share them with a new colleague, you can just export them and send them to him. He can import it to his outlook application using this CSV file.

How will you find this feature?

Go to the File menu> Open & Export> Import/Export to export your contacts to a CSV file format. I told you this feature as a power tool because it helps you a lot. You can ask your colleague to export and share all your contacts when you are a new company employee.

export your contacts

10. Backup Outlook emails

For the safety of your email messages, to change your device, or for any other reason, you need to create a backup of your email folder. Outlook has this fantastic feature for you. It is necessary to create a backup file every month. Some people just take screenshots of an email to create a backup of an email. What a stupid idea! You can use this tool to create a backup of your emails.

How will you find this feature?

Go to the File menu> Open & Export> Import/Export to create a backup file for your inboxes in a PST file format. This file can be opened further with the outlook application. You can set a temporary password while creating a backup. You can store it on your computer hard drive or office server computer or in a cloud. If you lose your device or change to a new one, this backup file will help you feel like your previous Outlook application.

export your contacts

I hope this content will make you find some special features of Outlook that you did not know before. Every day, Outlook is updating, and new features are available; to learn and know about outlook features, you are requested to visit our website frequently.

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