6 Reasons Why is Outlook the BEST Email Client?

6 minute read

Firstly lets go over a few questions before we dig deeper.

What is Microsoft Outlook?
This is an program that allows you to read your emails on a computer.

Why have an application when I can access email online?
-This software will allow you to connect to various email services from your website provider, Google, Yahoo, Live.com and workplace (if permitted by the company policy).
-This saves you from logging into a website each time having to remember your password details and the website address.
-This allows you to access your email even if you lose access to the internet.

Lets explore some real life examples and how Outlook can help us.

Mailbox Management
Often in the workplace we will have access to a second or third email account. Without having to login to 3 accounts, Outlook can allow you access to each of the email accounts one after the other.



Junk mail and newsletters
We often get junk emails sent to us and as a result the time it takes to filter through these emails is additional time in our day where we didn't get as much work carried out. How do you explain that to your manager? Working extra would mean you lose your personal time. With Outlook email from unknown people will more than likely go to 2 locations:
-Junk email - tends to be emails selling you a product or service
-Inbox - Which traditionally is where your other email is.

Outlook 2016 has a new feature (focused and other).
-Focused is actual emails from people you know and where your time is needed.
-Other is where newsletters you subscribe to and emails from automatic systems will go.
As a result you will focus your time more on your team and customers.

Rules
This is an older feature but keeps on improving as Outlook is updated. This allows you to set up an automatic system where email from a particular address goes to a certain folder.

Lets say you subscribed to a club / hobby and they send emails once a week. Rather than appearing in your inbox, they go to a particular folder. You will then look at this folder at the end of the day or in the evening as it's not important during work hours. A few rules like this will help you from being distracted during the day.

Rules can also be set up to highlight emails from a certain email, company or words in the subject or the email content.

Customer Manager
Do you constantly work with multiple teams? Then this tool is for you. Microsoft added this feature in Outlook 2016 and this allows you to monitor conversations from the team in one view.

See more about this feature and it's benefit from Microsoft.



Outlook Calendar
We would like to go over some benefits.

Email to Calendar Appointment
The first with the ability to create a calendar appointment from an email. If you have an email, you can drag this (normally left click and hold) and bring this down to the calendar icon in the bottom left of Outlook. What will happen is you create an appointment from the email which includes the email content and attachments.

Search all calendar items
Did you ever want to locate an appointment but only had basic information what it was about. Using the "search calendar", you can find appointments with information from the title and subject. Outlook will list all the appointments.



Appointment colours
When you are working with a lot of appointments, wouldn't it be nice to see certain appointments in certain colours? You could do this manually by using "categories". Outlook can do this automatically with the use of "conditional formatting" (similar to Microsoft Excel).

A real life scenario is when a certain member of the team is out the office (meetings, holidays or sickness). Having this highlighted will instantly give you the information you need without spending extra minutes looking through all those appointments.



If you are using Microsoft Exchange in your business or even Office 365 for Business you could also benefit from a number of extra features. To find out more, drop us an email or call our team on 01489 290 001.

This post was brought to you by Baldeep on 12 Sep 2017.

Small businesses are often left behind by IT companies as the aim is to work with the larger businesses. Baldeep started the company knowing that IT doesn't have to be your frustration. Provide great solutions at small business budgets is helping companies in Hampshire to focus on their goals without the burden of IT overheads or downtime.

Baldeep continued developing his skillset and has multiple accreditations to his name including his degree, Microsoft Certifications, ITIL and VMware Data Center Virtualization Certification. He is always learning to move IT forward for your business.

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