New Web Outlook: Setting Up/Using Categories (LABELS!) Maybe the tip to finally get a clean inbox?

Hi everybody, Randall F. Dean, email sanity expert. Um, hey, I'm continuing down the path of recreating some of the videos I've done in the past, but ones that I did at the time for classic Outlook users, but now trying to create a very similar tutorial for the people that have now moved on to new and web Outlook. And I did a very detailed video on this topic about how to set up and use your categories in new— in classic Outlook several months ago. I'll link that video link in the description because that video goes into quite a bit more detail than I'm going to go in in this one. I'm going to try to do this one pretty quickly, but if you want to really dive in and understand sort of the logic and the strategy of what I'm doing with categories, Even if you're using new and web Outlook, go watch that video and look at it for the strategy. I'll get into a little bit of the strategy in this video, but really what I want to do is show you how you can set up your categories and how you can use your categories. And listen to this closely, they work in your email, they work in your calendar, they work in your contacts. But I believe that they may be that missing piece that you've needed with your email inbox to finally get your inbox clean. So that's been one of your big annoyances. Keep watching. I'm going to show you what I mean by this. All right. So let's dive out of here and go into my new Web Outlook and look at that nice clean inbox. By the way, before we get too deep into today's video, I'd like to thank today's video sponsor, Stellar Data Recovery. Which is a perfect sponsor for this video. You'll learn a bit more about what they can do for Microsoft users a bit later in the video. So enjoy. Thanks. Now, um, I'm going to make myself a little bit smaller here so I can show this to you a little bit better. I personally think the easiest way to get to your categories, which by the way, I believe if you want them to make more sense in your head what they are and how you use them, Replace it with the word labels. They're your labels. Now, let me show you what I mean. Something sort of interesting. I think the easiest way to get to them is just when you're in any of your email folders. I'm in my inbox right here. Click on the little checkbox next to one of your emails and notice right here, categories, right? There's the button under the Home tab. But what's interesting is notice what icon they use. A label. So even Microsoft knows these are labels. Get that in your head. These are your labels. Because notice this, if I hit the drop button, notice that what it's going to do is it's probably going to show me the labels I've used most recently or, and, or most often. Um, you can create new labels by hitting new category right here. Let's say, you know, you've created a label. That you've used before, but you don't see it in your list, you can come down here to all categories and see all of the labels you've created. I've created a few labels. Um, what's interesting about that? Let's talk about that for a second. I think you might want to create a whole set of labels that are unique to you and your job. And here's the kinds of things you might want to make labels for. Your key projects, your key subprojects, your key clients, your key customers, your key activities, your key events, your key coworkers, your key vendors. Make a whole set of labels that are specific to you and your job. You can even put in a couple personal ones in there if you're doing some personal stuff in your work email. Although I would argue maybe you should be using Gmail or Apple Mail for that kind of stuff. But here's the interesting thing about this. Notice this. I've got a couple emails that are in my inbox that already have had labels added, including this one right here, Zingers. Now let's go up to the Categories button one more time, because I've got this email selected. I open up the Categories button. You'll see I have added 4 labels to one email message. Now you're probably going, why are you doing that? Real simple. Have you ever had an email that you got done what you needed to do with it? For right now. You either responded to it, replied it, forwarded it, did what you needed to do. Or if you couldn't do it now, put it on your calendar to work on it later or added it to your task list to work on it later. Which, by the way, that's my definition of done for now. You either did what you need to do or you put it on your calendar or task list so you could work on it later. By the way, that's also a video out here for new and web Outlook users, how to turn your emails into new Calendar and Task Items. Might want to watch that one too. But here's the interesting thing about this. A lot of times when you have a message that you're done for now, that's when I'd argue you want to put it away. But here's where people run into a problem. They basically say, okay, it's time to put this away, but this is related to the main project I'm working on, the subproject within the main project. One of my key clients is involved. I've got a couple vendors involved and my my coworker Jill is involved. It could go into any of those folders. What folder should I put it in? I don't know. Guess I'll just leave it in my inbox. You ever done that? And then listen to where it gets crazy. So you leave it in your inbox because you're not sure where you should put it right now. And then 2, 3, 4 days later, even though you did what you needed to do, you open it and read it again because you can't remember if you did what you needed to do. That's really close to the clinical definition of insanity, by the way. You're re-reviewing something you've already reviewed and dealt with because you can't remember if you reviewed it or not. And you're gonna end up with a bunch of clutter in your inbox too. But here's the beauty. You can add labels. You can set up labels. You can add all of those labels., and then later, if you go to find that email and it's not in the folder you thought you put it in, you can then come up to your search field. And I want to show you something here. Notice that this one has the label Zingers. I actually did that to create this video because I was pretty sure I didn't really have too much out there that would have Zingers. So That way I'm not going to be pulling up 400 emails that all have the word Zinger in it. All right. But let me show you one of the interesting things. You can go up to the search field here. You click on the search field, it's going to say current mailbox, but you can also get very specific on where you search. But if you come way over here to the right, you'll see this little thing looks a bit like a funnel. It's filters. And if I go into filters, Then I come down to keywords. I just have to know what are my labels, and I know one of my labels is zingers. So let's do a search and see what happens. And it will pull up everything that has the word zinger either in as a category or probably somewhere inside the message. So, and what's nice is I can actually see what folder this is in. This one's in the Microsoft folder, This one is still in my inbox. I can find the email. And by knowing you can find that message by doing a category search and find it pretty quickly, by the way, you don't need to leave it in your inbox. You can have confidence you can find it later. As a matter of fact, there's an argument that maybe you don't need so darn many subfolders because you've got these labels. Maybe you could have a few major subfolders for key projects, activities, events, but then have like just a generic sweep folder or done for now folder for everything else. And once you do what you needed to do with that item for now, you add your labels, put it into the sweep folder, and then you just use search when it's time to find what you need by using your categories. Not a bad system. Have much simpler file cabinet, yet still have a clean inbox, yet still be able to find stuff related to certain activities, events, projects, people pretty quickly. Not a bad option. Are you an IT manager or decision maker? Today's video is sponsored by Stellar Data Recovery and their product Stellar Converter. Stellar Converter for OST is the trusted solution for IT MVPs. It seamlessly converts all OST mailbox components to PST with 100% precision. This includes emails, attachments, contacts, calendar items, and notes. There are no file size limitations, ensuring a smooth conversion process. The software can handle inaccessible, orphaned, encrypted, or IMAP OST files, and it's compatible with Outlook 2021, 2019, 2016, and earlier versions. Additionally, it offers the convenience of migrating offline OST files to Microsoft 365 or Office 365, making it an indispensable tool for IT admins and professionals alike. You can learn more here or following the link in the description. But here's what's really interesting. Let's go back and I want to show you something else here. Let's go back and get out of the search. Let's go back to the inbox. I'm going to select the checkbox again. Notice Here, the category button. Notice when this is turned off, it's grayed out, not available. Click the checkbox, now it's available for you to work in. I can click this, I can make new categories right there. I already showed you how to see all your categories, but if I come here to manage categories, let's see what this does. Click on manage categories and it takes you into your settings Accounts, Categories. Now you could go that same path from right here. You can go into Settings, Accounts, Categories. That's the same thing. There's two different pathways to get there. One's from using the category button from right there in your inbox or any other email folder. The other option is to do this via Settings. Either way, they're specific to this email account and address. That's another important point. Your categories are specific to that account because notice this, I have a second email account in here. I could set up a whole new set of categories for that separate email account. So if you've got two different workplace emails and you're using them for different things, you could have different labels for the different email accounts, but specific for what that email account what you need it for, which is sort of cool. Um, the other thing that's sort of nice about this— notice this— you can favorite this and it'll add it to your folder pane, which I think is sort of interesting. And you know what I'd like to do? I'm going to go back down to Zingers. There it is. And I'm going to favorite this. We'll go look at my folder pane in a second to see if it's there. You can edit the name Zingers. Let's actually do an edit real quick because I want to show you something a little bit cool. Want to move it nearer to the top of your list? Add a special character like exclamation point in front of the name. Hit save. Because now, wait, where'd Zingers go? Right up to the top. That's a good little tip. You know, use special characters when you're naming for things to move to the top of your directories that you go to very frequently. Nice little micro tip right there. But Let's keep going into this because the last thing is you're not using Zingers anymore. You get rid of it. A little side note on that. These categories are specific to this account. Let's say you're using certain labels in your inbox that you're not using in your calendar. And then when you're in your calendar, if you see that as one of your options, don't delete it because you still need it in your email. These categories go across all of your Outlook functions— email, calendar, contacts, etc. And so if you're using them in one place but not the other, don't delete it when you're in the other. You're going to need that for where you're at. So these are all little micro tips on how you can basically get to your categories, set them up, create new ones, add names, change names, favorite. See what happens here. I'm going to close my categories now. Hold on a second. There we go. Close. And now let's go over and see if— oh wait, there it is. It's under Favorites. So, so now to close the thought, I want to share a little something else with you. Let's pop now real quick into my calendar. I want to go to today and I want to go to the week view and notice I've got some stuff going on here. Notice how this flight here is gray. That's because— let's click on it, open it. Notice that inside of here, when you do this, you can also categorize. And I categorize this one travel. Now let's go back and take a look. I want to show you something sort of cool about this. Let's close this. Let's go to this one right here, and I'm going to double-click, and I'm going to go up to categories. And this time I'm going to go to all categories because I'm not seeing the one that I need, and I'm going to paste page down to Timely Tips because that's my e-newsletter. Now watch what happens when I do that and then I hit close. That's how you color code your calendar. And that same capability is available in your people. You can color code and/or label your individual contacts in your people. And then the beauty of that is when you do a search using the keyword that matches your category, those people will come up. So it's a good way to help you find people too, especially if you're not great with remembering names. You can add labels, um, search by label, find a list of everybody, and then you'll be able to find the person you're looking for. So all of these are little tips on how you can utilize your categories in Nuun Web Outlook, how you get to them, how you can manage them, edit them, change them. You know, in short, let's sort of finish this thing up. I'm actually a pretty big believer that when you set up your categories, it's probably going to help you most with being able to search and find. It will thus allow you to maybe have more organized inbox because you can add labels to things that you're done with for now and be able to find them later in subfolders. But you can also use it in your calendar and in your contacts. Uh, you can have a pretty color-coded calendar. So if you want, set up your categories, set up your labels, um, start tagging things, uh, starting today and see if that might help you get things a little bit more under control and make you feel more confident in your ability to find what you need when you need it, where you put it. Okay. So with that, let's finish this one up. I'm Randy Dean, like I said, popularly known as the Email Sanity Guy. If you'd like to learn a little bit more about me, please go visit my website, randalldean.com. If you find this video helpful, consider subscribing to the channel. And/or liking the video and/or sharing the video. All of those things help. Maybe write me a comment. All these things help with videos being found a little bit more. I also do have some productivity PDF tip sheets, and this video is going to be added to a new version of that, one of my key tip sheets, which gives you links to a lot of my older YouTube videos. If you'd like to get some of those productivity PDFs, just send me an email, randy@randalldean.com, and put YouTube PDF in the subject line, and I'll even tell you That new PDF will give you an easy option to get my full ebook on Taming the Email Beast if you're interested. So go check it out. And, uh, with that, I'm gonna say we are done. Thank you for your time today.