Outlook 2013 Essential Set Up Tips

Hello everyone, it's a new year and time for some new Outlook tutorial videos. As you can see, this is Randy Dean, popularly known as the Email Sanity Expert, and what I want to share with you today are 3 very essential setup options for your Microsoft Outlook 2013. These options will help you to potentially be able to navigate a little bit better as well as maybe keep your focus a little bit better. So let's pop into the Outlook and take a quick peek here. Alright, so let's pop into my Microsoft Outlook and we'll go to the inbox view here real quick. And as we go into the inbox view, I want to show you a couple things here right off the bat. The first thing that I want to show you is, as you know, in Outlook 13 they've sort of changed the navigation. They used to have these 5 functions down here in the lower left-hand corner of your screen. Now they've moved them across the bottom in this large word format. If this is sort of annoying you in terms of landscape, you do have options here in these three little dots. As a matter of fact, while I'm talking about this, notice that I've got all five of these exposed. I can actually show all five of these as part of using these three little dots down here. Open up the three little dots and then go to Navigation Options. What you can do in the Navigation Options is you can change it from the maximum number of visible items. You can go down to 3 if you wanted, which will only show you Mail, Calendar, and Contacts. I'll hit OK and you can see what I mean. Or you can go, which I strongly recommend, to the full 5 and hit OK. And now you can see both your tasks and your notes. And, and in later tutorials, I'll show you why I think having tasks and notes showing is a very important thing in terms of being able to use your Outlook more effectively and more efficiently from a higher-level perspective. The other thing that you can do, which is sort of interesting, in these three little dots opening up navigation options is this. Notice this option to select Compact Navigation. Now watch what happens What happens when I select this and hit OK? Now what happens is that your tiles change to a much smaller view. Now instead of having the word, you can actually see it in more of an icon format. Here's Mail, here's Calendar, here's People, here's Tasks, here's Notes. And so if you prefer, you can consolidate that down, make it smaller so that you have more screen real estate to work with. So that's the first key thing. Second thing that I want you to take a look at is right here. In Outlook 13, by default, many times your screen does not have your top ribbons open. And notice this, that in order to see what you want, you have to click on the top tab in order to be able to see these ribbons. But notice this little pin item right here. If you come over here and use the pin item, you can click it so that that stays as a constant view. So you can come back here to Home, Send/Receive, Folder, but then when you click back down, these ribbons will stay open for you. And especially if you're using this on a full-size computer, I think that this may be a very good option for you in terms of being able to retain your navigation. So just use this little icon. But if you want more screen size, you can collapse the ribbon. Once again, just click on the ribbon and then hit Pin, and that ribbon will stay open for you on a regular basis. And now here's my final little tip for you today. How about this? Instead of opening your Outlook to your inbox, which is what most people do. They open right up into their email. Now I want you to think about what you're doing when you do that. If you open your Outlook first thing in the morning to your email, you're basically almost asking yourself to be distracted by the crisis du jour. And so what I want you to do is consider this: come up here to your File options, go down to Options, and when you go into Options, go to Advanced. And when you go into Advanced, look at this option right here: Start Outlook in this folder.. And instead of having it on your inbox, just try this simple little thing. Go into your Browse and switch it from Inbox to Calendar or possibly Tasks. See, if you open your Outlook to your calendar, then you're going to see your day. You're going to see what's already happening on your day. You're going to remind yourself of what's happening with your time that day, or possibly open it with— to your task list, which gives you the option to see what it is you're trying to get done that day. Day rather than your inbox. And if you can do that little shift just at the start of the day, you sure you can jump to your email after you look at your calendar in a couple minutes, but if you do that little shift, you're giving yourself the opportunity to potentially have a little bit more of a chance to get your focus at a higher level. Alright, so let's jump out of here. Let's pop back up and end this thing here. So I'd like to thank you for your time in attending this tutorial today. If you'd like to find out a little bit more about me, my programs, my online full-length e-learning programs, and how I can maybe help your company better train their people as well as potentially speak at your upcoming conference event or meeting, just visit my website randaldean.com.