Ms Office Tune Up

When you glance at your Inbox message list, all the messages look more or less the same. You might see icons in the Flag Status, Reminder, or Attachment columns, but the message data itself is a sea of sameness. By contrast, you probably don’t think of those messages in the same way. Instead, you might have an informal classification scheme that you use to slot each message into a particular category: colleagues, your boss, receipts, projects, and so on.

Rather than keeping these categories in your head, you can configure Outlook to use the categories you want, and you can then apply those categories to your messages. These categories and their associated color icons display in the Categories field, so you can easily see which message belongs to which category, and you can even sort on the Category field to see related message together in the message list.

Outlook comes with several generic categories predefined for you: Red Category, Yellow Category, Purple Category, and so on. The default is Red Category, and you can apply it by clicking the message’s Categories field. The first time you do this, Outlook displays the Rename Category dialog box, shown in Figure 1. This isn’t too surprising because Red Category isn’t exactly a descriptive name. Type a new name in the Name text box, select a Color, and assign a Shortcut Key, if you want. (Assigning a shortcut key is what you do so that you can apply this category to the current message just by pressing that key combina­tion.) Click Yes when you are done.

Figure 1 When you click inside the Categories field for the first time, Outlook asks if you want to rename the Red Category item.

To apply other categories, you have three choices:

• Right-click the message’s Categories field
• Click the Categorize toolbar button
• Choose Actions, Categorize

With the list of categories displayed, click the category you want to apply. As with the default Red Category, the first time you select a category, Outlook displays the Rename Category dialog box so that you can customize the category.

Rather than customizing the categories one-by-one, Outlook offers the Color Categories dialog box, which enables you to customize existing categories, create new categories, and delete categories you don’t use. Here are the steps to follow:

1. Choose Actions, Categorize, All Categories. (You can also right-click the message’s Categories field or click the Categorize toolbar button and then click All Categories.) Outlook displays the Color Categories dialog box, shown in Figure 2.
2. Click the category you want to customize.
3. To change the name, click Rename, type the new name, and then press Enter.
4. Use the Color list and click the category color.
5. Use the Shortcut Key list to associate a shortcut key with the category.
6. To create a new category, click New to open the Add New Category dialog box (which is similar to the Rename Category dialog box shown earlier in Figure 1). Type a Name, choose a Color and (optionally) a Shortcut Key, and then click OK.


Figure 2 Use the Color Categories dialog box to customize your category names, colors, and shortcut keys.

7. To apply one or more categories to the current message, click to activate the check box for each category you want to apply.
8. To remove a category, select it and then click Delete.
9. When you’re done, click OK.

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