For many of us, the e-mails and calendars managed by Microsoft® Office Outlook® substantially define both our working and off-duty lives. But we seldom take advantage of any but the most basic, default capabilities of Outlook to organize this critical information in a way that can make our days go a bit smoother. Outlook 2007 contains a plethora of easy-to-use tools and features that can help you get organized. One of the most useful is color coding.

 

We would be remiss if we did not acknowledge that some of our subscribers might suffer from one or more forms of color-blindness. If you are so afflicted, our colorific tips might not be especially helpful, and we apologize. Please stay tuned for the next issue of KB CommEntary, in which we will discuss organizing Outlook information by view.

 

These tips are for Outlook 2007, but most of them can also be implemented in earlier versions of Outlook.
 
And now, on with the show...
 
Outlook allows you to assign colors to e-mail notifications and calendar appointments based on categories or criteria meaningful to you. Color coding permits you to quickly scan your e-mail lists and calendar and locate particular categories or types of messages, appointments, and events based on the colors you have assigned them.
 
Did you know you can color code your e-mails so that every time you receive one from that oh-so-special person, it appears in your Inbox sporting its own unmistakable color? We recently stumbled across this spiffy feature and now have a virtual rainbow lighting up our Inbox. It's easy! While viewing your Inbox, select Tools > Organize from the menu. The Ways to Organize Inbox pane appears at the top of the window. Click Using Colors. Then click an e-mail from the lucky sender, select a color from the dropdown list, and click Apply Color. Now you can quickly scan your e-mail lists and pick out messages from that sender by color.
 
The Outlook calendar provides even more opportunities and options for using color as an organizer. Perhaps you've already learned how to change the calendar background color. That's fun in a virtual-decorating kind of way. 
 
But did you know you can color code appointments and events?Let's say you have a breakfast meeting every Monday at 8:00. Right-click an instance of that appointment and select Categorize > All Categories. You'll notice that some predefined categories and associated colors already appear. You can select and apply one of them or create a new one especially for your breakfast meeting by clicking New, giving the meeting a category name, selecting a color, and clicking OK. Every scheduled instance of your breakfast meeting now appears on your calendar in the selected color, regardless of which calendar view you choose.
 
You can apply a category/color when you create a new appointment as well. Select Categorize from the Appointment tab on the Ribbon and choose the appropriate category/color, or add a new one if necessary.
 
You can even color code your appointments based on words or phrases that appear in their titles. For example, if you put your hair appointments on your calendar, you can create an automatic formatting rule so that all appointments whose titles contain the word "hair" will appear in a particular color. Go to Edit > Automatic Formatting. Click Add, enter a name for the formatting rule (e.g., hair), and select a color. Next, click Condition and enter in the Search for the Word(s) dropdown box the word or phrase you want Outlook to search for in the appointment title (e.g., hair). Then click OK.
 
Similarly, you can color code holidays, special events such as birthdays and anniversaries, and mandatory vs. optional meetings, just to name a few.
 
Now that your calendar looks like a peacock, wouldn't it be handy to view it from different angles? We'll discuss ways to do that in the next edition of KB CommEntary.