Why not take the information in that email, turn it into a to-do list item or appointment, and get it out of your inbox? By now, you know the drill - click Create New to start a new Quick Step and choose your first Action.Īgain, you can click Add Action near the bottom of the dialog box and choose either Delete or Move to Folder to get one email closer to Inbox Zero with a single mouse click.ĭon’t limit yourself to these five Quick Steps! Think about what you do in your inbox every day to see what other multi-step processes could become one-click wonders.Quick Steps are easy-to-use one-click buttons which perform multiple actions at once. Turn emails into tasks or appointmentsĪ lot of emails are about actions you need to take (or assign), places you need to go or phone calls you need to initiate or receive. Set up those folders for your busiest cases, then create a Quick Step to mark selected emails as read and move them into that folder. Some document management systems allow you to drag-and-drop emails out of your inbox into another folder, which in turn will automatically upload and index the email according to parameters you configure. Lucky enough to have a document management system that interfaces with Outlook? Use Quick Steps to enable one-click filing. Next time you get an ECF filing, click that Quick-Step and consider it handled. Want to add a decluttering step? Click Add Action near the bottom of the dialog box and choose either Delete or Move to Folder. You can even add a Flag for the recipient to pop up a reminder in their Outlook. Add some boilerplate text (“Download and file this”) if you like. Start the process like the pre-configured emails shown above, except your first action will be to forward the email either as is or as an attachment (useful for sending several at a time). If you get a lot of electronic filing notices, particularly from court systems that don’t copy your assistant or paralegal, make a Quick Step to forward those along. If you’re not comfortable with the “delete” step, right-click on Reply & Delete and choose Edit to either remove the Delete action or modify it to Move to Folder. It works like it sounds: It starts a reply email and deletes the original from your inbox. If you’re looking to achieve Inbox Zero, one pre-installed Quick Steps comes in really handy: Reply & Delete. Just click the shortcut key you have selected once and start typing! 2. Next time you send that claims rep an email, you don’t have to look up the claim number or the cc: information. Address the email (steps 3 and 4), type in your Subject line and any standard text you need (step 5), and, if you prefer keyboard shortcuts rather than mouse clicks, choose an optional shortcut key (step 6): Just click Create New in the Quick Steps area of the Home tab, name your new Quick-Step (step 1 in the screenshot below) then choose New Email (step 2). You could dread communicating with these people, or you could set up a Quick Step that fills all this information into a brand-new, ready-to-go email. Some of them (e.g., insurance companies) require certain information in the subject line or body of every email (like a claim number), or require you to copy additional recipients. Pre-configured emailsĬommunicating with some recipients isn’t as easy as opening up a new email, popping in an email address ( careful with that AutoComplete!) and typing a message. Unless otherwise noted, all instructions and screenshots are for Microsoft Office 2010 for Windows. Here are five ways to deploy Quick Steps today to manage your email better. The pre-installed Quick Steps only hint at the feature’s time-saving potential. Quick Steps are like macros - they string together several actions and make them all accessible with one click. If you’re using one of the Ribbon versions of Microsoft Outlook, you’ve probably overlooked one feature right on the Home tab: Quick Steps.