- A weblog by InetSolution
Here's A Quick Way to Keep Important Emails from Falling Through the Cracks
By Jason Sherrill
Posted on Aug 13, 2007
Roughly 40 to 60 legitimate emails establish residency in my inbox every business day. About 25% of them require me to perform some type of follow up action, like replying or completing a task. Combine those emails with the 10 to 30 phone calls I receive, plus my own prioritized To Do list that I create each day, and it would be easy for a few emails that require action to slip through the cracks. But Outlook 2003 offers a handy two-click method to easily track these emails so they don't end up in inbox oblivion.
The Follow Up flag is a little titan of inbox organization hidden in the right-click context menu. Your first step to tracking your "requires action" emails is to flag it. There are two easy ways to do it:
1) In your inbox list view, you can right click on a message line, click Follow Up and then choose Red Flag (or Blue or whatever you like).
2) If you're viewing the message in its own window, click the Actions menu at the top of your screen, then Follow Up and then choose Red Flag.
Using Search Folders to Track Flagged Messages
You've flagged your messages, so now you need a method to easily find them. I use the Outlook Search Folders function because (a) it's easy and (b) it already has a built-in For Follow Up filter. To see all of your messages that are flagged for follow up, first make sure that your Navigation Pane is visible (press Alt + F1 to toggle the Navigation Pane visibility). Your Search Folders live near the bottom of the Navigation Pane, so just click the + sign in front of the Search Folders menu option to expand it to show your For Follow Up search folder.
Now in your message list you'll see all of the messages you've flagged for follow up.
Messages that I've flagged for follow up
When you've completed your follow up action, right click on the message again and select Follow Up > Flag Complete. Outlook will now automatically remove the message from your search folders (this does not delete the message from your inbox, however).
