{"id":859,"date":"2008-10-13T16:26:11","date_gmt":"2008-10-13T15:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/?p=859"},"modified":"2008-10-13T16:26:11","modified_gmt":"2008-10-13T15:26:11","slug":"gtd-using-microsoft-outlook-to-colour-code-e-mails","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/?p=859","title":{"rendered":"GTD &#8211; Using Microsoft Outlook to colour-code e-mails"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I receive a lot of e-mail that is not sent directly to me.  I work for a large company with thousands of employees &#8211; at least 50% of my inbox is made up of corporate &#8220;global all&#8221; type e-mail.  Whilst it&#8217;s important to read these, I personally prefer to read&#8217;n&#8217;process the e-mail that are sent directly to me before I look at the global all items.  To do this, I make use of Microsoft Outlook&#8217;s built-in formatting options such that mail sent directly to me appears in my inbox in light blue.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s how we do this&#8230;choose the <strong>Tools<\/strong> menu followed by the <strong>Organise<\/strong> menu item:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/OutlookOrganiseMenu.jpg\" style=\"border:none\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Next, click on <strong>Using Colours<\/strong>.  I already have e-mail that is sent to me and me only appear in blue, hence the option to turn it off is available.  Assuming that you don&#8217;t have this option enabled, click on the <strong>Automatic Formatting<\/strong> button at the top right:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/OutlookOrganise.jpg\" style=\"border:none\" \/><\/p>\n<p>By default, Microsoft Outlook provides a handful of automatic formatting rules, one of them is &#8220;Mail sent directly to me&#8221;:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/OutlookAutomaticFormatting.jpg\" style=\"border:none\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Outlook will do a pretty good job working out the conditions required to make this happen.  For the sake of completeness though, click on the Condition&#8230; button to see for yourself:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/OutlookSettingMailToMe.jpg\" style=\"border:none\" \/><\/p>\n<p>As long as you have a tick beside the &#8220;Mail sent directly to me&#8221; rule, Outlook will colour-code your incoming e-mail:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/OutlookInboxColoured.jpg\" style=\"border:none\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This is yet another small and simple product feature that you may well have been aware of, however if it&#8217;s new to you, it could be of some use.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Other posts<\/strong><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/?p=856\">GTD Action\/Deferred\/WaitingFor\/Someday folders in Microsoft Outlook &#8211; Show Item Count<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/?p=853\">Making e-mail simpler and easier to handle: using Microsoft Outlook rules<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/?p=851\">Elementary GTD using Microsoft Outlook \u201cmove to folder\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Technorati Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/Microsoft+Outlook\" rel=\"tag\">Microsoft Outlook<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/Outlook\" rel=\"tag\">Outlook<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/colour\" rel=\"tag\">colour<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/colour-coding\" rel=\"tag\">colour-coding<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/GTD\" rel=\"tag\">GTD<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/Getting+Things+Done\" rel=\"tag\">Getting Things Done<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I receive a lot of e-mail that is not sent directly to me. I work for a large company with thousands of employees &#8211; at least 50% of my inbox is made up of corporate &#8220;global all&#8221; type e-mail. Whilst it&#8217;s important to read these, I personally prefer to read&#8217;n&#8217;process the e-mail that are sent &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/?p=859\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">GTD &#8211; Using Microsoft Outlook to colour-code e-mails<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[98,99,97,714,92,93],"class_list":["post-859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gtd","tag-colour","tag-colour-coding","tag-getting-things-done","tag-gtd","tag-microsoft-outlook","tag-outlook"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigmurphy.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}