Creating Outlook Macros and Linking them to Keys and custom buttons

To streamline my Inbox Organization process even further, I decided to see if I could automate things, by mapping buttons and shortcut keys for "move to folder and mark unread" for Action, Respond, and Waiting, and "move to folder and mark unread" for Temporary Hold and Archive.

The best tutorial was this blog article, descriptively called Outlook Keyboard Shortcuts to Move a Message to a Folder: http://www.fiftyfoureleven.com/weblog/general/outlook-email-shortcuts

You can basically follow that exact walk through with the following caveats:

• The macro he links (which, by the way, was broken for me, I had to google it: http://verychewy.com/archive/2006/04/12/outlook-macro-to-move-an-email-to-folder.aspx ) is great for just moving stuff around, however we want to mark it read (or unread), so we need to use this version: http://www.yeraze.com/article.php/outlook_macro_move_to_folder_mark_Read It is the same, except it has "objItem.UnRead = False" pasted right above "objItem.Move objFolder." Rather obviously, you need to switch this to 'true' for the folders you want inbound mail marked 'unread', and leave it 'false' for the ones you want marked read.

• SelfCert.exe, at least on this machine, is a weird piece of software: the interface of which was all question marks...as in ???????? ????????? ????????--it performs as advertised if you just follow the steps described on the Microsoft website (hit enter instead of OK after you type your name if you can't tell which ?????????? button is which), however it wasn't located where the site said it should be--I had to do a search to find it

• The instructions at http://blogs.technet.com/kclemson/archive/2003/09/25/53794.aspx for creating keyboard shortcuts is a little bit unclear for my taste--the basics are there, but I modified their technique significantly.
  

• First, pick the letters you want to use for your shortcuts. I realized I had two "A" folders, so I renamed Archive to Vault. I also choose to display them "Image and Text", and picked cute little pictograms to represent my five folders. Also, Temp Hold got renamed "hold" since I couldn't figure out how to make the two word name work in the macro.
  

• Second you can drag the new macro buttons wherever you like, not just on the standard toolbar. I put them up next to File Edit etc.
  

• Third, you can use whatever letters you want, but you need to delete the & signs from the names of the commands that originally had them. For example, if you want Hold to be "alt-h", you need to rename the Help menue from "&Help" (the current alt-h) to just "Help" . If the letter you want to use isn't displayed with an underline on the current toolbars, you're in luck...do note when looking for conflicting letters that it doesn't have to be the first letter (I'm looking at you, Find)
  

• Finally, if you open any piece of mail, you can customize it, too. That way if you're reading a message (or clicked 'ok' on the "you have new mail, would you like to read, like I just did") you can add all your buttons (using the exact same process as above) to disposition the message without ever even opening your full outlook window
  

• Helpful Hint: it isn't very intuitive, but the renaming command and other properties are only available while the 'Customize Toolbar' window is open. You'll see what I mean once you try to start doing it.
  

• The first time you try to run your macro (or possibly the first time you close and relaunch outlook, and THEN try to run it), it will prompt you asking if you want to trust macros from "your name"...check 'trust always' and click yes, and you won't have to do it again. It is important that you digitally sign your macro project using the SelfCert or it won't let you run them next session and this will be a big pile of wasted effort.
  

• All in all, this is a reasonably simple process, and barely requires anything more than basic Office knowledge. YMMV with different versions, and obviously this is Windows only (there are easier ways to do it on a mac, they are linked in the first article in this blog post), but the general steps should be basically the same.
  

Enjoy your new found organizational ability! Here's some pics!

Outlook Organization Addendum

Addendum:  After using the system briefly, I decided to adopt the full 5-folder system, at least for now.  The difference between a "Temp Hold" and a "Waiting for Response" is significant enough that I think it warrants its own folder.  Plus, the Waiting has so far been my most used folder, as whenever I send action requests to others, I drop my sent mail in there, so I can keep track of any pending requests.

 

In this case, I don't actually have any truly 'unread' messages.  What I do have is nothing in my inbox (yay!), one item that requires action (that I have marked 'unread' so it will show up on the folder), two items that require quick responses (both marked 'unread' after getting dropped in the Respond folder), and one item I'm waiting for a response on (my 'copy sent into inbox' rule automatically marks my sent messages unread as it copies them, so I just dragged it into 'waiting').  This system has been so far quite suitable for dealing with everything that has come in. 

 

You can see by the Plus sign that I have some Archive subfolders...so far they are Reference and CYA, but if something that I feel like I want to save long term doesn't fit nicely in one of those, I'm not afraid to just let it live in the main archive until I see a large enough trend develop to deserve a subfolder.

 

The hardest part of the system is viciously and immediately deleting things that don't fit in one of the five categories.  It is totally worth the effort, though...not to mention outlook will never get bogged down.  At my previous job, my inbox had 5800 messages in it, for no particular reason, I had just never thought to delete anything.  In this system, I will never run out of mailbox space, and if my archive somehow gets large enough to get close, well, I have an easy choice of which folder to archive locally.

 

The folder system is actually streamlined enough that it makes my color formatting obsolete.  I'd have to be getting truly epic volumes of mail to have enough stuff in my inbox at one time to need to visually distinguish between them.

Outlook Inbox Optimization

Since I started a new job, and don't yet have a flood of emails streaming in, I decided to take some pre-emptive steps to manage my inbox.  I'm using three different techniques--Some things I implimented at my previous job, some are new, so I'm not sure whether they will need to be modified to work well together, or if they will compliment eachother.  I will follow up after a couple weeks once I know how much I use them.

 

1. Priority Coloring

I've used this for years, and it really makes it easy to sift through a busy inbox.  Using autoformatting, you can specify that messages be different color based on how they reached you.  From highest specificity to lowest:

• Messages only to me are blue
• Messages to me and others individually are black
• Messages I am CC'ed on, or that are to my group are dark grey
• Messages to the entire company are light grey

This gives you an easy at-a-glance indicator as to how important it is that you react to the message.  New messages coming in are usually bolded, so they retain the coloring.

 

2. Sent mail in inbox

I set up a rule to copy any sent mail to my inbox.  This way, I can sort by subject line and see the whole conversation thread.  If your version of Outlook isn't smart enough to know that "RE: Lunch Room" goes with "Lunch Room," then you can pull up the field chooser and sort by Conversation instead.  This rule by itself is very convenient, but actually works a little bit against my next technique, but I'm still able to make good use of it.

 

3. Zero Inbox

As a goal, this technique immediately sorts all incoming email into folders, and gets them out of your inbox.  I read about this on lifehacker, where Gina Trapani links to the originator (which I've forgotten at the moment), who originally crafted a 5 folder sort system.  Gina went even further, making to mergers to simplify to a 3 folder system.  I'm not sure I'm ready for that amount of streamlining, so I'm going with a 4-folder system:

 

• Respond - Any emails that can be responded to in less than 5 minutes.  Anything that can be responded to in less than 1 minute, just do as it comes in and don't bother to file it.  Gina merged this with Action and called the whole thing "Follow up".
• Action - Any emails that require more than 5 minutes of work to respond to, or that have work instructions.  Marking active tasks unread as you place them in this folder give you a running tally of currently active tasks, is a way to keep yourself aware of this folder's contents.
• Archive - Long term reference message storage.  This folder can have sub folders by category if desired, although since it is searchable that is probably not needed.
• Temporary Hold:  Stuff that requires no action, but that you want easily accessible.  Examples would be tracking numbers, order confirmations, or other stuff you might be referring to over the next week or so.
• Trash - Yes, I know this is a fifth folder, but it's one that is already there.  Delete visciously.  Anything that doesn't go in one of the top four folders, or anything from those folders that you are done with and don't need to move to archive, gets deleted.

Because I have my sent message copying turned on, I disposition my own messages just like I would anyone elses (am I promising to do something, am I sending out information I would like a permanent copy of?).  This lets me keep a running conversational record of the exchanges.

 

It's actually ridiculously easy to impliment all of these techniques, so much so that it is a little frustrating that they aren't turned on by default.  If anyone is curious about them, just poke around in the "organize" menu, and you can see the rich available options for the (separately grouped for some reason) Rules Wizard and Auto Formatting.