Empty Your Outlook Inbox

Another helpful tech tip for keeping the old Outlook inbox slim and trim, for those that may not know.

Are you using your mailbox as a To-Do List and have 4,563,231 emails and growing?

Stop it now and end your day with an empty inbox, or at least nearly empty.

I do.

All you have to do is flag your email and then archive it out of your sight.

It will still be searchable, and you can assign a due date to it, to remind you that it needs to be done.

What?

Yes.  Just flag them and get rid of them.

Here’s what you do …

In your inbox on each message, you should have the option to “Flag this message.”

It looks like a little flag and turns red when you click it.

Click that flag!

Now, click the little blue checkmark on the left toolbar.  

It says “To Do” when you hover over it.

In the left panel of the new screen, you will see “Flagged email.”

Click it!

When you get a lot of things in here, it will say “Earlier, Today, Tomorrow, A date range, Later, etc…”

Most importantly, you will say a section that says, “No Date.”

Expand it if you need to, using the little “ > “to the left of that title.

Hover over the Item Title and you will see a little “i” that is circled.

Click it!

A panel opens on the right the details of that item and usually shows only the subject of the email and a link to open it.

Here you can add a Due Date, a Reminder, Color Tags, Attachments and your own notes.

Follow this process and each time you flag an email, and you can just archive it out of sight or move it off to a folder.  Do NOT delete the email.  That will delete to To Do.  Archive is in your right-click menu and looks like a little file box.

Hope this helps make your inbox less frightening!  Good Luck!

Now, if only Google offered anything as reasonable integrated.