Get your inbox to empty after your holiday - fast
In the Each Day Empty eBook I describe how you can quickly get your inbox to empty each day. But after a summer holiday you may be in for some serious help to attack your inbox when you arrive at the office again. My own Outlook started to download 3200 mails when I returned – and I was glad that I already knew some of the following tips.
- Learn how to sort and group e-mails in your mail reader. In Outlook you could use the View | Arrange By item in the main menu.
- Sort all mails in your inbox by Subject. A lot of the spam that got through your spamfilter will be grouped together now. You can quickly remove all mails starting with Cyrillic symbols (unless you happen to live in Russia). Also all spam that happens to have the same subject over and over again can easily be spotted.
- Then sort all your mails by the To field. This may not be relevant to everyone, but I still get e-mails (especially spam) that was sent to another e-mail address than my own addresses. Sorting this way I can remove these messages easily.
- Now sort the remaining e-mails by From and Date. This way you will group all mails that came from each specific sender – and in the order that they were sent. Your mileage may vary, but I tend to quickly scan through all mails starting with the oldest one. But I don’t reply to any of the mails yet. This way I can read up on the developments, better understand my customers and employees, and still prevent myself from replying to something which is changed or revoked in a newer e-mail.
- After taking these steps, I’m up-to-date again. I’m aware of current issues, I know whether there are serious problems that need my attention and I know which e-mails I’m going to want to answer first of all.
Even before I go on vacation, I already think about the first days when I’m back in the office. In my out-of-office autoreply I do mention the date that I think I will be answering e-mails again - and it is several days after I return from vacation. This way I prevent having to tackle my e-mail straight away and in an ‘urgent’ mood, just as I’m feeling rested and relaxed from my vacation.
Fortunately, once I’m up-to-date again it’s quite easy to keep my inbox empty each day for the rest of the year.
Thank you for the tips on how to empty your inbox on Outlook after the holidays……..after summer vacation my inbox was packed and this helped a lot. Thanks.
I set up my vacation rule to pass responsibilty for the email back to sender. My rule replies to the sender “Thanks for your message but I am on vacation until (3 days after I return). Your message has been deleted, if it is still important please re-send it to me after I return and I will deal with it then”.
I usually direct all the incoming email to a vacation folder knowing that I can deal with it in my time and I know that any new email was considered important enough by the sender for them to resend it.
Sounds tough but it foreces the sender to take responsibility for their email not dump it on your vacation. In practice I find that about 1% of the email is re-sent when I return - obviously I am not very important
You’ve offered great techniques to keep your fingers on the keyboard while navigating Outlook. Is there a way to open an attachment without using a mouse?
@AW - in Outlook 2007 you can open a message with the Enter key, then from the Body press Shift-Tab to set the focus on the ‘Message’ rectangle. From there you can use the arrow keys (left, right) to move to the attachment that you’d like to open. Once you have the attachment selected, press Enter again.
Another way would be to use the ‘right-click key’ that is located right from the spacebar on most modern keyboards. Using that key (or Shift-F10) you can display the context menu for an e-mail item in your inbox (preview window).
That context menu has an item ‘View Attachments’ which you can easily select by pressing the ‘h’ on your keyboard, once the context menu is displayed. This will open a sub menu, in which you can locate an attachment and press Enter.
I hope this helps.
Kind regards,
Taco Oosterkamp
@Learn Outlook Mom - you’re welcome, I’m glad to hear that this article helped you.
@Grant - I personally don’t like to have the burden of having to inform people twice when they are on vacation put on my shoulders involuntarily. Besides: I don’t think it is wise to insult your customers or friends this way. You don’t want this to be your last paid vacation, after all.
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