You can apply more than one category to the same item. The category color and name appear above the item while the color appears on the item list. To apply a category to an item simply select it then click on the category from the list at Home | Categorize. : _ before numbers then letters and finally ‘ and –Īnd if you think that’s a strange thing for a supposedly mature and sophisticated product … you’d be absolutely right. The workaround is to use a trick that been around since the days of DOS, put an underscore, dot or some other characters before the text, so it appears at the top of the list. Microsoft locks you into alphabetical order (yes even in Outlook 2013). There’s no way to change the order on category list so the more common ones are at the top. You can apply categories to incoming messages via IMAP but any category settings aren’t copied back to the online mailbox store as they should be. Outlook connecting to a mailbox with IMAP doesn’t support categories. So it’s wise to avoid category labels that might be embarrassing such as ‘Fools with Money’ or ‘Simpleton Customers’, ‘Annoying Friends’ etc. Outlook should strip category information from outgoing messages but category information can still be sent out, for example in a shared appointment or contact. To make an entirely new Category, click the New … button, type in a name and select a color.Ī warning about category names. Don’t feel obliged to set a shortcut key, it is optional and not often used. You’re limited to Ctrl + F key combinations. To change the color, click on the name then the color selector.Īs you can see, there’s 25 colors to choose from, but not a ‘blank’ or ‘white’ selection.Įach category can have a shortcut key for quick applying to items. Select that item and rename it by either clicking the Rename button or double-click on the text label. Usually you’ll first change one of the unused categories like ‘Orange Category’.
To setup your categories go to Home | Categorize: Microsoft switched to the color labels in the hope that people would realize the labels can be edited.
The choice is yours.Įarly versions of Outlook had preset names for the categories but many people thought they were fixed and could not be changed. You could give related or overlapping categories the same color (for example ‘Travel’ and ‘Flights’ both blue). The same color can be linked to different categories. The colors themselves have no meaning except what you apply to them. As you can see above, some have already been given the names ‘Medical’ ‘Travel’ and ‘Urgent’. ‘Blue Category’, ‘Yellow Category’ etc.Įach of the categories can be given a text label of your choosing. When you get Outlook, there are ‘blank’ Categories ready with just the color name as labels e.g. Outlook categories are also available on Microsoft’s webmail service, Category Setup You can make a single semi-permanent folder showing messages from a category using the Search Folders feature, details on that below. Unlike separate folders, you can have the same email or item in different categories. Here Travel category items are from email and calendar (tasks and contact items could be there too).Īll that’s done with a few clicks on the Search tab and changing the search scope to ‘All Outlook items’.Ĭategories are a more flexible and faster alternative to having separate Outlook folders for different topics or subjects. It gets better because the search can be done across more than one folder. Those messages may not show up in a search for the word ‘travel’ or ‘trip’ but appear immediately because they are tagged with a category. They can be subjects that a normal Outlook search could not cover because the keywords may not be in all the items.įor example, here’s some messages about an upcoming trip: Outlook has had a Categories feature for a long time … here’s how you can use it and why.Ĭategories let you group Outlook items (emails, contacts, calendar and tasks) into broad topic areas or subjects … all without moving from their original folders. Thanks for joining us! You'll get a welcome message in a few moments.
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