Thursday, October 16, 2014

Quickly Archiving Mail with Outlook 2013 when using Outlook.com

Third post in a series of posts on how to single-click (or swipe/tap) to Archive mail when using Outlook.com.  The first covered how to swipe-tap to archive in iOS 8, and the second covered on how to set up an Instant Action to mouse over and click to Archive a mail on the web client. 

This post covers the most famous email client of them all: Outlook.  And most specifically Outlook 2013.  As mentioned in the first post, the pre-setup for this one is to create a folder called Archive in your mailbox. I covered how to do this this in the iOS8 post.

With Outlook 2013, there is a Quick Steps box.  You’ve probably never noticed it, it’s at the top, on the ribbon.  Well, it’s a set of customizable actions, where the Outlook team has taken the liberty of defining ones for you, mostly destined for business.  If this is the first time you’ve used these, take a look around, they are really powerful. Even on a personal account.  For example, I have one called “To Wife” which just forwards the email to my wife.  I do this a lot when I get an email on something that she should know, but I digress.  Here is what my personal account looks like:

Quick Steps

Here’s how to set up the Archive one Quick Step

  1. Click on the Create New button in the Quick Steps box (you may have to scroll down using the arrows to see it), it’s depicted above.
  2. Fill out the Quick Step, with your Name, and any number of actions you want to happen, it’s like a mail macro!  This is how mine is set up.  You can also assign a short cut key if you’re a keyboard kowboy. Edit Quick Step
  3. Click on Finish.

You’re Quick Step is ready to use.  Simply select the email you want to Archive and hit the new Archive Quick Step button, and the mail gets marked as read, and placed into your Archive folder.

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Quickly Archiving Mail from the Outlook.com Web Client

In a previous post, I talked about how to quickly archive email in Outlook.com from the iOS 8 mail client. Similar to what you do with GMail, but of course we all don’t do our mail on our phones, we use computers as well! 
In this post I’ll tell you how to configure an Instant Action to do the same thing.  If you haven’t followed that post, then you are missing the pre-step to this one, which is to create a new folder called “Archive” (the name is key for iOS, not for the web client).  So do that first, then jump into these steps!
  1. First, log into your Outlook.com email account
  2. Click on the Settings gear (Settings Gear) in the top right hand corner of the page and select Options.
  3. On the Options page, under Customizing Outlook.com, you want to click on Instant Actions, in which you should see this Instant Actions
  4. Click on Add actions and then select Move To, and you’ll notice a Move To item show up in the list “Show on mouse over”
  5. In the right hand pane, choose to move a message to the “Archive” folder that you created, give it a coloured icon, and you can also choose to mark it as read if you want.  You can see how i might look in the preview (and how my preview looks above).  If you don’t like it the ordering, you can use Move Up and Move Down to order the list how you want.
That’s all there is to it.  Now when you mouse over the message in the message list, you get the Instant Actions to appear, and the Archiving icon you just created will single click it to the right folder.  Here is what mine looks like on the web:
Move this Message to Archive and mark it as read
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Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Quickly Archiving Mail in iOS8 when using Outlook.com

One of my frustrations with Outlook.com, which isn’t configurable is how long it keeps deleted items for: 2 weeks.  That’s it.  2 weeks.  I for one want to have more time than 2 weeks to decide if I have to recover something from my deleted items.  And Outlook.com boasts unlimited storage now, or at least a lot of storage, to compete… so why not Archive email instead of delete it?
My workflow has changed.  Mail from computers, like Air Miles, or ZDNet or Marriott Rewards, after I’ve digested them, the deleted items is a perfect place for them.  But email from friends, family, co-workers, or even receipts and orders that I’ve done.  That mail just gets archived.. searchable.  The challenge I’ve been having is it’s hard to archive email, versus delete it.  I mean every app gives you a delete button, but not all apps give you archive, especially if you aren’t using GMail.
So, here is what I discovered on iOS 8 in order to Archive email on Outlook.com.
  1. Create a folder in your Outlook.com email address called “Archive”, this folder name is important, because iOS8 recognizes it.  In fact, now if you look at your folder list, it will look something like this.  Note the icon next to your Archive folder: Archive Folder Icon
  2. Now that iOS has recognized you have a folder to Archive email to, let’s make it super easy to add mail to it.  While you could just move mail to this folder like any other folder, iOS8 has a “swipe right” in the mail list that you can customize!  So to do that go into Settings, then Mail, Contacts, Calendars, and then Swipe Options.  From here you can simply click on Swipe Right, and choose the action of Archive, thus enabling you to swipe right and Archive that particular message or conversation grouping, and you're ready!: Change Swipe Right to Archive
That’s all there is to it.  Now when you are in your email message list, and you swipe right, you can simply Archive the message into the folder you created.  Check it out:
Swipe and Archive
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