If you’ve been using Outlook for awhile, you may have accumulated many contacts and are starting to use the calendar and tasks more. You may find it useful to quickly organize these items according to a category. An example might be to “code” everything having to do with a specific project to a category you create. This allows you to find everything having to do with that category very quickly. All the people involved, appointments and tasks would be listed!

Creating a Category

Outlook supplies a great list to get you started with some common ones, such as Key Contacts, Personal, Competitor and Supplier. You can also create your own categories to customize it for your own needs.

Outlook makes it easy to work with categories. You are able to add and modify your category list from almost any screen!

1.        Choose Categories from the Edit menu.

2.        Click on the Master Category List button. You are able to see all of the categories that come with Outlook.

a.         If you wish to add one, simply type the name in the New Category box and click the Add button.

b.        If you wish to delete one, just click on it and press the Delete button.

Enter as many as you can think of. You can easily modify this list at a later date.

Assigning a Category

On nearly every shortcut menu (the menu you see when you right click on an item) you will see the Category option. Here you are able to code the item to your category. Let’s use contacts in this example.

1.        Click on the Contacts folder.

2.        Select one on more of your contacts. Right Click on one of them.

3.        You will see the same screen as you did in the previous step. If you want to modify your category list, you can. Otherwise, simply click on all the checkboxes of categories to which this contact applies to.

Viewing your Items by Category

Once you have associated your contacts with the appropriate categories, you can create a very useful list. In most screens, you have a drop down list on the toolbar to display the information (i.e., Contacts) in a specific view. This option is available if you have the Advanced Toolbar turned on.

1.      Turn on the Advanced Toolbar by going into the View menu and choosing Toolbars. Click on it to display it.

2.      You will now see the View List drop down list. Click on the arrow to display the choices. You will see “By Category”. This will organize your list by category. Since you are able to apply more than one category to a contact, your contacts may appear more than once.

Drag those Contacts!

Now that you’ve organized this list, you can treat the items by group. For example, you can easily delete or send an email to all contacts in a category. If all the people in a category are on your network, you can even send everyone a group appointment.

1.      Once you’ve listed your contacts by category, you will see a summary line at the top of each category listing showing how many contacts are in each one.

If you click and drag that line to one of the folders on the left, you will be performing an action and applying it to each contact in that category. Here’s what happens when you drag to each folder:

a.       Inbox                    an email is created with the contacts in the TO field

b.      Calendar               a meeting is created with all the contacts invited

c.       Tasks                    a task is created and will be sent to the contacts

d.      Deleted Items        deletes the contacts. If the contact appears in another category, they will be deleted from both. If you only want to take the category off, simply right click and choose categories and clear the check box beside the category name.

Retrieving all Items in a Category

The above option works great for displaying specific items (i.e., Contacts) for a category. But let’s say that you have been assigning categories to appointments and tasks as well as contacts. To display all types of items according to category, you can use the Advanced Find feature.

1.      From the main Outlook screen, right click on the top level folder. It may have your name on it or it may be called Personal Folders.

2.      This brings up the Advanced Find screen. At the top of this screen, choose the type of Outlook item (i.e., Contact, appointment, etc) you want to find. If you want to find everything assigned to the category, choose “Any Outlook Item”.

3.      To choose the category, click on the “More Choices” tab and select it by clicking on the Category button. Note that you can select more than one category.

4.      When you click on the “Find Now” button, all items in your whole Outlook mailbox will be listed. You will be able to double click on them to open them or press the delete key to delete them!

Defining Your Own Categories

Use the following list to determine if you can utilize the existing category list or need to add some of your own. You may want to consult your co-workers to have some consistency!