Online Success Starts Here

You're inbox is filled with tons of messages.  You have emails from weeks, months, maybe even from last year sitting in your inbox...and you're tired of it.  Well here's a cool tip for taking emails and converting them into action items and getting them out of your inbox.

Goals This Tip Support

• Reducing inbox clutter
• A way to remember that an action is needed for an email message

Step By Step

1) Select the message you want to convert into an action item. Do this by holding down your left mouse button on top of the email message.

2) Drag the email message on top of the Outlook's task folder. This will turn the email into a Task.  All of the contents of the email message will now be in the body of the Task.

3) Change the subject of the Task to the action that needs to be done for the email. By default the Task subject is the subject of the email.  It will be more helpful when you look at the task in the future if it has the action item in the title.

4) Set any reminders or due dates for this task. Now that you're email is a task you can use the Task functionality of setting a reminder or due date for this task to help ensure that it will get done.

5) Click Save & Close. Once saved your email is now on your Task list and Outlook can remind you of it if you setup a reminder.

6) Decide what you want to do with the original message. Now that your email along with its content has been converted to a task you have two options for the original message:

• Delete It: If you do not need to keep the original message then delete It.
• Put in Reference Folder: If you need the original message for future reference, move the email from your inbox to a reference folder.

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