This article is part two of the Microsoft Outlook – top tips series. It will show you some of our favourite keyboard shortcuts and Outlook features that will help improve productivity at home or in the workplace.
First up is a selection of keyboard shortcuts you should take advantage of: (please note these may vary depending on which version of Outlook you use)
| Switch to previous message (with message open) | Ctrl + comma |
| Create a new journal entry | Ctrl + Shift + J |
| Flag a message for follow-up | Ctrl + Shift + G |
| Check for a new e-mail | Ctrl + M or F9 |
| Display the current week in calendar view | Alt + – |
| Display the current month in calendar view | Alt + = |
| Change the number of calendar days that display | Alt + (any number from 1-10) |
| Expand search to include items from the current folder | Ctrl + Alt + K |
| Expand search to include subfolders | Ctrl + Alt + Z |
| In the Reading Pane, page down through text | Spacebar |
| In the Reading Pane, page up through text | Shift + Spacebar |
Email Signature
Outlook allows you to create a piece of text to include things such as contact information or personalised messages at the bottom of each email you send with ease.
You can of course include contact details and other information you think is appropriate at the end of each email you send, but with Outlook you can append this piece of text (or image) permanently for every email you send without having to type it up each time.
In order to create an email signature, you should go to File > Options > Signatures > click New > Enter a name for the signature > click ok > and then you can add the desired text within Edit signature. You can insert an image and business card as a vCard file as part of it.
Undisclosed Recipients
Normally when you create a new email message, you would specify a To and a CC and therefore who ever receives the email will see who else is included in the email. However, this isn’t always the best approach if you want to hide a recipient’s identity. Sending emails to multiple addresses can also make it look a little bit messy.
If you want to avoid displaying the email addresses of the recipients, you should create an Undisclosed Recipients contact so that only this contact is shown instead as a placeholder.
To do this you should go to the Address Book within Find located in the Home Tab > File > New Entry > New Contact > click ok > Enter Undisclosed Recipients as the name of the contact > enter whatever email address you want in the in email section > Save & Close.
Once you have done this, create a new email > next to the To button enter or select Undisclosed Recipients and then use the BCC button to insert all the address you want to email (if you don’t see this go to Options > BCC) > and then just send the email.
Increase Font Size while reading Mail
With monitors getting bigger and resolution increasing, images are becoming more sharper and crisper. This is good news for those that use external screens, but for someone who is working on a laptop, text in the reading pane is often too small to read for a lot of users. So Outlook allows you to increase the size of text in emails.
To do this, you should go to the very bottom of the screen where the status bar will be and click the zoom button. This will allow you to increase (or decrease) the text size from the reading pane with the email selected. If you have the email opened up in a separate window you can also increase text size by going to the message ribbon > click zoom > select zoom percentage > click ok.
Further Reading
For more tips and tricks related to Outlook, please visit: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/keyboard-shortcuts-for-outlook-3cdeb221-7ae5-4c1d-8c1d-9e63216c1efd