Categories in Outlook 2007

re: Categories in Outlook 2007

btodd — Thu, 22 May 2008 19:28:22 GMT

new to Office 2007 and excited about the immense amounts of time I'll be spending tweaking the thing (OCD delight)

in your post the screenshot of your inbox shows the entire message colored (I'm assuming by category). However, when I categorize, all that shows up is a tasteful, tiny, square with the category name in that column. How do you do it?

thanks

re: Categories in Outlook 2007

camjohnston — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 05:50:53 GMT

David, just a great post, your right most people do not know how to use these and I am one of them. If you can point me and others at other place where strategies and approaches about categorization and management are discussed it would really be appreciated.

Once again, a great post

cheers

re: Categories in Outlook 2007

Carrie — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 04:30:38 GMT

I am wodnering if you have to use the same categories for calendar and contacts. I want to categorize contacts with (business, networking, clients, family, friends, neighbors, etc) But in calendar I want different categories (family, personal, ministry, kids, business, travel, vacation) these are categories I wouldn't use in contacts. Office 2003 has different categoris lists for each. I see the crossover as helpful in some situations, but I don't ever need to categorize a contact as "vacation". Is there a way around this?

re: Categories in Outlook 2007

dstrome — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 20:42:58 GMT

hi Carrie.

Outlook 2003 had category and calendar concepts. These features were unified into a single categories feature in Outlook 2007. Unfortunately that means you can't do what you're describing. Your question has been passed on to the Outlook feature PM and it'll be considered for a future version of Outlook.

David

re: Categories in Outlook 2007

Giulio — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 18:01:38 GMT

Hi,

I started to use catgeories recently and I have to say they seem a missed opportunity.

One obviuos adavantage of categories over folders is that for a message to be in multiple folders is takes up space on disk while you can attach multiple categories to a message with almost no impact. So, if a message relates to one or more topic you attach multiple catgeories to it instead of copying it in multiple folders.

Now, once you have spent time attaching category to you incoming mail one would expect to have an easy way to filter through category. Something like: a button similar to the one that allows to add categories to a folder but that in fact filters the current folder with one or multiple categories.

So with two click I can see all messages that have attached both ctagories "info" and "travel".

re: Categories in Outlook 2007

dstrome — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 04:16:28 GMT

hi Giulio

Have you looked at Search Folders? If I understand your comment correctly, Search Folders will do what you describe - you can create a new search folder and base it on a category you've created. You can scope the search folder to a single folder or to your entire mailbox. When you open the search folder, Outlook will find all of the messages that have the same category and list them in that search folder.

For more information about search folders, go here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/CH010380001033.aspx

I hope this helps.

David.

re: Categories in Outlook 2007

Peter Jansen — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:48:36 GMT

Hi David!

Thx for the post! It made me start working with categories, which is great.

Now we finally got an exchange server in our company. But after copying all my data from the .pst to the exchange account my categories are missing (and I even can't find them in the old .pst anymore!)...

Sorry, I know it's a little off topic, but I would very much appreciate some help ;-)

Thx again,

Peter

re: Categories in Outlook 2007

Anders — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 10:15:09 GMT

Hello, thank you for a great post. I have been using categories only in the calendar. have never thought of using rules in mail to set categories.

One question though.

Is it possible to set a default category in the calendar? Most of my appointments there are work relatet and I would like for all new appointments to be set to category "work".

/Anders

re: Categories in Outlook 2007

Robert — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:40:52 GMT

Hi David thanks for all this information, I've been using the categories for a long time, but i always end with the same problem:

When i format my computer amd install the office again all the categories are goone!!

I do a backup of all my personal folders with outlook ( contacts, emails..... ) but once i reinstall this personal folders everything is as it was before except the categories, my question is:

How can i save this categories for a new instalation or for another computer?

thanks a lot for your time david!

re: Categories in Outlook 2007

Charles — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:09:22 GMT

Hi David,

I agree with others that this is a great post. I've used Categories extensively with Outlook 2003 and find them extremely useful. As with Carrie's post, I'm disappointed that the Categories are not maintained by object type (calendar, mail, tasks, etc.).

One thing I've noticed that is also no longer available is to drag and drop an email (or collection of emails) from a search window into a group of emails in the Inbox that have already been assigned to a category. For example, I use a category called "Phone issues" to organize all emails related to phone problems my staff may encounter. I may receive several emails from different threads regarding phone issues. AS I've collected several emails, I will do a "search for related messages" to find each thread. From the search list, I used to be able to drag and drop all the emails from the thread into the "Phone Issues" Category and have them all get assigned en mass. I can't seem to do that any longer. My workaround is to drag them into an empty folder, assign them to the Phone Issues category within that new folder, then drag/drop them back to my Inbox with the other messages.

Any ideas on this one? My guess is that is by design.

It would be great if MS would just add the Categorize menu option to the right-click context menu in the search list. It's not available in the search list.

Of course, dragging and dropping is much easier for me.

thanks!