Outlook 2019 has been out since last fall and if you’re an Office 365 subscriber, you didn’t have to buy it, you received it with the incremental updates you get with O365. The Outlook 2019 Features & Tips in this article don’t all apply just to 2019, but these are helpful, time saving and things the typical user perhaps isn’t aware of.
My Top 12 Outlook 2019 Tips & Features
- Creating folders
- Rename & move folders
- Viewing email
- Categorizing items
- Attaching items to email
- Drag & drop items to email
- Reading pane
- Read aloud
- Zoom bar
- Search tools
- Disable add-ins
- Bonus tip – how to enable the new themes (dark gray, black, white, colorful)
Video of my Top 12 Outlook Tips & Features
If you’re a visual person, here’s my YouTube video that complements this blog post.
Personalizing Outlook 2019
Create, Rename and Move Folders
Create – After Outlook (desktop), is installed, make it your own by creating folders to store email by subject, client, etc. To easily do this, right-click either on the email name, you’ll see a list of options and select ‘new folder’. A new folder will appear and it’ll be ready for you to name it.
Rename – It’s the same process – right-click on any folder and select ‘rename’, then rename your folder!
Move Folders – The default is to organize folders alphabetically. But you can choose to drag your folders to any position you wish.
Ways to View Your Email, Ways to Attach Items to Your Email and Categorizing
View Email – by selecting the ‘View’ menu item, look to the right and you’ll see the Folder Pane, Reading Pane and To-Do Bar section.
The Folder Pane controls the list of folders over to the left in Outlook. You can choose to turn it off, minimize it and then Options opens a box where you can choose which folders to display.
Reading Pane – This is my favorite part – here you can choose ‘right’ to see your email in a list on the left, but on the right, you see the email. Another choice is to put the ‘view’ on the bottom, and last, you can turn it off, then you’ll see just a list of your email.
Now It’s Easy To Attach Documents (Items) to an Email – This is a really cool feature. Now when you’re writing your email and you want to attach a document, if it’s a recent file you’ve worked on, it will probably be available to you when you click on ‘Attach Item’ in the ribbon. No more digging into your folders to find it.
The other way to attach it is to just drag and drop your file(s) from Windows Explorer into the body of your email – simple!
Categorizing Email – I don’t use this one much as it does take a little time to set up, but it does have its uses. For example, if I want email from a certain client to have a color/category assigned to it so it’ll stand out, I can use the Categorize function. But to truly make it effortless, you would need to set up a rule that will automatically assign that category to a selected incoming email. (I will do a video on how to set up a rule after applying a category and link to this post.) Did the video on 2-28. Here it is…
Accessibility Features of Outlook 2019 – Read Aloud, Zoom & New Icons
Read Aloud – when I discovered this, I was a happy camper. Now, I click a button and have not-terrible Outlook-type voice read my text emails to me. Saves time and eyestrain.
Zoom – when people send emails with small font sizes, now I can either select the zoom bar (when the email is in the right side reading pane mode, or look for Zoom in the ribbon and slide it over to a much larger font size! Whoop!
New Icons – Microsoft does categorize their new icons as accessible because they are built as ‘scalable graphics’.
Search Tools and Disable Add-ins
Search – Outlook 2019’s Search feature has come to my rescue multiple times. The search is so powerful, yet easy. It’s easy to type in my search words at the top of the email and then I can choose to have it search just that folder, sub-folders, all folders in my entire Outlook! This saves me so much time because I’ve added 7 email accounts in my desktop Outlook 2019. explains more about it. This article from Microsoft has more information on search.
Outlook 2019 Features & Tips Conclusion
Outlook 2019 is probably my most used app in the Office suite. This article contains just a smattering of the features I use constantly.
I’m an Office 365 subscriber and also an Office Insider, so I get the new features earlier than most. I try to take time to read what’s new this month and also catch the monthly Office Insider YouTube video. Click the links and investigate them for yourself.
What are your top go-to Outlook 2019 features? Leave them in the comment section.