Microsoft Outlook Course

Go beyond just email and discover a full Swiss Army Knife of tools

Outlook Mastery

Course Description

Arguably the most powerful email client on the market for large organisations, this 1 day beginners Outlook course will reveal to you how Outlook can revolutionise your life. Your work habits will change and your productivity will rise.

Outlook is so much more than e-mail, and yet that's all that 90% of people use it for. It's like having a Swiss army knife and only using it to open your letters in the morning.

As well as learning how to send, receive and manage e-mail, you will discover how to use the calendar to create appointments, arrange meetings, set tasks for yourself and for others and maintain your own private list of contacts.

You'll then discover how to work smarter and use Outlook more efficiently. Gain greater control over the way Outlook behaves, better manage incoming messages, share information and work more effectively with other users.

Want To Customise Your Training ?

Don't see exactly what you want in the topic list below?

You are welcome to swap topics in and out from the different courses available to create your own custom course.

We can accommodate all requests. Customisation is 100% free. 

Let us deliver a powerful course with useful content that you or your staff will actually use. Tailor the training around your own needs and requirements.

Click to tell us what you need.

Duration

Corporate group training: 4-5 hours.
Private 1-on-1 training: 3-4 hours.

Prerequisites

You should be familiar with the Windows operating system and comfortable using a mouse. There are no other pre-requisites.

Whether you have never used Outlook before, dabbled a little or use it regularly, this course offers something for you and the training will be adapted to your level and needs.

Versions Taught

Our computers are always installed with the latest version of Office. The current version is Outlook 365 (desktop).

If you have an earlier or Outlook such as Outlook 2016 or Outlook 2013 we will explain any key differences during the training.

Still using Outlook 2010 or earlier? It's time to say goodbye to an old friend and upgrade! Microsoft don't support this version any more.

what you get

Here's what you'll learn in this course

Orientation, Configuration & The Grand Tour

  • The Outlook Screen
  • What does Outlook do? 
  • The command centre 
  • How screen size affects the commands you see 
  • Tool tips 
  • The navigation pane 
  • The selection bar
  • The main window 
  • Resizing the Outlook panes
  • Repositioning the reading pane
  • Configuring the folder pane
  • Resizing the message preview 
  • Configuring the To Do bar 
  • Simplifying the message summary 
  • Using Outlook Today 
  • Customising Outlook Today

Email Part 1: Messaging

  • Creating and sending a new message
  • Inbox, Drafts & Sent Items 
  • Using an Address Book 
  • When to use To, CC and BCC 
  • Auto-completed recipient emails 
  • Receiving and viewing a message 
  • Viewing messages you have sent 
  • Marking a message as read or unread 
  • Deleting a message 
  • Replying to or forwarding a message
  • Saving and retrieving a draft message 
  • Finishing and sending a draft message 
  • Flagging a message and creating a task 
  • Adding a follow-up when you send a message 
  • Adding a message status or instruction 
  • Adding a flag column to your message summary

Email Part 2: Format & Design

  • Choosing the best message format
  • Setting the default message format 
  • Different types of formatting 
  • Playing with the font & paragraph settings 
  • Changing the font and font size
  • Adding bold, italic or underline for emphasis 
  • Changing the font colour 
  • Striking through the text 
  • Superscripting or subscripting text 
  • Changing the case
  • Highlighting text 
  • Positioning your text 
  • Indenting text from the margins 
  • Spacing out the lines in a paragraph 
  • Controlling the spacing between paragraphs
  • Hanging indents
  • Using the paragraph setting dialog box 
  • Inserting separators or dividers 
  • Inserting a symbol 
  • What kind of symbols to use? 
  • Adding Icons
  • The much-underused Office Clipboard

Email Part 3: Features & Tools

  • Attaching a file to a message
  • Opening an attachment
  • Saving or stripping an attachment 
  • Attaching any Outlook item to a message 
  • Creating links (formerly hyperlinks) in a message 
  • Linking to another file or web page 
  • Linking to a new pre-populated e-mail message 
  • Using links to create an interactive message 
  • Editing or removing links
  • Displaying the message options
  • Changing the importance and sensitivity of a message 
  • Redirecting expected replies to someone else 
  • Delaying the delivery of a message 
  • Putting a shelf life expiry date on a message 
  • Requesting a Delivery Receipt 
  • Requesting a Read Receipt 
  • Setting your default response to read receipt requests 
  • Responding to a read receipt request, one at a time 
  • Receiving a read receipt 
  • Creating voting buttons in a message 
  • Receiving a vote request and voting 
  • Counting the votes 
  • Resending a message that was sent in error 
  • Recalling a message 
  • Retrieving deleted items after trash is emptied

Email Part 4: Efficiency

  • Ways to use outlook signatures
  • Creating, editing and deleting a signature
  • Inserting a signature automatically or manually
  • Setting a default signature 
  • Creating a canned response using a signature 
  • Creating a canned response using quick parts 
  • Using automatic replies
  • Inbox zero 
  • Selecting and deleting multiple emails
  • Removing redundant messages in a conversation 
  • Using the conversation clean up tool 
  • Emptying the Deleted Items folder
  • Retrieving 'permanently' deleted items
  • Creating a new email folder 
  • Moving emails into a folder 
  • Creating Favorites Folders
  • Categorising your Outlook items 
  • Customising categories 
  • Organising and viewing items by category 
  • Using predefined quick steps for mail
  • Creating and running a new custom quick step
  • Using rules to automatically handle email 
  • Creating a rule from an existing message 
  • Creating a rule from scratch 
  • Editing or deleting a rule
  • Switching a rule on or off
  • Exporting or importing rules

People (formerly called Contacts)

  • Where to find “people”
  • Creating a new contact 
  • Entering name, company and job title 
  • Entering internet details 
  • E-mail, Web and Instant Messaging (IM)
  • Entering phone numbers 
  • Entering address information and using MAP IT
  • Mug Shots 
  • Marking a contact as private 
  • Saving the contact 
  • Changing a contactÂ’s details 
  • Deleting a contact 
  • Other contact information you can store
  • Business Card and other ways of viewing contact data
  • Categorising your contacts
  • Sending an e-mail to your contacts 
  • Flagging a contact for follow-up 
  • Locating an elusive contact 
  • Creating and modifying a contact group 
  • Maintaining the contact group 
  • Sending an email to every group member
  • Setting up a meeting with every group member
  • Share the details of a contact or contact-group 
  • What to do when you receive someoneÂ’s contact details 
  • Sending a mail merge to your contacts (complete run-through)

Calendar

  • What can the Outlook Calendar do?
  • Calendar overview 
  • Appointments, meetings and events 
  • Scheduling a personal appointment 
  • Using date descriptions 
  • Setting a reminder 
  • Removing an appointment from your calendar 
  • Viewing appointment details without opening it
  • Moving an appointment to a new time or day 
  • Views – day, workweek, week, month & schedule 
  • Viewing specific days 
  • Creating an all-day-event 
  • Scheduling a meeting
  • Autopick the next available time/date 
  • Sending out meeting invites and tracking responses
  • Responding to a meeting invite 
  • Booking shared resources 
  • Rescheduling a meeting 
  • Recurring appointment or meeting
  • Converting an email into message notes 
  • Sharing your calendar with your work colleagues 
  • Opening a calendar that has been shared with you

Tasks

  • What is a task?
  • Creating a task
  • Viewing the Task Summary
  • Updating task progress
  • Marking a task as complete
  • Deleting a task
  • Creating a recurring task 
  • Assigning a task to someone else 
  • Accepting or declining an assigned task

Notes

  • About Notes – the electronic yellow sticky note
  • Creating, editing, deleting, resizing, moving, categorising or colour-coding your notes

Printing Email, Schedules & Tasks

  • Printing emails
  • Printing calendars 
  • Printing a list of contacts
  • Printing the full details of a contact or contacts
  • Printing a task summary
  • Printing the full details of a task or tasks

Custom Templates 7 Custom Forms

  • Creating canned responses using message templates
  • Using a custom template 
  • Designing your own custom form 
  • Setting the Tab Order 
  • Publishing your custom form 
  • Using your custom form 
  • Using forms with multiple active regions

Importing & Exporting Outlook Data

  • Creating a backup of outlook data 
  • Importing from a backup file 
  • Importing a comma separated variable CSV file

Custom Views

  • What is a view?
  • Exploring the standard views 
  • Creating , cloning or modifying a view
  • Choosing which fields to display 
  • Grouping, sorting or filtering data
  • Changing the view design
  • Setting conditional formatting
  • Changing the column format

Archiving Old Data

  • Why does data need to be archived?
  • Auto Archive: Archiving folders automatically 
  • Overriding the Auto Archive settings
  • How to stop items in a folder from being archived
  • Manually archiving a folder