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Save time in Outlook with custom quick steps

Thanks to custom quick steps of Outlook can save an enormous amount of weather. Many of us spend a large part of our working day answering different emails of all kinds. The quick steps are intended to facilitate different tasks that can be customized depending on our needs.

How to save time in Outlook with custom quick steps

Create custom quick steps

The first thing we’ll do is create our own custom quickstep. For this we are going to go to the Home tab and select the bottom arrow in the Quick Steps box.

Here we are going to choose Create New. We can also move the cursor to New Quick Step and choose Custom from the popup menu.

There are several types of Quick Steps and each one does a specific thing, offering us useful automation that will help us save time.

Manage categories, tasks and flags

One of the best custom quick steps is categories, tasks and flags, we can get various things in our email. We’ll assign a category, attach a flag, or create a task. We can also delete the categories or labels, even mark the message completely.

We go to the Choose an action drop-down box and select the option in the Categories, tasks and brands section.

For example, we can choose the Categorize message action. After this we will choose the category in the drop-down box. Then, with a simple click, we can assign a category to the message.

Another possible example is using the Create a task with message text action. This option is really very good to use if we manage to-dos in Outlook. Next, we will have to choose the Quick Step and we will see a new task window open in the email.

message presentation

One of the most useful quick steps is in the File category. This allows you to quickly move, copy or delete an email.

We choose the Choose an action drop-down box and select an option in the Presentation section. We’ll need to give this quick step a name at the top of the window.

In case of choosing one of the removal options, obviously we will not have to do anything else here.

Instead, if we choose Move to folder or Copy to folder, we will use the following box to select the folder we want. This is something quite comfortable if we are used to moving or copying emails to the same folder.

We can also assign a shortcut key using the dropdown box at the bottom, we can even insert tooltip text so we know what the quick step does when we hover over it.

reply or forward

With the Reply category, we can create a new message, forward, reply or reply to all, reply with a meeting or forward the email with an attached file or folder, etc.

We start with the dropdown box by selecting the Reply action.

An example here would be forwarding the message as an attachment. This is ideal if we usually receive emails that you often forward to someone else. We will select Forward message as attachment in the Choose an action box.

If we want to pre-populate the details of the forwarding email, we will have to choose Show options.

Now we can add everything we want to this email: subject, brand, text, importance, etc. What we will have to remember is that this information will apply every time we use Fast Pass.

create an appointment

The Appointment option is great for those messages we receive that usually end up in meetings. We can schedule a new meeting or create an appointment. A good example is creating a new meeting.

To set up a blank meeting request that we fill out on the fly, all we have to do is choose New Meeting from the dropdown box, choose the action, and nothing else. If we want to complete details so that they remain by default, we will have to choose Show options.

We can add interesting details such as: theme, location, importance, text, attendees, etc. Let’s remember that these details will be applied to this quick step every time we use it.

Change email status

It is even possible to use it to change the status of an email to read, not read or set its importance. To achieve this, we are going to use a quick state change step.

We choose the Choose an action dropdown box and here we select Change status. Then we’ll give this quick step a name.

If we choose Mark as read or Mark as unread, we will not have to select anything else.

In case we select Set importance, we will have to choose the priority in the next drop-down box that we will see. This is something very useful to quickly mark messages as important.

How to use custom quick steps

After creating a custom Quick Step, we’ll need to learn how to use it. For this we will have to select an email and we will go to the Home tab. Here we are going to choose the Quick Step action that has the name we have assigned it.

If the created quick step moves, marks or responds, this will happen automatically when we click. In case you set up a Quick Step to forward a message, create a task or schedule an appointment, we will see the corresponding box as the Quick Step you see in the image to create a task.

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