Outlook Shortcut Keys and Quick Action Tips!
Windows Outlook has always been the best email client for Windows platform. With the introduction of Office 365 services as the subscription offers, it has gained even popularity among Windows and Mac users combined.
For users dealing with hundreds of emails daily, it can be quite beneficial to learn some tricks that can make you faster and more productive with the whole Outlook interface. The best way is to learn some handy shortcut keys that allow you to carry some of the more complicated operations in just few dabs of your fingers on the keyboard.
This post will give you a list of some of the best shortcuts and quick actions that can help you achieve just that.
Best Outlook Shortcuts for Frequently Used Operations:
Who likes hovering around the entire UI just to create, type, and send a single email? Probably, you don’t either. For that reason, every decent program provides a few keystrokes that can help you achieve that in an instant.
One of the best tip related to shortcut keys that I use all the time is through using ‘Tab.’ Press the ‘Tab’ button on your keyboard. That will highlight all the main menu buttons at the top of the Outlook bar with the shortcut keys shown next to the actions.
Here are some most common Outlook shortcut Keys that will save you time:
- Alt+H –> to go to ‘Home’ tab
- Ctrl+N –> To compose a new Message from the “Mail” view
- Ctrl+shift+M –> to compose a new Message from anywhere
- Alt+S –> Send
- Alt+H, R, P –> To reply to a message
- Ctrl+2 –> To go to ‘Calendar’ view (Ctrl+1 –> Switch back to ‘Mail’ view)
- Ctrl+Shift+A –> Create appointment (once you are inside the calendar)
- Ctrl+7 –> To Switch to Shortcuts
What are Quick Actions and How to Use Them!
Quick actions or quick steps is one of the most productive features Outlook has. Without which, I couldn’t imagine dealing with hundreds of emails on a daily basis. They make most of the frequent operations extremely quick, which would otherwise take countless minutes.
This isn’t applicable to any version of Outlook that came before Outlook 2010.
They are basically shortcut keys but instead of keys, they are “clicks” and instead of one task, they perform multiple tasks in a single click. Such as moving emails to other folders, Marking emails as archived, read, or unread, and many such operations. The great thing about this feature is that you can create your own quick step if you are going to use that frequently.
It basically reduces all the long and tedious repetitive tasks into a single click.
If you want to configure the default quick steps or want to create your own, follow the steps below:
Click ‘Mail’ on the home tab –> Choose “Quick Steps” Group –> Click the more arrow –> click ‘Manage Quick Steps
Choose what you want to do here – change or add any action that you want.
Windows Outlook is already a great email client for users with heavy emailing needs. But handy features like Quick Steps and an exhaustive range of shortcuts (for almost everything) makes it even better. Users that need to be productive and work faster with emails will love them.