How to Use Quick Steps in Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook is a popular email application. It is easy to use and has many productivity features commonly used in business environments. You often perform repetitive actions throughout the day in Outlook.

Luckily, Microsoft has included a handy productivity feature called Quick Steps to help automate a series of steps. Read on to learn what Quick Steps are and how you can take full advantage of them to work more efficiently in Outlook.

What are Quick Steps in Microsoft Outlook?

Quick Steps is an easy-to-use productivity feature included in Outlook 2013 and later that lets you quickly automate a series of repetitive actions. Automating these tasks has the added benefit of making it easier to manage multiple mailboxes at once, saving you a lot of time every day.

You can use Quick Steps for different scenarios. An everyday use case might be to automatically move an email to a specific folder while simultaneously forwarding it to a colleague and marking it as important with just one click.

By default, Microsoft Outlook provides you with a number of commonly used Quick Actions. You can use them as is or customize the default Quick Steps to suit your needs. If that's not enough, you can create a custom Quick Step to enhance your routine workflow.

Use default Quick Steps in Microsoft Outlook

In Microsoft Outlook, you can easily use the default Quick Steps on the go. There are 4 predefined Quick Steps in Outlook (as part of Office 365): Move to, To Manager, Team Email , and Reply & Delete .

You'll need to configure these items with the correct recipient email addresses and preferred folders before you can use them for the first time. To use Move to , follow the steps below:

• From the Home tab , click Move to from the Quick Steps section .

• In the First Time Setup dialog box , select the folder where you want to move the email and rename the Quick Step if necessary.
• Click Save and you're ready to move emails quickly.
• Select the email you want to move to another folder and click the saved Quick Step from the Home tab . Outlook will directly move the email to the configured folder.

You can configure other default Quick Steps in a similar way. You may also be interested in learning how to archive emails in Microsoft Outlook on your computer .

How to Create a Custom Quick Step in Microsoft Outlook

If you find that the default Quick Steps don't fit your workflow, you can easily create a custom Quick Step. It can be a simple action, like deleting or forwarding an email, or a series of actions, like forwarding an email to a colleague and then moving it to a dedicated folder.

Once set up, you can automate these routine tasks with just one click. This example will create a custom Quick Step in Microsoft Outlook:

• Move email to another folder
• Mark email as unread
• Forward email to colleague
• Mark email as important

Here's how we'll set it up:

• Select the Create New option from the Quick Steps tab group in Home .

• Name your Quick Step in the Name field (for example, we'll name it Demo ).
• From the drop-down list in the Actions section , first select Move to folder and specify the destination folder.
• Click the Add Action button and select Mark as unread .
• Again, click Add Action to set up email forwarding and select Forward .
• In the To… field , enter the email address you want to forward the email to, or select an address from your address book.

• Finally, click Add Action to put it into flag state.
• Optionally, you can also set Shortcut key from the drop-down list.
• When you're ready, click Finish .
• You can use your custom Quick Step from the Quick Steps section or a configured shortcut.

Quick Steps in Microsoft Outlook is a testament to Outlook's reputation as a professional email application that makes everyday tasks easy. If you're thinking about switching to Microsoft Outlook, you might be pleasantly surprised by the features other email applications have.