Technology Tip of the Week - December 14, 2005

Organizing Your E-Mail - Using Folders and Filters

Are you drowning in e-mail messages? Outlook has a great feature that allows you to automatically filter mail directly into folders to help you organize your messages and guarantee that you'll see the important ones first. The first step in organizing your mail is to create folders. For example you could create a separate folder for each course that you teach. To create a folder in Outlook:

Open Outlook on your computer

From the menu, click on File - New - Folder.

Type in a meaningful folder name to help you identify the contents, for example Comp I.

Click on OK. The new folder should now appear in your folder list on the left.

Once you have your folder in place, you can now set up a filter to automatically transfer all related incoming messages into the folder. Note that it is important to have a condition to identify a message from a group in order to filter it into a folder. A good way to accomplish this with class mail is to require the students to always put their course code in the subject line of any message they send you. That way you can filter by the course code in the subject line. If you wanted to filter all the Tips of the Week into a separate folder, you could create a folder called Tips and then create a rule that looks for any message with Tip of the Week If you are filtering messages from a listserv you belong to, you could filter by the name of the listserv in the From field. You can even filter junk mail directly into your Delete folder so you never have to look at it!

Open Outlook. Click on Tools - Rules and Alerts...

Click on New Rule... button

Click on Start creating a rule from a template

Click on the template that is most appropriate to your goal. For instance if you want to filter all the mail messages sent from your department chairperson, select the rule to move messages from someone to a folder. If you want to filter messages coming in on a topic or from a student in a course, you could select to move messages with specific words in the subject to a folder. Click on the Next button.

Scroll down under Step 2, click on the underlined links to provide the conditions. For instance if you chose to move messages from someone to a folder, you would click on the link to people or distribution list and type in the address - OK. Then click on the link to specified folder and choose the folder you created for these messages. If you want to move messages with specific words in the subject line, click on the specific words link and type in the words that would usually appear in the subject line - for example, CCRI Tip of the Week. Then click on the Tips folder as the location to move the messages to. Once both pieces of information are in place, click on Next.

Select the action to take with the messages that meet your conditions. For example, you would choose move it to the specified folder. Click on the Next button. Scroll down the list of exceptions to see if any of them apply. Click next to any that apply or leave them all blank. Click on the Next button.

Type in a meaningful name for the rule, for example a person's name or the topic. Verify that the checkbox is checked next to Turn on this rule. Click on the Finish button. That's it! Now every message that comes in that meets the criteria that you set will be automatically moved into a folder.

For more detailed instructions with screen shots on Creating Folders in Outlook 2003

For more detailed instructions with screen shots on Filtering Messages in Outlook 2003

Article of the Week

Active Learning with PowerPoint by Bill Rozaitis and Paul Baepler, 2005, of the Center for Teaching and Learning Services at the University of Minnesota

This article is full of great ideas for using PowerPoint to create active learning opportunities in your classroom. Topics include using PowerPoint for active lecturing, active learning strategies, effective handouts, games, and formative assessments. Enjoy!

Log in to the Teaching Forum and add your experiences in using PowerPoint in your classroom to the message board.

These tips are provided by the Department of Information Technology instructional support team. If you have any questions on these tips, or wish to offer your own, please feel free to contact Linda Beith at lbeith@ccri.edu. View an archive of past technology tips