In the case of the Inbox, the menu bar also includes Archive, Junk, and Sweep. This is designed to make it easy for users to categorize items. Note the prominent position categories receive in the menu bar on top of the item list for a folder. When we select a category, OWA lists all items in that category from any folder in the mailbox.įigure 1: OWA lists items in a favored category (image credit: Tony Redmond) I use the Airline ticket category to mark bookings so that I can find them quickly. The favorites list contains three categories (Exchange, Office 365, and Airline ticket). Clicking a category in the favorites list tells OWA to apply the filter and display matching items.įigure 1 shows categories in action. When you add categories as favorites, you’re essentially creating filters for OWA to apply to items. The change introduced in the new OWA is to allow users to mark categories as favorites so that categories appear with the other kinds of favorites (people, groups, and folders). Those who know how categories work are happy, but even when you sort messages by category, it can sometimes be difficult to find an individual item. Categories are very personal.Īll of this is good. If you add a category to an outbound message, it is stripped before delivery to the recipient. You can only assign categories to items in a mailbox. Usefully, when you add a category to an item, it is inherited by other items in that conversation. Outlook also displays the category in the message header. When you assign a category to a message, Outlook adds the category to the metadata kept for the message, which means that you can sort by the category. You can assign multiple categories to an item, meaning that judicious use of categories gives great flexibility for labeling items. To go back to basics for a moment, a category is a user-controlled label that can be assigned to a mailbox item. The new OWA interface is available to Exchange Online users but not to Exchange on-premises. That doesn’t sound earthshattering by itself, but it’s very useful in practice. The change is that categories can now be added to the set of Outlook favorites. SMALL ENGINE PARTS HOW TOIn any case, a small but interesting change in the new OWA interface might make you reconsider how to use categories. And other clients connected to Exchange via protocols like ActiveSync don’t either. SMALL ENGINE PARTS ANDROIDOutlook and OWA support categories, but the Outlook for iOS and Android clients do not. For example, if the mailbox handled customer complaints, the categories might include “Urgent Customer Issue” or “Awaiting Further Information.” A shared mailbox has its own set of categories that are not dependent on the categories defined in the personal mailboxes of those who process items in the shared mailbox. Certainly, that’s how I have used categories over the years.Īnother common use case is where people processing email in a shared mailbox assign categories to mark items in different ways. How-to recipes for successful use of categories exist on the internet (here is an example and here’s another), but my guess is that the biggest use of categories is to add color to calendar items (each category has a color). The ability to categorize Outlook items has been available since Outlook 2003, yet few probably know or use the feature.
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