Often, an application gives us capabilities that we do not know how to exploit. One of these applications is Outlook within Office365. An application with features, you probably don’t know that even exist. In this article we will focus on the 6 features we have seen that have the greatest impact.

Retrieve deleted messages (even if you deleted them from the “deleted items” folder)

Sometimes, you delete email messages accidentally. Often, you look for those messages in the “Deleted Items” folder and you can’t find them either. Did you know that in Office365, even if you delete your messages, the system keeps them in a “hidden” place for 14 days? To find these messages go to the “Deleted Items” folder (1), select “Recover Deleted Items from Server” (2), select “Restore Selected Items” (3) and in the menu that opens select the messages you want to recover (4).

Share your calendar with your associates

In many cases you want to share your calendar with your associates. You can give them access by choosing your calendar (1), clicking “Share Calendar” (2), selecting the details you want them to be able to see (title, free / busy, or all details) (3), selecting “add … ” (4) and adding the emails of the partners you want to give access to (5).

Ignore all those annoying emails

You’ve seen it before… You’ve been added (CC) in an email conversation and you get bombarded with messages that you do not care about. There is an option, within outlook, from which you can set to ignore these annoying messages. Select the applicable message (1), click Ignore (2), and select “Ignore this conversation” (3). Be careful though, this option does not ignore all messages from the specified recipient, it ignores only the messages of this particular conversation.

Cleanup your Inbox

Often your inbox is filled with messages that you don’t care about. There is an easy way to cleanup those messages. Go to outlook web access (https://outlook.office365.com), select the message (recipient) you want to “cleanup” (1), click sweep (2), and in the menu that opens choose to transfer the messages of the intended recipient to the “Deleted Items” folder (3).

Another useful option, especially for notifications from banks, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., is to set the system to retain only the last message of the intended recipient (A).

Defer sending your emails at a specific point in time

Have you ever wanted to be able to schedule sending an email at a specific point in time? When composing an email, instead of clicking “Send”, go to options (1), select Delay Delivery (2), and in the “Do Not Deliver Before” option, put the date and time you want the message to be sent (3). Then, click on Send (4). The message will get stuck in the “outbox” folder, until it gets delivered at the time you previously set.

Create useful shortcuts

There are actions that you perform quite often, like printing. For this reason, you can add quick shortcuts to the “Quick Access Toolbar” (blue stripe at the top of Outlook). This is accomplished by selecting the “down arrow” (1) and the command that you want to create the shortcut for (ex. print) (2).