I have been a Microsoft Outlook user for years.  It helps me keep up with my appointments, it reminds me of conference calls and even notifies me when a friend or family member is about to have a birthday - not that I ever forget any of them! ;)

Perhaps the most overlooked productivity tool in Outlook and Outlook Express, is the email portion, itself.  For years, I kept every single email that I wanted to keep in the inbox folder.  As time went bye, I ended up having over 12,000 emails in my inbox!  Outlook got slow, and it really hurt my productivity.  I wasn’t sure which emails I had responded to, and which i had yet to respond to.  Very frustrating - especially when you want to search for an email!

It is very possible that you are already doing this, and if so, then you are a step ahead of the pack.  If you have not already done so, start organizing your emails in folders.  That’s right - simply right click on the inbox item to the left of your screen in your Outlook/Outlook Express program, and select the option that allows you to create a folder.  You can create a folder for each of your clients, vendors, employees, leads, etc.  This way, you can keep your inbox from overwhelming you, plus you can keep a very good handle on what emails you need to respond to by simply not filing them until they are responded to.  Right now, I probably have over 100 folders, and it has worked wonderfully for me!

Warning for Outlook 2002 Users:  Outlook 2002 can only handle 2 gigabytes of data.  It is a good idea to keep this in check.  If your outlook 2002 file gets to be over 2gb in size, it will stop functioning and the odds are, you will lose your emails!  It is recommended that you save the large attachments in your email to your harddrive, and simply delete the attachment from outlook, or upgrade your outlook version.  To see the size of your outlook file, simply open up outlook, click on tools > mailbox cleanup.  It should be the first option you see.

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