Tuesday TechTip – Outlook Categories

I’m continuing my Tuesday TechTips posts following setting up my new laptop for my new job this week with a post about Outlook categories. I have always been an avid user of categories but fairly recently changed my strategy. When the pandemic hit, a lot of us with already crazy schedules were slammed with even more meetings. I used to categorize my meetings by project but during the pandemic, I learned a new way to categorize meetings that has drastically changed the way I look at my calendar. I hope this helps.

First, to access categories, look at the Home tab in Outlook and you see the categories menu.

Click All Categories… and you will see this screen.

On this form you can create, edit, delete, and rename Color Categories, including assigning a shortcut key, which I highly recommend you do.

In the screenshot above you see my new scheme. For meetings, I have a three-category scheme (not pictured are two other meetings types that I use which will come into play in a future blog post, OOO & Blocking Time). The nerd in me had to use Blue, Purple, & Red because they make a scale that made sense in my mind. The labels are pretty self-explanatory but I have a couple of rules I try to follow.

1. Only one ___Must Attend (blue) may fill any given slot unless there is a chance where the meetings only overlap. If there is a conflict, it needs to be resolved or one of the meetings needs to be downgraded to a __Delegate (this decision can be made the day of).
2. When an appointment is marked as a __Delegate a meeting response of Tentative must be sent to the requestor and the meeting may or may not be forwarded to a delegate. Delegate really holds an “if possible” on the end of it but my intent is to not attend the meeting.
3. The Do not attend category is used for meetings where I know I have no intention of going, but for whatever reason I want to be aware the meeting is happening so I can follow-up if necessary.
4. Any number of __Delegate or Do not attend meetings may fill any given slot on my calendar.

Here’s how the categories look in practice:

Hopefully, this post was helpful, please let me know if there are other productivity/TechTips you would like to see in future posts.