Is your Outlook inbox getting out of control?

Do you spend too much time scrolling through thousands of old emails every day?

Here are some simple tips to help you get your inbox down to zero.

iPhone 16e with iPhone 16 Plus and iPhone 16 Pro in hand against grey wall.

Move all of your non-urgent emails out of your inbox.

Archive Items

A quick way to clear out your inbox is to archive old or inactive items.

Use Quick Steps

Quick Steps are a great way to combine multiple actions into a single step.

An Excel table with a named range.

You cancreate your own Quick Steps in Outlookand use the few basic in-built ones.

Enter a name for your Quick Step and select an action you want to perform.

If you receive hundreds of emails a day, this may get overwhelming quickly.

Outlook folder structure highlighting “Important” and “Non-Ugent” folders.

You dont have to handle every email manually.

I prefer that an item is deleted when I swipe left and marked as read when I swipe right.

But that’s often difficult when emails require a follow-up task or other action.

Outlook’s Focused Inbox option.

If you want to copy the attachment, hold down the right mouse button as you drag the item.

When you do this, a menu will pop up giving you the option to include the attachment.

A long conversation with multiple recipients may create many redundant emails.

How to archive emails

To access these tools, opt for “File” menu and opt for “Tools” button.

Empty Deleted Items

The Empty Deleted Items tool does exactly that.

It will delete all the emails and email folders that are in the “Deleted” folder.

Outlook Quick Steps menu.

Creating a new Quick Step in Microsoft Outlook.

Outlook Mobile’s Settings menu.

Configuring Outlook Mobile’s Swipe Options

Outlook Clean Up Conversation context menu.

Outlook’s Mailbox Clean Up Tools.

Outlook’s Mailbox Cleanup tool.