Supercharge Outlook Notes

Look around your desk. Are there notes and scraps of paper taped to the monitor, to the wall, or on your keyboard? It's time to put the power of Outlook Notes to good use to better organize your work.

Notes are simple enough to create in Outlook. Anywhere in Outlook, press SHIFT+CTRL+N, and you're ready to type your note. But soon, you'll have a number of electronic versions of your scraps of paper — you've saved a tree and your desk looks neater, but you haven't done much toward getting better organized. Now it's time to combine notes with other Outlook features.

Categorize your notes

Categories give you a way to keep track of items with a common theme. You can create a category for customers to call, for a project you're working on, or just about any other grouping category you want.

1. Open a note.
2. Click the icon in the upper-left corner of the note.
3. Click Categories, and then select a category from the list or type a new category name.

Viewing notes by category

1. In the Outlook Bar, click Notes.
2. On the View menu, point to Current view, and then click By Category.

Color your notes

By default, Outlook notes are yellow. You can change the note color to one of four other colors.

1. Open a note.
2. Click the icon in the upper-left corner of the note.
3. Point to Color, then select a new color for the note background.

Link your notes to contacts

If your note pertains to one of your contacts, you can associate the note with that contact.

1. Open a note.
2. Click the icon in the upper-left corner of the note.
3. Click Contacts, then type the name of the contact to link to this note.

In the future when you open the note, you can click the icon in the upper-left corner and then click Contacts. When you double-click the contact name, the Outlook contact record opens. I want to share my experience with Microsoft Outlook support and Computer Help