To help you keep track of those email messages that contain important information, as well as those that are related to tasks that you need to follow up on, Outlook 2003 provides an enhanced Follow Up flag feature. Using this feature, you can tag an email message with one of six different colored flags to highlight those messages you consider important. By default the flags aren’t labeled, so you can decide for yourself what level of significance to attribute to each colored flag.

To flag an email message, right-click the message, select Follow Up, and then select one of the available colored flags. Once you assign a flag to a message, the colored flag appears in the Flag Status column. After you’ve flagged your messages, you can use the arrangement feature we mentioned previously to organize your messages according to the flag color.

In addition to assigning a colored flag to an email message, you configure a reminder to appear at a specific date and time to remind you to follow up on the message. To schedule a reminder, right-click an email message, select Follow Up, and click Add Reminder. In the Flag For Follow Up dialog box, select a flag color from the Flag Color drop-down menu. Next, select a date from the pop-up calendar that appears when you open the Due Date drop-down menu. Use the adjacent drop-down list to select a time. Click OK.