Outlook 2003 adds several capabilities for searching and sorting through email. Anyone used to the drudgery of manually sorting messages into a hierarchical folder system will appreciate Search Folders, which can effectively automate the process. Rather than actually moving email into particular folders, you can use Search Folders to find what you need, when you need it.

  New Thinking

Search Folders are more like categories than folders in that they sort messages rather than store them. Mail you find inside a Search Folder is actually stored somewhere else, such as the Inbox or any of your other folders. The Search Folder lets you see messages that have particular criteria in common regardless of the folder in which they reside.

To see for yourself, take a look at the folder list on the left side of the Outlook 2003 screen. If you don’t see your Personal Folders, click View and make sure there’s a check mark next to Navigation Pane. In the Navigation Pane, click the Mail button near the bottom-left corner of the screen. In the All Mail Folders, look for your personal folders and click the small plus sign (+), if necessary, to expand the folder list. The last entry will be Search Folders.

Click one of the Search Folders and the program gathers all of the matching messages into the main section of the screen. Outlook 2003 has three default Search Folders: For Follow Up, Large Mail, and Unread Mail. Within these Search Folders are subcategories. For instance, if you click Large Mail, messages will be sorted into Large, Very Large, Huge, and Enormous. For Follow Up pulls together messages that you have flagged.

A message in a Search Folder can be acted upon just as if you had located it inside the actual folder where it is stored. Remember that the messages you see inside a Search Folder are the actual messages, not copies. If you change or delete a message you see in a Search Folder, it is changed or deleted as if you had accessed it the old-fashioned way.

  Choices

Many other types of Search Folders await. Right-click Search Folders and choose New Search Folder. You’ll see a small dialog box with a list of new Search Folder candidates. Choose one of these for quick Search Folder creation.

For example, at the top of the list sits an Unread Mail option. Select this and click OK. A new Unread Mail folder appears with the other Search Folders. Click it, and Outlook displays all messages marked as unread. As before, subcategories group the messages, this time by their actual folders.

Another useful choice can be found under the Mail From People And Lists heading in the New Search Folder dialog box. Mail from and to specific people will quickly create a view of all messages relating to a person you choose. With this kind of Search Folder in action, there’s no need to tediously sort email into folders named after your contacts. Rely on Search Folders to automatically group the messages.

  Home Brew

At the bottom of the New Search Folder dialog box is Create A Custom Search Folder. Select this choice and click the Choose button. Give the folder a name—you can skip this step for now if you are just exploring—and click Criteria.

Users familiar with Outlook’s Search function will recognize the Search Folder Criteria dialog box. Here are detailed options for narrowing a search in any number of different ways. For instance, you might create a Search Folder based on a particular key word or phrase found within a message or its subject line. Combine criteria for detailed searches. Old hands should try out the Advanced tab, which lets users build complex criteria based on any mail field Outlook uses.

Theoretically, Search Folders could be the sole way you manage email. Consider keeping all of your old messages in a single folder and then using Search Folders to group email in different ways. The stack of messages that arrives every day might seem more manageable. Act on pressing email and let Search Folders find everything else as the need arises.