Microsoft Outlook is being used world wide as a generic base for companies, universities and school e-mail addresses. Its extensive use has brought about numerous changes and improvements over time to maximise the output without too much time being invested. Most recently Microsoft Outlook 2010 has introduced “Quick Steps”, which allows multiple actions being performed simultaneously, easily and quickly, saving time.

Quick steps are primarily one-click buttons, found in the centre of the Ribbon, that allow the performance of numerous actions at once. One can easily customize quick steps to suit individual needs from the Home tab and once that is done, you are ready to go. Quick steps have a wide scope, with numerous functions all aiming to maximise productivity when dealing with your mail.

The most appealing feature of Quick steps is the flexibility it offers to perform all sorts of actions in one movement, hence you must be comfortable with customizing it, changing orders, modifying or duplicating them to suit you. Hence it is mostly blank at first and requires you to fill in the actions and tasks as per your needs. To do so you would have to go to the “Manage Quick steps” tab, when a new window appears, you can change the order or the task with as much or as little detail and specificity.


If you wish to save a conversation in the archive, you can create that “step” and save it as “save in the archive” and thereon whenever you wish to do so all you have to do is click one button and the action is carried out immediately. Similarly if you wish to write an e-mail, send it as well as save it, all you need to do is create a quick step that will send the mail and save it thereafter in one motion. It is easy to set up quicksteps, as you will be prompted to do that at the start of MS Outlook 2010. You simply have to name it and specify the action or multiple actions if you so wish, select a shortcut key and when done, it will appear in the ribbon area.  Along with creating your own there will also be some preloaded quick steps, such as options to send out meeting replies or scheduled messages, which you can delete or modify as easily.

Quick step is designed solely to be compatible to every individual”s needs to the maximum, and once the setting up is over it easily becomes the best feature to appear on outlook, with a variety of complex actions, just one click away.

Suggested reading for Outlook 2010 Quick Steps:

Visit the following sites for further details about Outlook Quick Steps:

How to create and customize quick steps in MS Outlook 2010

 

Aakshey Talwar
Technical Writer