Reading and Deleting Messages

Module 4.1.1: Reading and Deleting Messages

When you first open Outlook, focus goes to the top message in the list of messages in your Inbox. By default, messages are arranged chronologically, with the most recently received message at the top of the list and the oldest one at the bottom. Down arrow or Up arrow to a line with information for each message. This includes the name of the sender, the subject, the date, and size of the message. If one or more files are attached to the message, this too is indicated. Press Enter to open a message. Focus will be placed at the top of the body of the message. Use standard reading keystrokes to read and navigate through the body of the message. To access other fields in the message, press Shift Tab. This will enable you to access the Subject, Date, To, and CC fields. Ordering is not consistent between the various versions of Outlook, or at least we have not been able to detect any pattern. However, if there are attachments, it is always the case that a single Shift Tab, starting from the top of the message body, brings you to the list of attachments (more on attachments below). Why is information in some of these other fields useful? Beyond just yourself, it is good to know who else has received the message, whether in the To or CC field. If the message was sent just to you, or to you and just a few others, chances are good that the sender is expecting you to reply. But if you are just one in a large group of recipients, or it has been copied to you, then you are usually being sent the message for informational purposes, and probably no response is expected from you. When finished reading the message, press Escape once. This will usually return you to the Inbox. we say “usually” because sometimes escaping tosses you out of Outlook and into another window. This often happens when you have been working with messages with attached files. When this happens, Alt Tabbing once or twice returns focus to the Inbox window. If you now want to delete the message from the Inbox, simply press the Delete key and it will be moved to your Deleted items or Trash folder. You will not be asked for a confirmation. Be diligent in deleting messages you no longer need. If thousands of messages accumulate in your Inbox, your efficiency in finding the messages you actually need will suffer. Also, be cautious about getting on lots of commercial mailing lists. In extreme cases, we have had students who received 40 or 50 messages per hour, most of which were total garbage. Their ability to find the one or two messages that actually mattered was severely hampered. In such cases, consider creating a new email account and no longer using this problematic one. Alternatively, you could unsubscribe from unwanted bulk email lists, but this is time-consuming. For some of these lists, senders purposely make it difficult to unsubscribe.