Use Quick Steps to process messages

- [Instructor] A Quick Step is a feature of Outlook in which you manually trigger a sequence of events to process a message. Unlike rules, which trigger automatically, you can easily trigger a Quick Step on whatever emails you like and what fits your needs at the time. Quick Steps are on the Home ribbon tab in the Quick Steps area. With your message selected, you can click the Quick Steps rule. For example, clicking To Manager will forward the selected email to your manager. The first time you use the tool, you'll be prompted to tell Outlook who your manager is.

We can create a new Quick Step. For example, let's move this newsletter into a folder that I've already created called To Read. I'll click the drop-down arrow next to Quick Steps, and I'll hover my mouse over New Quick Step. I'll choose Move to Folder. I can give this one a name. I'll call it To Read. Under Actions, I'll choose to move it to a folder. I'll select the folder that I've already created, and I'm going to uncheck Mark as read. I don't want it to be marked as read because that way I'll know and I'll get visual notification that there's something in the folder.

I'll click Finish, and my Quick Step is created. Now when I'm going through my emails, I can select my newsletter, choose the To Read Quick Step that we just created, it gets moved from the view inside my Inbox, and I can come over to To Read and there it is. Let's go back to the Inbox. Because Quick Steps can be much more complex than that, let's create a multi-step Quick Step. I wanna create a generic approval process in which, if something comes to me that I need to approve, I can move it into a folder called Approvals, send a message back saying that I approve it, and I can also initiate a meeting about it with Jenny if need be.

Let's create our Quick Step. I'll click the down arrow, hover my mouse over New Quick Step, and this time I'm gonna scroll all the way to the bottom and choose Custom. The first thing I'll do is give it a name. I'll call it Approval. Now I need to select an action. The first action is going to be to move to a folder. I'll select Choose Folder. I need to have already created the folder ahead of time. In this case, I did, and it's called Approvals. I'm going to add an action, so I'll click Add Action to create my second one.

The second one is that it was going to send an email back saying that I approve. So I'll scroll to the bottom and choose respond with a Reply. I'll click Show Options, and here's where I can set the message details. I can add a Cc or a blind carbon copy if I need to. I can also alter the subject line if I want. In addition, I can add my own custom text. I'm going to click Add Action one more time.

I'll select Choose an Action again. Our final action will be to create a meeting. So let's scroll to the bottom. I'll choose New Meeting. I'll click Show Options again. This time, I'm going to address my new meeting to Jenny. I can create a subject. I can add a location if I want. And then I can create the body of the meeting request. And finally, I'll choose Finish down at the bottom.

My Quick Step has been created. Let's take a look at this email that we want to apply it to. Here's an email that Leslie sent. She's saying, "Take a look at this, "and let me know if you have any changes." It's a PDF file that doesn't need any changes. I need to approve this. So with the message selected, I'll click Approval. Here's my meeting invitation with Jenny. I can change any details that I want. I can set the start time and the end time. When I'm ready, I'll click Send.

And here's my reply back to Leslie that says I approve. I'll click Send, and off it goes. Finally, the message itself will have been moved into my Approvals folder. With one click of a button, three actions occurred. I can now apply the same Quick Step whenever I need to make a new approval.