Turning Emails into Appointments - More Options!

Outlook-Emails-Appointment-More-Options
 

There are additional options available in Microsoft Outlook for turning Emails into Appointments that provide even more features and functions to help speed your Email Processing and Triage capabilities.

In a prior post, I showed a technique for quickly and easily turning Email messages into Calendar Appointments in Microsoft Outlook.

I showed how you can simply drag an Email to your Calendar Icon and an Appointment would be created.

However, what I didn't mention is that there are several additional options that are available to you if you first "right-click the Email" before dragging it to the Calendar Icon.

Here is how to get these additional Email to Calendar Options in Microsoft Outlook:

Just "right-click" an Email in your Inbox and then "drag" it down to your Outlook "Calendar Icon".

Outlook Email Right-Click Drag-Drop to Calendar

You will then be presented with several additional options:

Right-Click Email to Calendar Additional Options

Here are what these options allow you to do:

  • Copy Here as Appointment with Text - This turns the Email into a Calendar Appointment with the Email Subject as the Appointment Subject and the Email Text as the body of the Appointment. All you need to do is to choose a date/time and you can schedule it onto your calendar. This is helpful when this is an important item that you want to schedule to ensure you perform it at a specific time. This is what happens if you just drag the Email to the Calendar without first using the "right-click".

  • Copy Here as Appointment with Shortcut - This performs the same function as above, but instead of the text of the Email appearing in the body of the appointment, a "shortcut" to the Email appears. If you click  the Email shortcut, you are brought to that Email message. The Email itself isn't copied, only the shortcut to the location of the Email. This is important to know since it means that if you turn this Appointment into a Meeting Request, the recipients won't be able to view the Email since they won't have access to the Email, since it is sitting in your Inbox folders.

  • Copy Here as Appointment with Attachment - This performs the same functions as above, but this time, the Email message is included in the Appointment as an "embedded attachment". Double-clicking this Email attachment will always open the complete Email, regardless of where it is currently located, since it is a full copy of the message.

  • Move Here as Appointment with Attachment - This also creates an appointment with the Email as an attachment, but the Email is removed from its original location and now exists only within the Appointment.  This means that if you delete this Appointment, you will lose the attached Email! But this is useful if you don't need to keep the Email around after turning it into an appointment.  One less Email to have to manage!

  • Copy Here as Meeting Request - This creates a "meeting request" that contains the Email subject as the meeting subject, the Email body as the meeting body, and the "attendees" from the "TO" and "CC" fields from the Email. This is a very handy feature if you want to quickly invite everyone copied on an Email to a meeting.

Ok.. There you have it.  These are some great techniques to improve your Email processing and triage capabilities.

I especially use the option to turn an Email directly into a Meeting Request that contains all the names on the Email as invitees. I use that one all the time!
— Michael Einstein


Do you have any other helpful Email to Appointment Tips or Tricks in Microsoft Outlook?

How about any in Gmail or other Email clients?

Feel free to share your ideas!