- [Narrator] In Outlook, categories cross
all the applications.
The same categories list is used
in the calendar, in email, in contacts, and so on.
But I love categories in my calendar.
I can assign multiple categories to any Outlook item.
For example, if I create a meeting that has something to do
with a budget, I can assign a budget category
but I can also assign a project name category
if it's about the budget for a particular project.
Outlook comes out of the box
with built-in categories like orange category,
blue category, yellow category, and so on.
And we modify these categories by changing their names
but we can add more categories.
And when we sort and filter by category,
Outlook uses the text associated with the category,
the actual category name,
so it's perfectly fine to have three
or four categories that all use the same color
if that's a help for your organizing.
To get to the categories dialog box,
I just need to have any Outlook item selected.
So I'm going to create a new meeting
on Tuesday, August 1st at 10:00 a.m.
I simply select it here in the calendar
and add a title and this is going to be a budget meeting.
If I have people I want to invite,
I simply add them in here.
There's Reggie, but I also need Charles.
Outlook's looking at their calendars
and finding suggested times,
says everyone is available at 11 apparently,
not necessarily at 10, so I will try 11 o'clock.
Notice that that shifts.
I can add a room or a location.
This is not a Teams meeting, it's an in-person meeting.
Now I can click more options
and have access to my entire ribbon.
And what I'd like to do is categorize this
as budget and finance.
Now this is a category I created previously.
It's got a green color to it.
It's a meeting so Outlook AI says, ah, it's a meeting.
I'll put a couple of conversation bubbles
to be able to display that that's a meeting on the calendar
and if I wanted to add more information, I could.
If I wanted to add another category,
I can do that, though.
I already have budget finance.
I'm also going to add planning
and now I have budget finance and planning, both categories.
So if I were to search for this particular meeting,
I could search for either the budget category
or the planning category.
That would work just fine.
When I'm all done, I'm going to simply send this
and it appears here on my calendar with the icon
and it shows that I am the owner of this particular meeting.
When I first started using categories,
I went crazy with them in my calendar,
and my calendar is full
of colors that provide meaning for me.
I was not so hot on using categories
in my inbox until I realized the power of search
because categories are, in fact, like hashtags for email.
If I assign a category in an email,
it's easy for me then to search for that category later on.
Categories provide an Outlook-wide organizational
method that is visually appealing in the calendar
and powerful for search everywhere in Outlook.