In this module, you're going to learn how to create search folders. Both predefined search folders and custom search folders. And outlook search folder is a folder you create to store the search criteria to view specific emails. Once you click on a search folder outlook is going to show you the most current results for that search. There are two types of search folders. predefined, which are one set up by Microsoft and custom search folders come in handy if there are specific searches you run on a regular basis.

Let's start by going over the steps to create a search folder that's predefined. First, make sure you're in the mail app of Outlook. And we're going to click on the folder tab. Once you click on the folder tab, we're going to go to the new group and click New Search folder. Once you click the New Search folder, it's going to open up the new search folder dialog box. And from here you would click on the preview To find search folder you wish to add.

Now if we scroll through this, we've got an area that shows reading mail. So you can see the predefined searches there, mail from people and lists, organizing mail, and custom and we'll go for custom later. For this example, we're going to set up a search folder for unread mail. Got that selected. So once we've got our criteria set up, we'll click OK. Once we do that, it's going to come over under the search folders and set up my new search criteria folder. And you can see it shows me the unread mail, there's 344 of them.

Clicked on my folder, it lists them all. Now even though this is a predefined search folder, you can do a right click on it and rename the folder. Okay, so that's how you create a predefined search folder. Now in order to do a custom one, we're going to go through some of the same steps. You need to make sure you're in Outlook in the mail app. We're going to go to the folder tab, go to the new group, and click on new search folder just like we did before.

And it's still going to bring up the new search folder dialog box. But what we're going to do at this point is we're going to scroll down to the custom area and click on create a custom search folder. Once you do that, it's going to take you to the Customize search folder area where you can specify your criteria. So in order to specify the criteria, you click the Choose button. Once you click Choose, it's going to bring up the Custom Search folder dialog box. From here we give it a name.

So for the example I'm doing for you, I'm going to have it pull all the emails from a certain email address. So now click on the criteria to set the criteria for this. Once you do that, it's going to take you out to the search folder criteria dialog box. The first tab is the messages. So this is where you can set up what you're searching for, on the message. So it's going to be from now I could come up Pick, if I had it my contact list, I don't.

So I'm going to just type it in, I can get more specific in it if I want only messages from this email that have specific words in the subject, subject and body are frequently used text. I can also say if sent to a specific person, or I can tell it where I'm the only person than the two lines. So I'll go ahead and check that one. I can also get very specific in when it was sent, received, do expired, and so forth. So when you're setting up the criteria, you can get very specific in what it's looking for. So this is all I'm going to do for the messages area.

So now you can go over and click on the more choices and see what else is available for setting up your search folder. Here we can give it categories, and we can tell it specifically what types of items. So if I click on categories, I can choose a category it belongs to. So if the message was categorized as part of my Acme project, then I will wanted to put it in there. So you can get very detailed. Like I said, with doing this, we're not going to give it a category, I just want to go through and show you some of the examples of things that are available, you can tell it only items that are unread, or red.

If I want items that have attachments, I can check that you can also set your importance and items that were flagged by me flagged completed, flagged by someone else or have no flags. So we're going to uncheck that we'll go to our advanced and this is where we can set up very detailed specific criterias. So for instance, if I want to define more criterias I can tell it for instance, the date and time it was received. Honor before I can add it to my list, and now it's going to add it so I can get very detailed and add more criterias to it as well. And you can see from the fields, I can also choose that our contact fields by post field Mail fields, you've got all of these criterias available to you. So when you're going through and setting up your search folders, take a look at all the options that are available to you.

So it's a very powerful feature that's available. Once you've got everything set up the way you want it, click OK. takes you back out, and it tells you it's going to search for mail from folders, which are in my mailbox, I can click the Browse button if I want to narrow it down to specific folders. The default is the mailbox and it will search all subfolders so if you wanted only to search a specific folder, come in here and check and check the folders that you wish to search. Click ok. Everything set the way you want to click OK. Click ok. Again, if I come into my search folders, I can see the new search folder that I had set up emails from vl. biz back@yahoo.com and I can see that I have to unread because remember it's all He's gonna show you how many were unread.

It's got all of my emails listed, there are 27 of them. Setting up search folders are great if you want to remain organized, but you're not great at follow through on dragging and dropping emails into folders, because you can set them up to search your entire mailbox. When you click on it, it's almost like you're looking at a folder where you've dragged everything, but you don't have to worry about remaining consistent, and it's not copying the email here. It's linking it back. So what it's doing is just giving you the search results. So the emails that are listed here are just the results from the search that I had set up.

If you no longer need a search folder, highlight it, do a right click and say delete folder. And then it's going to ask you if you're sure you want to permanently delete the search folder. Now it notes on there that the items contained in this folder will not be deleted because remember it did not move the items to that folder. It's just showing you the results of a search We'll go ahead and tell it Yes. And then it's removed. Remember, if you want to set up search folders, make sure you're in the mail app, go to the folder tab, new group new search folder, it's going to bring up the new search folder dialog box.

From here you can select one of the predefined searches or you can create a custom search by scrolling down and choosing custom. And again, search folders are great organizational tool. They help you stay organized even when you don't have time to do it yourself.