How to Mark an Email as Important in Outlook: Simple Steps to Prioritize Emails

Importance of Marking Emails as Important in Outlook

In today's fast-paced digital world, our inboxes are constantly bombarded with a deluge of emails. To stay organized and prioritize tasks effectively, it's crucial to identify and flag important emails. Marking emails as important in Outlook allows you to visually distinguish critical messages, ensuring they don't get lost in the clutter.

• Enhanced Focus: By visually highlighting important emails, you can quickly identify and prioritize them.
• Improved Time Management: By prioritizing emails, you can allocate your time effectively and avoid wasting time on less important tasks.
• Reduced Stress: A well-organized inbox can reduce stress and improve your overall productivity.
• Better Decision-Making: By focusing on important emails, you can make informed decisions and take timely actions.

How to Set an Email as Important in Outlook

To set an email as important for convenient follow-up, you can do try the following methods.

Method 1. Use "Set this item as High Priority"

Step 1. Open outlook.com or launch the desktop application.

Step 2. Click New Email to compose a new message.

Step 3. In the Tags group on the Ribbon, select High Importance  or Low Importance .

Method 2. Use "Flag" icon

Step 1. Double-click on the email you want to star.

Step 2. Look for the Flag-shaped button in the email toolbar.

Step 3. Clicking the Flag / Unflag button will toggle the feature on or off.

Step 3. Once the flag is highlighted, the email is marked as important with a red flag icon.

Method 3. Use "Create New Rule" 

Besides, you can automatically mark emails as "important" based on your specific criteria via the "Create New Rule" feature.

Step 1. Open Outlook and click on the Setting icon on the top right corner.

Step 2. In the new window, click on "Mail"- > "Rules".

Step 3. Specify conditions like the sender's address, keywords in the subject or body, or the presence of specific words, which helps identify which emails should be marked as important. You can set more than 1 condition at the same time to make a more precise filter.

Step 4. Select "Mark as Importance" in the "Add an Action" section.

Step 5. Then you can choose importance level from "High", "Normal" and "Low". Once done, click "Save."

Method 4. Use "Categorize" 

Also, you can customize a new category for your important emails in Outlook.

Step 1. Navigate to the Setting window by clicking on the gear icon on the top right corner of Outlook Home screen.

Step 2. In the Setting window, click "Account" -> "Categories"- "+Create category".

Step 3. In the pop-out mini window, name the category as you need, here we use "Important". And choose a color for the tag.

Step 4. Then you can right-click on an important email and select the desired category.

Conclusion

Marking emails as important in Outlook is a simple yet powerful way to stay organized, prioritize your tasks, and ensure critical messages are never missed. By using methods like setting high priority, flagging emails, creating custom rules, and categorizing emails, you can streamline your inbox, enhance focus, and improve overall productivity.

Bonus Tip: How to Back up or Migrate Outlook Emails

This article explains “how to mark an email as important in Outlook?" If you’re considering backing up or migrating your Outlook, MultCloud can be extremely useful. Trusted by over 3 million users, MultCloud is a multi-cloud management tool that facilitates the transfer or synchronization of files between various cloud services. Now, it has released the Email Migration feature for backing up important emails to local or cloud drives.

For instance, you can save your Outlook emails as PDFs to your computer or cloud drives, such as Google Drive, OneDrive, or Dropbox, in bulk. MultCloud also enables you to access and manage all your cloud or Email accounts via a single application. Currently, it supports about 40 different cloud services, including Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, Box, Google Photos, iCloud Photos, FTP, WebDav, and more.