The more items you keep in your mailbox, the more difficult and time consuming it can be to find and organize information. Here are some ways to reduce the clutter:

• Empty the Deleted Items folder   By default, Outlook stores items that you delete in the Deleted Items folder. You can manually delete the contents of this folder to keep it and your mailbox from getting too big, or you can automatically delete the contents each time you close Outlook. For more information, type empty deleted items in the Office Assistant or on the Answer Wizard tab, and then click Search.

• Back up rarely-used items to a separate archive file or files; delete expired items  AutoArchive is a feature that moves old items out of your mailbox and into an archive location, where you can access them if and when you need to, and discards items whose content has expired and is no longer valid. This keeps your mailbox size down, which makes it quicker and easier to locate and manage the information you use most often. For more information, type archive in the Office Assistant or on the Answer Wizard tab, and then click Search.

  Tip

  The Mailbox Cleanup tool combines the previous two features and others that help you manage the size of your mailbox. For more information, type clean up mailbox in the Office Assistant or on the Answer Wizard tab, and then click Search.

• Automatically delete or forward e-mail you receive using rules and the junk or adult content e-mail filters   Rules are a set of conditions and the actions they trigger that process and organize messages automatically. For example, if you are on a distribution list that sends out a weekly status report that you're not interested in, use a rule to automatically delete the message or forward it to someone else. The Rules Wizard helps you create rules, which Microsoft Outlook then automatically applies when messages arrive in your Inbox or at other designated times. For more information, type create rules in the Office Assistant or on the Answer Wizard tab, and then click Search.

• The junk or adult content e-mail filters automatically move these types of messages from your Inbox to a Junk E-mail folder, to your Deleted Items folder, or to any other folder that you specify. Alternatively, you can create a rule that automatically deletes this type of e-mail. For more information, type junk e-mail in the Office Assistant or on the Answer Wizard tab, and then click Search.

When organizing your mailbox, the goal is to keep related information together so that you can easily find what you're looking for and, if necessary, see a set of related information at once. However, there are different ways to relate items in your mailbox. For example, you may need to see all messages in a particular conversation thread about a specific supplier. Or, you may need to see all e-mail, meetings, other Outlook items, and documents pertaining to the supplier. Later, you may need to see all information related to all your suppliers, not just one supplier. How can you see your information from all these different perspectives? Here's how:

• Create folders for organizing related items  You use a variety of folders based on the type of Outlook item you're working with and the type of e-mail account you have. For example, you might create separate e-mail folders for personal mail, for mail related to suppliers, and for mail related to a specific project. Then, instead of searching through many messages in your Inbox, you can go directly to the folder that contains the items you want. For more information, type use folders in the Office Assistant or on the Answer Wizard tab, and then click Search.
• Categorize your information   A category is a keyword or phrase that you assign to an item to help you keep track of it. Use the same category for different types of items that are related but stored in different folders. For example, you can track all of the meetings, contacts, and messages related to your West Coast suppliers by creating a category named West Coast Suppliers and assigning those items to it.

  Categories also give you a way to keep track of items without putting them into separate folders. For example, you can keep business and personal tasks in the same task list and use the Business and Personal categories to view the tasks separately. For more information, type categories in the Office Assistant or on the Answer Wizard tab, and then click Search.

• Associate items with a specific contact   You can link any Outlook item or Microsoft Office document to a contact to help you track your activities associated with the contact. For example, you can track all the messages, meetings, documents, and other items related to a specific supplier contact. For more information, type link contact items in the Office Assistant or on the Answer Wizard tab, and then click Search.
• Use color or formatting to highlight items   When looking at a long list of items such as messages, it's difficult to find key items that you need. To make specific items stand out, such as all messages from a specific supplier, Outlook can automatically highlight the messages using color and text formatting. To do this, customize the current view or create a new view of the list of items and include automatic formatting. For more information, type highlight items in the Office Assistant or on the Answer Wizard tab, and then click Search. You can also use the Organize pane to apply color to certain messages, such as those sent from a specific person or those identified as junk e-mail.

  In Calendar, you can color individual or recurring appointments and meetings manually, or you can use rules to automatically color items that meet certain conditions, such as when a certain word is used in the subject or when a meeting request is sent by a certain person. For more information, type calendar coloring in the Office Assistant or on the Answer Wizard tab, and then click Search.

• Automatically organize items using rules   Move items into folders automatically based on certain criteria, such as who sent them or what the subject is, or assign categories to messages based on the content. For more information, type create rules in the Office Assistant or on the Answer Wizard tab, and then click Search.

After you've organized information into folders or assigned categories to items, you can see the information just the way you want by using views. Views temporarily display your information in different ways, such as all messages grouped by conversation topic or all tasks that are overdue. Some views are predefined. Others you customize, either by applying filters that temporarily hide items that don't meet certain criteria, or by applying sort orders or creating groups. For more information, type view items in Outlook window in the Office Assistant or on the Answer Wizard tab, and then click Search.