Luckily, Outlook has a few simple tools that can make a huge difference without creating complicated folders or systems.
🎨 Use Categories to Organize Visually
Categories let you add colour labels to emails so you can quickly spot important messages.
You could create categories like:
- 🔵 Staff
- 🟢 Parents
- 🟣 Tech Tips 😉
- 🟠 Urgent
- 🟡 To Read Later
👉 Right-click an email → Categorize → choose a colour or click on New category and set one up.
🚩 Flag Emails You Need to Return To
Instead of leaving emails unread forever, try using Flags.
Click the little 🚩 beside an email to mark it as something you need to follow up on later.
This works great for:
- emails you don’t want to forget to read later
- people to reply to
- tasks you can’t do immediately
Interacting with PDFs
One of the most frequently asked question we get is how can students interact with PDFs that are provided to them by the teacher. With the right tools, students can listen, highlight, write on them, annotate on them and even use dictate tools for speech to text.
Our district supports two tools:
- OrbitNote (browser extension)
- Microsoft Edge (built-in)
ORBITNOTE: 👉 OrbitNote is designed specifically to make PDFs accessible, interactive, and student-friendly.
With OrbitNote students can:
- 🔊 Listen to text (it reads aloud and highlights words)
- ✏️ Highlight and add notes
- 🖊️ Draw, write or type on the page
- 🎤 Leave voice comments
- 🌍 Translate and define words
- 🧾 Collect Vocab / Highlighted Lists
- 💻 Convert Non-accessible PDFs using OCR function
- 🖱️Right click any PDF and “Open with” > Edge
- 🔊 Read aloud (listen to the text)
- ✏️ Highlight important parts
- 🖊️ Draw, write or type on the page
- 📄 Fill out worksheets and save them
This is perfect when you are presenting and would like to demo an app in another window. You don’t have to minimize or close the current app to access the other.
Deleting Autocomplete Email Addresses
Have you ever noticed that Outlook sometimes automatically finds and completes email addresses for you? This is great if the email addresses are correct or relevant, but as we accumulate email addresses throughout the year, we often have “suggested” emails we no longer want. Sometimes we even accidentally click on those emails and either have an email sent to the incorrect address OR not sent at all.
Good news, these can easily be deleted. It is as easy as clicking the “X” next to the recipient’s name when the mouse is hovered over it. This will prevent the recipient’s name from showing up at the top of your list and you accidentally clicking it.
Windows Key + H – Dictate Anywhere
Do you like to use “Dictate” in the Microsoft Office products but it doesn’t work once you’re in other applications or on the internet.
💡 Did You Know…?
🔉 ⌨ Windows has a quick key combo that allows you to use speech-to-text in any text box available. This magic combo is Windows Key + H.
Want to learn more about this? Use the link below to navigate to the learn71.ca page.
Keyboard Combo to use Speech-to-Text in any Text Box> Windows Key + Letter H
