And so Valentine's Day came and went and I was not overlooked. I went down to my mailbox and there, among the white and buff envelopes of the rest of the mail, was a red one standing out like a dollop of strawberry jam on white bread with buff crusts. I knew exactly what that envelope contained without even opening it, as the scarlet paper was a telltale sign of its contents. While the Valentine card envelope was a dead giveaway, quite often we don't know where a letter is from until we open it. This is not the case with email in Microsoft Outlook.

You can add eye-catching colour coding to the mails in your inbox quite simply, not for the fun aspect, but for practical purposes. If you receive a lot of emails each day, you might want to colour the incoming mails of important clients so they stand out from the crowd. For example, an email in bright orange letters would be more conspicuous among the standard black type of the rest of your inbox, and just like that red envelope, you would know at a glance exactly what the mail related to. If you are dealing with a client whose mails must take priority then this is a good way of alerting yourself to each new message.

It is really easy to arrange your inbox with a different colour for each of your regular contacts. Go to Tools and then Organise and you will see a list with the option Using Colours. Select this and where it says Colour Messages From, enter the email address of the contact whose messages you wish to apply colour to. Then from the colour menu select whichever one you wish to use for this contact and click Apply. Close this box and you are done.

You could take the colour coding aspect of this a step further by colouring the mails in line with the prominent colour on the logo of the firm they relate to.

In Outlook 2007 you can colour code appointments in your calendar too. This could be useful if, for example, you have appointments that are at different stages with clients. I used to have appointments with clients regarding the setting up of websites. If I had used colour coding in my calendar I could see at a glance exactly the types of appointment I had for that day.

For example, a new client I was meeting for the first time could be highlighted red. A client I had seen before, but who had not yet decided to go ahead would be yellow and, you may be ahead of me here, a client who had commissioned us to produce their website would be green. This would have been very useful, as I could have seen immediately how much of each day was to be taken up in seeking new work and how much of it was actually earning money.

To colour code your calendar in Outlook 2007, select an event and right click. Choose Categorise and select a colour from the menu. This will highlight that entry in your chosen colour.

There is so much more to Microsoft Outlook that everyday emails. It is the king of personal information managers, holding many more practical tips and hints like the ones above. Sign up for training in the use of Outlook and see the bigger picture for yourself.