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Spot the rotten fruit in your Inbox

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As a follow-up to my earlier post about message expiry settings, you might also like to customise your Inbox view to alert you to expired messages you have received. Here's what I do:

  • In Outlook go to the Inbox
  • Either right-click on an empty space in the Inbox message header window and choose Customize Current View or go to the View menu, select Arrange By then Current View, then Customize Current View
  • Click the Automatic Formatting button
  • Click Add
  • Enter a names like Expired Emails
  • Click Font... and selected the formatting that you'd like Outlook to apply to all expired emails in your Inbox (I use a strikeout effect so expired emails are effectively crossed out in my Inbox. I can still read them if I wish but I instantly know that they're out of date without having to consult the Info Bar)
  • Click Condition... then the Advanced tab
  • Click the Field drop down box and select All Mail fields then Expires
  • In the Condition drop down box select on or before
  • In the value box enter the word now
  • Click Add to List then OK 3 times
  • That's it

All emails in your Inbox that are expired will now be formatted just as you'd like them to be. Now if you could only teach your fellow Outlookers to make better use of the message expiry feature we could all avoid reading a lot of out of date messages.