If your inbox is running your workday instead of the other way around, this is the day that turns Outlook into a workspace rather than a fire hose.
Who delivers this: Christopher Ross · Microsoft Office trainer for professional and administrative teams · classroom training delivery since 2004 · MA Candidate, Learning and Technology, Royal Roads University
Outlook 101 is the practical day for people who already live in Outlook and want it to stop being a source of background stress. I teach it because the inbox is rarely the real problem. The real problem is that most people treat every email as a decision they have to make right now, and a day of that is exhausting before lunch. By the end of this day you will have a working triage routine, your calendar will protect the time you actually need to do work in, and you will leave with a small set of habits that compound across the next six months rather than a list of features to memorise.
Who this is for
- Fit. Professionals, executive assistants, project managers, and team leads handling 50–300 emails a day and a calendar that someone else can put meetings on.
- Fit. New managers inheriting a busy inbox and the email habits of their predecessor, without the time to figure it out by trial and error.
- Fit. Teams switching to Outlook from Gmail or another mail client and wanting the conversion to actually land rather than leave half the team using webmail.
- Not fit. Anyone hoping for productivity-guru philosophy. This is an Outlook day, not a personal-development workshop, and I will keep it practical.
- Not fit. People who want to be taught keyboard shortcuts as the point of the day. Shortcuts come up where they earn their place; they are not the point.
Prerequisites: a working Outlook account (Microsoft 365 desktop, Outlook on the web, or the Outlook app for Windows or Mac), and an inbox you can show me with real volume in it. That is the bar.
What you’ll be able to do after
- Run a four-fold inbox triage in under fifteen minutes a day (delete, respond, defer, file) without thinking about it.
- Build Search Folders and Rules that handle the routine traffic before it lands in your view.
- Use the calendar as default-busy rather than default-available, with focus blocks that survive a meeting request from your boss.
- Capture tasks from email without context-switching out of the inbox, and review them on a cadence that means they actually happen.
- Run Quick Steps for the multi-action tasks you do every week, so a five-click sequence becomes one.
- Send email at the right time using delayed send, and read your own outgoing email like a stranger before it lands in someone’s inbox.
The day, block by block
- Empty the visible inbox in fifteen minutes without dropping anything. You will learn the only four things that should ever happen to an email: delete, respond, defer, file. We set up the triage pass at the start of the day, the working pass mid-morning, and the close pass before you log off. We build Search Folders for the things you look at every day and Rules for the things you should never have to look at. In the room, the moment that lands is when someone realises “reply within 24 hours” was the wrong target all along.
- Make the calendar protect your time instead of giving it away. You will switch from default-available to default-busy and build focus blocks that survive a meeting invite from your boss. We cover working hours, time zones, and the “optional” checkbox most people never use, the recurring meeting that should have been a one-line email, and booking links and Microsoft Bookings where they earn their place. What I watch people do is leave the calendar wide open and then wonder where the day went; this block fixes that.
- Turn the things you do every week into one click. You will capture a task from an email without breaking focus, and we look honestly at the To Do integration and where it falls short. Then we build Quick Steps for the multi-action sequences that come up weekly, archive-and-flag, move-and-categorise, forward-with-template, and set up Categories that mean something instead of a rainbow of colours nobody remembers. The habit I want you to leave with is collapsing the five-click sequence to a single button.
- Set up the small habits that quietly keep the inbox calm. You will set delayed send, signatures that respect everyone’s time, and out-of-office that actually does its job, including the autoreply hygiene that stops two people emailing each other’s autoreplies forever after they both leave the office. We finish with the end-of-week review that takes ten minutes and resets the inbox before Monday. This is the block people tell me they keep using six months later.
Real examples we’ll work through
- A live triage of your actual inbox: thirty minutes in, the visible queue is half what it was, and you know why.
- A Search Folder for the recurring meeting requests you would rather batch than handle each as they arrive.
- A Quick Step for the five-click sequence you do every week, collapsed to one button.
Where this fits in the Microsoft Outlook track
Shaped for: Professionals, executive assistants, and team leads handling high email volume, a busy calendar, and a task list that needs to actually clear.
Let me be honest about the ladder: there is no Outlook 201. Outlook 101 is the complete standalone day, and that is by design. Once triage, calendar control, Quick Steps, and the weekly review are habits, you have the part of Outlook that causes stress under control, and a second day of Outlook would be padding. When people ask me what comes next, the honest answer is one of two things. Either a different application is the real bottleneck (Excel for the numbers, Word for the documents, PowerPoint for the decks), or your team works in Outlook in a way specific enough that a tailored private session beats any catalogue course. I would rather send you to the right next thing than sell you a day you don’t need.
The full training catalogue shows how the Microsoft Office courses sit alongside the WordPress training track, and is the right place to find the real onward path.
Format, duration, and pricing
Outlook 101 runs as a single full-day class, six hours, in person across the Niagara region or online over Microsoft Teams. The two half-days across a week format works well for teams who cannot block a full day; the half-day compressed format is a working introduction rather than a complete multi-day program.
| Format | From price (CAD) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Half-day compressed (3 hr) | from $750 | A working introduction |
| Full-day class (6 hr) | from $1,495 | The standard format, online or in person |
| Two half-days across a week | from $1,495 | For teams who cannot block a full day |
In-person delivery includes room setup, reference materials, a post-training summary for managers, and travel within the Niagara region. Online delivery includes the recording if you need it. Final scope and quote confirmed on the discovery call.
Currently booking through Q3 2026. One public cohort per quarter; private team engagements scheduled separately.
Common questions
Who should take Microsoft Outlook training – level 1 (Microsoft 365/2021)?
This course is for people who already live in Outlook and want it to stop being a source of background stress. You will build a triage routine so you stop treating every email as a decision you must make right now, and a calendar that protects the time you need for real work. I have taught this in classrooms since 2004.