Previous versions of Outlook each offered an Organize pane which allowed users to quickly apply colors to messages from specific users.
This is Outlook 2007's Organize pane:
The Organize pane was removed from Outlook 2010. Instead, users will need to create Conditional formatting rules in the view. While this is more work, especially for simple rules, I believe it will reduce confusion – many users had no idea that Organizer created Automatic formatting rules in the current view. When they changed views or moved items to other folders, the coloring was lost and they had no idea why. (Using the /Cleanviews switch will erase all custom views, including those created using Organize or Conditional formatting. )
Note: Automatic formatting was renamed Conditional formatting in Outlook 2010 to better reflect what the feature does.
Video Tutorial
Create Conditional Formatting Rules in a View
To create Conditional formatting rules, you need to open the Advanced View Settings dialog. There are several ways to get to this dialog in Outlook 2010, the easiest is to switch to the View tab, then click the View settings button.
Now click the Conditional Formatting button, then click Add to create your formatting rules.
Conditional Formatting Tips
To format all messages from a domain, add the domain name to the From field on the General tab. When you use the From field on the Advanced tab, Outlook looks at the Display name field, not the email address field.
Rules are tied together using the AND operator. A single rules From Mary OR To Mark is not possible unless you enable the QueryBuilder.
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Last reviewed on Sep 28, 2011
All I would like to do is color code the names of incoming emails, for example all the emails from my teammates are in red, the ones from my principal are in purple, etc. How do i do that ?
You need to create a custom view with conditional formatting. Getting the teammates will be more difficult than single addresses – it might be easier to use rules to set a category (“Teammates”) then apply formatting to mail in the Teammates category.