Many email clients have built-in functionality to help you organize your inbox. In Microsoft Outlook, you can use the Clean Up feature to have the system automatically move redundant, read messages to the Deleted Items folder.

To make sure emails containing requests or tasks don’t get lost in your inbox, you can copy the message to your Tasks. Luckily, you don’t have to re-enter all the information. Instead, click the message and drag it to Tasks on the navigation bar. The contents of the message, except attachments, are copied to the body of a new task. From there you can set a due date, add a reminder, or assign the task to someone else.

Finally, you can highlight and group related messages using color categories. Assign a color category to a group of interrelated items—such as notes, contacts, appointments, and email messages—so that you can quickly track and organize them. You can also assign more than one color category to items.