Is there a way to assign a keyboard shortcut Outlook 2011 to move email to a specified folder?

In Microsoft Outlook 2011, I'd like to be able to quickly highlight an email and move it to a folder (e.g. "Processed") with a simple keyboard shortcut.

Solution 1:

By default there isn't a shortcut to move an email to a specific folder. You can use SHIFT+⌘+M to choose the folder.

However, you can create an Applescript and then map that to a shortcut through System Preferences > Keyboard. Here is a sample script that will move emails to a folder named Processed (here is the original source if you would like to learn more).

You can save the file wherever you'd like, but the default Outlook scripts are saved in:

 ~/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Outlook Script Menu Items/

Note: as of Office 11 SP2, this location has been changed to:

 ~/Library/Application\ Support/Microsoft/Office/Outlook\ Script\ Menu\ Items/

To create the shortcut, open up the Keyboard Shortcuts panel, and under Application Shortcuts hit +. It will give you a list of applications to choose from (Outlook 2011), and then for the menu title make sure you choose the name of the name of the script as it appears in the menu.

Solution 2:

This is pretty easy in the version I'm using (14.4.6). Simply select a message and hit the Move button. Move the message to whichever folder you desire. This will create a menu item for moving to that folder in the dropdown.

Open up Keyboard Preferences and select App Shortcuts. Add a new shortcut for Microsoft Outlook. Title it 'Archive Folder Name (Name of your account)' and then select your shortcut.

Now, go back to Outlook and click the Move button, you will see your shortcut is now appended to the new menu item that was created earlier.

Solution 3:

There's a simpler way with just adding a keyboard shortcut to the app, outlined here.

I'm a big GMail user, and I wanted to map a keyboard shortcut to move a message to an "Archive" folder that I'd created within Outlook on the Mac, just like GMail has an archive keyboard shortcut. That article worked for me.