If you’re a GTD buff, chances are good that you are using categories in Outlook to simulate the effect of “tags” or “labels” (as popularized in Gmail) on individual messages. This makes sense, of course, as it limits the amount of thought required when archiving messages. You no longer need to decide which single folder the message belongs in; the message just carries as many categories with it as you’d like.

Eh, sorry. That is, you were using categories…prior to upgrading to Office 2007. In the new Outlook, categories are no longer text fields that you can fill up with a variety of tags. Categories are now cute little chicklets that you can make different colors. Quite pleasant to look at, but totally useless. Here’s a way to take the power back.

Because Outlook allows you to define custom fields in the Outlook database, we’re going to create a new field called “Tags,” and let it assume the duty of our lost categories. Note: you must repeat this process within each folder that you want to display tags; while the tag data will be persistent, you won’t be able to see the tags unless you modify the view for each folder. Also note that you’re going to begin tagging your messages with a new attribute – one that won’t exist in your older messages. Functionally, it’s not an issue – but you’ll be searching “categories” in old messages, and “tags” in new messages. For this reason, I recommend creating a new PST for stuff moving forward.

Right click the headers in your inbox. Select “Field Chooser.” Press “New” at the bottom, and create a new field called “Tags.” You can call it whatever you want, but it’s what I’ve called mine (note: “categories” is unavailable, as it’s already taken).  The type is “Keywords” the format is “Text.” Drag that field to where your Categories field used to be, and hide that useless field. You can now add comma-separated tags to each of the messages that you receive in Outlook (e.g. coffee, starbucks, friends, scams, ideas).

The data in this field is persistent, but Outlook doesn’t display it by default. Again: you’ll have to repeat this process for any folder in which you’d like to use the “Tags” field – but only once.

I recommend that you group your view by “Tags” in archive folders, as it makes for pretty quick location of past stuff.

If you have any suggestions on how to streamline this, I’m all ears. For now, this is the most elegant solution I’ve found.

Update: you need to enable “Allow in-cell editing” in the Custom View / Other Settings dialogue in order to quickly type in your tags. Thanks for pointing out this nuance, Peter.