Handles the sliding actions of the Outlook application

If you send a email on your mobile, the Outlook application has some sliding actions that can help you navigate your inbox much faster. Here we show you how to use them in Outlook and how to change them if you don't like the default values.

To slide an email into the Outlook application, place your finger on the email and move it to the right "swipe to the right" or to the left "swipe to the left."

By default, swiping to the right removes an email. (Moves it to the Deleted Items folder). And swiping to the left moves an email to your File folder.

Steps to handle slip actions in Outlook application

However, if you want to change the default slip actions, or disable them completely, you must continue reading. There are several different slip actions that you can choose in Outlook:

  • Delete: Move the email to the Deleted Items folder.
  • File: move the mail to the File folder.
  • Mark as read: mark the email as read, but does nothing else.
  • Move to folder: Display a list of folders in your mailbox so you can move the email.
  • Indicator: Add an indicator of pending tasks to the email.
  • Schedule: Hide the email until you specify.
  • Read and archive: mark the email as read and then move it to the Archive folder.
  • None: this effectively disables the swipe action.

You can apply any of these actions to the swipe left or right action, and even apply the same action to both the left and right. This is ideal if sliding is not your thing and you want to change the left and right slide to "None".

To change the swipe actions, touch the menu icon in the upper left corner of the application.

In the lower left, touch the "Settings" gear.

In the "Mail" section near the top, tap "Swipe options."

This shows the current slip actions. We are going to change the “Swipe right” action by touching the big “CHANGE” option on the right side.

You can now proceed to change the options

This shows the slide options. At the top, it tells you if you are changing the option «Swipe to the right» or «Swipe to the left». And highlight the current slip action you have set. We will change our action to "Schedule" by tapping on it.

This will close that panel and take you back to the Slide options, where you can see that the action has changed to "Schedule."

When we return to the Inbox and slide to the right, the Schedule action is displayed.

That's all about it. You can change your slip actions at any time. If you are worried that you can move or delete an email without realizing it, Outlook offers you the option to Undo a move action for five seconds after you have slipped.

This will also be displayed after you have deleted an email because deleting an email moves to the "Deleted Items" folder.

A couple of useful tips:

The Archive action, which is the default swipe to the left, does not mark your email as read. That's great if you want to move your unread mail to the archive to read it later, but if you want to mark it as read and then move it, you will have to change the action of swiping left to "Read and archive."

The Schedule option only works in the Inbox. We love this feature because it hides your mail until the moment you choose, which is ideal for quickly removing things from your immediate view without losing track.

Programming is an excellent example of letting technology do boring things like remembering to deal with an email at a later date. So you can do interesting things, more than just remind yourself to try an email next week, for example.

Generally speaking, the Outlook client and the web application have much more power and functionality than the mobile application, as expected.

But sliding actions, especially when you are using a tablet or touch screen monitor, are one of the things we would definitely like to see in the next iteration of the Outlook client and the web application.