Executive Summary
Microsoft 365 is packed with features, but some of the most useful ones are also some of the easiest to overlook.
At Get Support, we use Microsoft 365 every day, and it is often the small shortcuts that make the biggest difference. Saving a few clicks on an email, finding the right Teams conversation faster or letting Excel complete a repetitive task might only save seconds at a time, but those seconds quickly add up across a working week.
Here are five practical Microsoft 365 time-savers that can make everyday work quicker and easier, without introducing complicated new systems or changing the way your whole business works.
Introduction
How much of your working day is spent doing the same small tasks over and over again?
Moving emails into folders. Searching through Teams. Cleaning up an Excel spreadsheet. Sending documents back and forth. Trying to find the version of a file before somebody accidentally changed it.
None of these jobs feels particularly significant on its own. The problem is how often we repeat them.
Microsoft 365 already includes plenty of tools designed to remove some of that repetitive work. You just need to know they are there.
Here are five of the time-saving features we find particularly useful.
1. Use Outlook Quick Steps for repetitive email jobs
If you regularly perform the same actions on emails, Outlook’s Quick Steps feature is worth setting up.
Quick Steps lets you combine several email actions into a single click. For example, you could create one that moves an email into a particular folder, marks it as read and applies another action at the same time. Microsoft supports Quick Steps in current versions of Outlook, including new Outlook and Outlook on the web.
Why we like it
Email contains lots of tiny repetitive jobs.
Imagine you receive invoices from suppliers throughout the day. Instead of manually filing every message using the same sequence of clicks, you can create a Quick Step specifically for those emails.
The individual saving is small. But if you are processing dozens of similar emails every day, it soon becomes useful.
Quick Steps can be particularly handy for people working in:
- finance
- administration
- operations
- sales
- customer service
- shared or busy inboxes
The basic rule is simple: if you regularly do exactly the same thing to an email, see whether a Quick Step could do it for you.
2. Schedule emails instead of leaving them sitting in your drafts
Sometimes you want to write an email now, but you do not necessarily want somebody to receive it now.
Perhaps you are catching up on work at 8pm but do not want clients to think you expect them to respond outside normal working hours. Or perhaps you want a reminder, update or document to land in somebody’s inbox first thing tomorrow morning.
Outlook’s Schedule Send feature lets you prepare the email when it suits you and choose when it should be sent. The exact options vary slightly depending on whether you use new Outlook, classic Outlook or Outlook on the web.
Why we like it
It means you do not have to rely on remembering to come back to a draft later.
You can finish the task while it is fresh in your mind, schedule the email and move on.
It can also be useful when working with colleagues, suppliers or customers who keep different hours. You can work according to your own schedule without unnecessarily filling somebody else’s inbox late at night.
It is a very small feature, but once you get used to using it, it becomes surprisingly useful.
3. Stop clicking around Teams to find conversations
Microsoft Teams can get busy quickly.
Once you have multiple chats, channels, meetings and teams in use, finding the conversation you need can take longer than it should.
A couple of keyboard shortcuts can make this much quicker.
For example, Ctrl + E takes you to Search in the Windows desktop or web version of Teams. Ctrl + G lets you jump to a particular chat or channel. Microsoft also provides a range of other Teams keyboard shortcuts for common actions.
Teams also supports slash commands in the desktop app. Typing / in an appropriate message or search box shows the commands available to you, including options for navigating Teams and changing your status.
Why we like it
The benefit is not really the keyboard shortcut itself. It is avoiding the temptation to hunt through menus and scroll through long lists of conversations.
If you already know who or what you are looking for, jumping straight to it is usually faster.
You do not need to memorise dozens of shortcuts either. Start with one or two that match the things you do most often.
For many people, simply learning the shortcut for Search is enough to make Teams feel quicker.
4. Let Excel’s Flash Fill do the boring copying for you
Excel is often used for jobs that it can actually do automatically.
One of our favourite examples is Flash Fill.
Flash Fill looks for a pattern in the data you are entering and then offers to complete the rest of the column for you. Microsoft gives examples such as splitting first and last names or combining information from separate columns. You can also trigger Flash Fill manually using Ctrl + E in Excel.
A simple example
Imagine somebody sends you a spreadsheet containing hundreds of names in this format:
Sarah Jones
But the system you need to import them into requires the first name and surname in separate columns.
You could go through every row manually.
Or you could show Excel the pattern you want and let Flash Fill complete the rest.
The same idea can be useful when tidying up lists, reorganising contact information or preparing data for another system.
Why we like it
You do not need to know complicated Excel formulas.
For straightforward patterns, you show Excel what you are trying to achieve and it does much of the repetitive work for you.
As with any automated data change, it is sensible to check the results before relying on them, particularly with important business information. But for the right task, Flash Fill can turn a tedious job into a very quick one.
5. Work on one document instead of emailing different versions around
This one is less of a shortcut and more of a better working habit.
If several people need to edit the same Word document, Excel spreadsheet or PowerPoint presentation, avoid emailing separate copies around wherever possible.
When files are stored appropriately in OneDrive or SharePoint, Microsoft 365 allows multiple people to collaborate on documents and see changes as they are made.
That can help avoid familiar filenames such as:
Proposal-final.docx
Proposal-final-v2.docx
Proposal-final-v2-Sarah-edits.docx
Proposal-FINAL-USE-THIS-ONE.docx
There is another useful safety net too.
For supported Microsoft 365 files stored in OneDrive or SharePoint, Version History allows you to view previous versions and restore an earlier one if necessary.
Why we like it
It saves time in two ways.
First, everybody can work from the same file instead of trying to work out which attachment contains the latest changes.
Second, if something goes wrong, you may be able to return to an earlier version rather than trying to recreate lost work manually.
For businesses that still rely heavily on sending Word and Excel attachments between colleagues, moving towards shared Microsoft 365 files can make day-to-day collaboration much easier.
Small savings make a big difference
None of these features is going to transform a business overnight.
That is not really the point.
Good technology should remove unnecessary effort from everyday work. If a shortcut saves you 20 seconds but you use it 30 times a week, that matters. Multiply those little improvements across an entire team and they can make a noticeable difference.
The best approach is not to learn every Microsoft 365 feature at once.
Instead, look at the tasks your team repeats every day and ask a simple question:
Could Microsoft 365 already make this easier?
Quite often, the answer is yes.
Final Thoughts
Businesses sometimes invest in Microsoft 365 and then only use a fraction of what they already have available.
Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint all contain features designed to make everyday work faster. The challenge is knowing which ones are genuinely useful and how they fit into the way your business works.
Even introducing one or two small improvements can help your team spend less time clicking, searching and repeating routine tasks.
And once you start looking for those opportunities, you will probably find plenty more.
Make Microsoft 365 Work Harder for Your Business
If your business uses Microsoft 365 but you are not sure you are getting the most from it, Get Support can help.
We can help you configure Microsoft 365 properly, improve the way your team uses tools such as Outlook, Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint, and provide practical advice and support when you need it.
Whether you want to improve productivity, make collaboration easier or simply remove some everyday IT frustrations, get in touch with Get Support and we can help you make better use of the technology you already have.
FAQs
The features covered here are available within relevant Microsoft 365 applications rather than being dependent on an additional Microsoft Copilot licence. Exactly what is available can vary depending on your Microsoft 365 plan, application version, device and your organisation’s settings.
Look for something you repeat frequently.
If you spend a lot of time managing email, try Outlook Quick Steps. If you spend time tidying spreadsheets, experiment with Flash Fill. If Teams feels difficult to navigate, learn one or two search shortcuts.
The best time-saver is the one that removes effort from something you already do regularly.
For documents that several people need to review or edit, sharing access to a centrally stored file can often be much easier than circulating multiple attachments.
It helps everyone work from the same document and, when Version History is available, gives you a way to review or restore earlier versions if required.
Yes. In fact, some of the biggest benefits come when teams agree on simple ways of working.
That could mean using shared files instead of attachments, agreeing where documents should be stored, setting up useful email processes or showing staff the Microsoft 365 features most relevant to their roles.
The aim is not to introduce lots of rules. It is to make the easiest way of working the normal way of working.
Yes. Get Support can help with Microsoft 365 setup, configuration, support and practical advice on how your business uses the platform.
We can also help identify areas where better use of Microsoft 365 could reduce everyday frustration, improve collaboration and make common tasks simpler for your team.
Sources
This article was checked against current Microsoft Support guidance for Outlook Quick Steps and Schedule Send, Microsoft Teams shortcuts and commands, Excel Flash Fill, and OneDrive and SharePoint collaboration and Version History.