Most of us receive a lot of email and important messages may get overlooked in our long list of messages. If you’re sending a message that requires attention in a timely manner, you can set the priority for the message, allowing the recipient to find it quickly.

To send a high priority email message, make sure the “Home” tab is active and click “New Email”.

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Enter the recipient’s email address, subject line, and body of the message. Make sure the “Message” tab is active.

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In the “Tags” section of the “Message” tab, click “High Importance”, if the message has high priority. You can also assign a “Low Importance” to a message. This is handy if the message is not as important, but you still want the recipient to be able to find it quickly in their list of email messages.

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To assign a priority to an email message, you can also click the “Message Options” dialog box button in the “Tags” section.

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The “Properties” dialog box displays. In the “Settings” section, select an option from the “Importance” drop-down list to set the priority.

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You can also select the “Sensitivity” of the message in the “Settings” section. Click “Close” once you’ve made your selections.

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High priority messages received in Outlook are marked with a red exclamation point in the first (“Importance”) column and low priority messages are marked with a blue down arrow.

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These marks make it easier to find messages based on priority or importance. You can also click on the column header (“!”) to sort your messages by importance.