Outlook Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) – Explantion Guide

Outlook Quick Access Toolbar, most people don’t know how to program, although the Quick Access toolbar in Outlook is not terribly complicated and can be learned rather easily.

The trick here is that you’re asking them to understand a phrase rather than a concept: something which words are chosen doesn’t matter nearly as much as what they mean.

In this article, we will walk you through all the different functionality that the Outlook Quick Access toolbar provides you with.

What is Outlook Quick Access Toolbar?

When you’re working on Outlook, perhaps the best way to take a note quickly is by accessing the note section from the tabs and using a keyboard shortcut followed by pressing Alt+O.

Keeping a link to your favorite contacts in the Outlook address bar that you can access at any time just by using a keyboard shortcut will help save you time if you have to work with those contacts so often.

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Where is the Quick Access toolbar in Outlook?

The scrolling through your favorite contacts is easy. The Quick Access Toolbar is always found in the upper-left hand corner of Microsoft Outlook, providing you quick actions to help you stay productive with a fingertip.

Easily printing a document, replying, forwarding, deleting and even activating Touch Mode if your computer happens to come equipped with a touchscreen.

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When you use this toolbar, you can pin items to it with one click. Just right-click an item on the toolbar and then click Add to Quick Access Toolbar.

Quick Access Toolbar Outlook: How to Add the new command?

The quick-access toolbar is your scheduler’s best friend. It cuts travel planning time in half, so you spend less time looking for the tools that you need to work on things more efficiently and get that trip done sooner.

Outlook is not the only application within Office that has a Quick Access Toolbar. In fact, many of the commands listed above are available as features in various Office applications including Word and Excel as well as Outlook.

Some common commands for the ribbon are already shown to you to choose from, and then get the detailed step-by-step tutorial “How to customize this ribbon” and add commands which aren’t in the default list and appear on it.

  • In order to customize the toolbar, click the launcher icon at the end of the commands. How-to-customize-this-toolbar 2
  • However, In addition to tons of more commands which user prefer to use a lot, click on More Commands from the drop-down list.
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  • And there the Customized your quick access toolbar dialog box appears, there are two sections, the first section consists of numerous commands and another is a quick action toolbar.
  • Here You can simply select the required action/command and add it to Quick Access Toolbar (QAT).
  • Which that from the left side panel, you can choose commands from the long long list, some of them regularly used sections (Popular commands, Commands not in the ribbon, All commands), you’ll see every possible option.
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  • The favorite (ALL COMMANDS) consists of almost every option in an alphabetic way. You can choose to find specific commands that you use.

Let’s understand it with an simple example:

  • Firstly select the command (for instance: Popular commands).
  • In order to add a command to the toolbar, select it from the list on the left-hand side, click Add & then choose the OK button.
  • Popular-commands 5
  • Finally the shortcut of “Manage Rules & Alerts” added in the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT). Manage-Rules-Alerts-in-QAT 6

Now when you click on the icon, it will open up the ‘Manage Rules and Alert‘ dialog box.

How to change the order of Quick Access Toolbar?

To modify the Quick Access toolbar’s order, right-click any tool on the bar and select ‘Customize Quick Access Toolbar‘ from the context menu.

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You’ll see that the Customize Quick Access Toolbar dialog box appears again. Now we’ll change the order of the icons inside it so we can move our new copy command back to where it belongs.

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Change The Quick Access Toolbar Location In Ribbon

By default, the Quick Access Toolbar sits above the top-right corner of the screen, but you can position it in one of two ways. You can move it below the ribbon, or keep things as they are by keeping the Quick Access Toolbar above the ribbon.

Click on the File tab on the ribbon >> Click Options. Click Quick Access Toolbar. Show-Quick-access-Toolbar-below-the-ribbon 9

How to Remove From Quick Access Toolbar.

Sometimes users need to remove an icon from the toolbar so they can regain valuable screen space for other links. You can simply right-click on the icon you want gone, select Remove From Quick Access Toolbar, and that’s it. Remove-from-quick-access-toolbar 10

Quick Access shortcut keys

When you press the ALT key, they can access commands by pressing the numbers located directly above their icon on your desktop.

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Reset Quick Access Toolbar Settings

Reset the quick access toolbar to its original state easily managed by a few simple steps:

  • Firstly open the Customize the Quick Access Toolbar window.
  • Then from the Right button of the dialog box, click the Reset button, and select Reset only Quick Access Toolbar.
  • reset-quick-access-toolbar 12
  • Now click Yes on the Reset customization dialog box to confirm.
  • reset-customization 13

The Outlook Quick Access Toolbar is one of my favorite tools to work with.  This article will support me in staying updated on new features that are constantly being added to this program.

Most Office applications like Word and Excel enable Quick Access Toolbar to perform similar tasks, such as those found in Outlook.

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