The @mention feature in Outlook

Most of us get deluged with email on a daily basis, and it’s hard to get your emails to stand out and get noticed by your recipients. Did you know you can use the @mention feature in Outlook to mention someone in the body of your email and also include them in the To field? Here’s how that works…

Here’s an email with no one in the To field, and nothing (yet) in the body:

I used the @mention on Sandra’s name (@Mahan, Sandra) in the body, and it automatically adds her to the To line of the email, in addition to highlighting her name in the email body:

This makes the mail stand out when Sandra reads it, and the @mention in the body draws her attention to the part of the email that is relevant to her.

A bonus tip… you can change your inbox to show emails where you are @mention’ed! While you’re in your inbox, go to View > View Settings > Columns:

In the Show Columns dialog box, you can add or remove columns that will show up in your view. In this instance, I selected Mention in the left column, clicked Add ->, and then moved Mention to show as the second column in my view:

Now in my inbox, I have a Mention column that shows an @ character for emails that I’ve been @mention’ed in!

You can also filter your messages that mention you by clicking on the filter option, then choose Mentioned Mail.

Quick Microsoft video on using the @mention feature (38 seconds).