Assign a category to a Business Contact Manager record

You can organize your Business Contact Manager for Outlook records into logical groupings by assigning them category colors and category labels. You can create as many categories and labels as you need and you can assign multiple categories to records. Then, in a list view of your records or in a report, you can arrange the items by category.

Note: The Master Category List from earlier versions of Office Outlook is replaced by color categories in Outlook 2007. The category labels from your Master Category list are still assigned and have not been deleted. For more information about changes to categories, see, How categories and calendar labels from earlier versions are updated for Office Outlook 2007.

In this article

Assign an existing category to a record

Create a new category and assign it to a record

Find records by category

Change the category of a record

Assign an existing category to a record

1. In Outlook, on the Business Contact Manager menu, click one of the following record types:

   • Accounts

   • Business Contacts

   • Opportunities

   • Business Projects

2. In the list, double-click the record that you want to assign to an existing category.

3. On the Ribbon, in the Options group, click Categorize .

4. Click the category.

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Create a new category and assign it to a record

1. In Outlook, on the Business Contact Manager menu, click one of the following record types:

   • Accounts

   • Business Contacts

   • Opportunities

   • Business Projects

2. In the list, double-click the record that you want to assign to a new category.

3. On the Ribbon, in the Options group, click Categorize .

4. Click All Categories.

5. Click New, and then type a name (or label) for the new category.

6. Choose a color and a shortcut key for the category (optional).

   Tip:  You can add a category label without assigning a color to it by clicking None in the Color box.

Note: For more information about creating new categories, see Create a new color category.

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Find records by category

The simplest way to find categorized records is to sort and then view them by category.

You can also create a Search Folder to find all the records in a particular category.

See the following procedure for an example of how to create a Search Folder to find all of the Accounts that are categorized as Writers.

Example

1. In the Navigation Pane, under Business Contact Manager, right-click Search Folders, and then click New Search Folder.

2. Type a name for the folder, such as Writers group in the Name box.

3. In the Items of this type are included in this Search Folder list, click Accounts.

4. Click the Filter button.

5. Click the Advanced Filter tab.

6. Under Field name, click Category.

7. Under Comparison, click Equals.

8. Under Compare to, type Writer.

9. Click the Review Results tab to see all the records that are included in the Writer category.

   Note: Each time you open the Writers group folder, the list is updated.

For more information about how to sort and view records, see Sort and view records by category in Business Contact Manager.

For more information about Search Folders, see About Search Folders in Business Contact Manager.

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Change the category of a record

1. In Outlook, on the Business Contact Manager menu, click one of the following record types:

   • Accounts

   • Business Contacts

   • Opportunities

   • Business Projects

2. In the list, double-click the record to open it.

3. On the Ribbon, in the Options group, click Categorize .

4. Click All Categories.

5. Do one of the following:

   • To remove the category from the record, in the Color Categories dialog box, clear the check box of the category.

   • To add a different category to the record, select the check box of the category.

For more information about categories, see Create and assign color categories.

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