The notification area of the Windows Phone 10 lock screen is priceless. From an email workflow, the benefit of the lock screen is to quickly see if any new messages have come in. This is especially useful as it saves you time from keying in your passcode and checking your account for new messages.
If you are like me you may have multiple email accounts on your Windows phone. Like me, you may also prefer to track how many new messages each email account has received on your lock screen. By default Windows Phone isn’t configured this way. Rather it tells you the aggregate number of all email messages across all accounts in a single notification. In the picture above the number two is actually two email accounts that have received one message each. This may be good for some but when I have both work and personal email accounts on my phone I want to know which account has the new message to determine if it needs immediate attention.
In this guide, we show how to create a separate message count on your lock screen for two email accounts. In our example, one account will be a work account on Exchange and the other will be a personal account on Outlook.com.
Let’s get started!
Configuring the lock screen for separate message counts
From the Home screen swipe left to go to the applications list. Scroll down to Settings.
From the Settings screen select Personalization.
Select Lock screen.
Under Choose apps to show quick status, select the Outlook Mail icon. This Outlook Mail icon is the app that aggregates our message counts across all accounts. We want to swap this quick status slot for one of our mail accounts.
In the application list, you should see the display names of each email account on your phone. In my case, ‘Bluechip’ is the display name of my work email account on Exchange. I’ll select this to replace the Outlook Mail app currently in that slot.
This takes us back to the lock screen settings where we now see the Exchange icon representing my ‘Bluechip’ work account in the third slot. The fourth and fifth slots on my phone are currently unoccupied. This vacant status is represented by the plus icon. Out of the box Windows Phone 10, only fills three of the five app slots. If you see other apps in the fourth and fifth slots you will need to decide which one to replace with the second email account.
Let’s add my personal Outlook.com consumer account to the fourth slot. To do this I will click the plus icon in the fourth slot.
Next, I’ll select the ‘Outlook’ from the application list. This is the display name of my Outlook.com account.
Back on the lock screen, we see the Outlook.com consumer icon occupying slot four. If I had a third email account I could put it in unoccupied slot five.
Tip: Unfortunately, this does limit us to five email accounts on the lock screen. To have five you would also need to replace the phone and messaging apps in their quick status slots which is impractical for most. I suspect most would keep slots one and two dedicated to phone and messaging notifications, leaving only three slots for other use.
With my ‘Bluechip‘ work account in slot three and my personal ‘Outlook.com’ account in slot four, let’s see how the new message counts are identified on the lock screen.
The lock screen now shows the same two messages as before. Unlike last time the messages are now split out into their own counts. The Exchange icon identifies how many messages I have on my ‘Bluechip‘ work account. Whereas the Outlook icon specifies how many messages I have on my ‘Outlook.com’ personal account.
Tip: This could get tricky if you have two Exchange accounts. In that case, it is a matter of remembering which account is in which slot.
What ways have you customized your Windows Phone to make yourself more productive? Drop a comment below or join the conversation on Twitter @SuperTekBoy.
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