How do you manage your emails?

[robbie williams]

Hi there,

I am interested to know how you all deal with your emails. I use Outlook and tend to keep pretty much everything. Im terrible, I feel that if I delete something I my end up needing it at some point so insert sub-folders for clients and throw them all in there. I then end up with a huge mailbox full of emails and then every 6 months go through them all and delete and archive.

In the meantime I end up with so many emails I then trawl through them every 4-5 weeks and wack them into their relevant sub-folder.

What do you do? Am I alone in this insane activity. Do you have any pointers to help me manage them more effectively? I'm lucky that I do not get loads of junk mail but with business so crazy so far this year im getting emails thick and fast!

 

[Subbynet]

Hi,

I chuck all my mail though Google Apps for your Domain (gmail), which then spam checks but also keeps an archive copy. Then I pull this to my local servers, takes another archive incase Google goes missing one day.

The upshot is I can pretty much delete as required in Outlook as the email will exist in another two places anyway.

 

[dave_n]

i have a number of rules setup in outlook to divert to a specific folder.
I also make sure I use the task manager and sync it with my phone for those important tasks and meetings.

My advice would be to make use of the functionality that's available

 

[An Oasis]

Mailwasher Pro deletes 99.99% and the rest are read and either deleted or downloaded.

 

[francie]

I’m a newbie about this kind of subjects but I know there are many companies dealing with it. Even if it is not their main service, they have experience with it and greater so try to check some of those companies and ask for help

 

[KM-Tiger]

My advice would be to make use of the functionality that's available

Good advice. Outlook has rules/filters that can sort the mail into folders as it arrives, which cuts out one job for you. You can also set it to place replies in the same folder, then everything starts to be in the right places.

That said, I'm much like you with far too much unsorted in my Inbox. You just have to force yourself to get organised!

 

[dave_n]

i guess if you are unorganised then no amount of software or functionality is gonna change that!

 

[ozbon]

I use a lot of rules/filters for stuff dealing with clients, but for the longer-term clients, I normally set up a separate email address , which means it's filtered at a server level.

So I use [email protected] for one, and [email protected] for another. They all forward on to my main account, so I know quickly/easily when something's been sent, but a copy stays in the client account, so I can delete it from main as soon as I know about it.

 

[stugster]

I have a main mailserver that checks mail against Spamhaus then forwards it to my mailserver here.

If it's in my whitelist, it gets forwarded automatically, if it's not, it goes through stricter spam checks, IP location, and such.

Copies are made of all my emails and archived, and then forwarded to a third machine.

Third machine is my IMAP server. It distributes email to different folders: different people, different subjects, etc.

I connect to the IMAP server every 4 minutes

 

[oMIKEo]

I use outlook but luckily don't get any spam. I deal with a lot of email for website updates so have set folders for each site, all my emails go into my inbox and as the update is complete i move them into their folder. This way i can see exactly what updates need completing in a single view and can always check back on archived messages.

Setting rules is also another good way to direct emails to specific folders to keep everything organised rather than manually moving them about. You can also use the 'flag' feature to colour code the emails or flag up emails you need to chase up.

 

[Submarine Washer]

I am ruthless.
I keep nothing in my inbox for more than 5 mins after I noticed it.

I either allocate to a folder or pdf the rest and then store it out of Outlook.

A clean inbox is like a clean desk.

 

[maltesechris]

Here's a tip regarding e-mails. Set up an email called priority at your website or urgent at your website. This will be your email which you only hand out to people where you are expecting important responses. i.e. business deals, VIP meetings etc

You will be surprised how this simple idea works so well.

 

[computer storm]

I use SBS2008 and setup spam filter in exchange 2007, also setup rules on the exchange to journal the mail to locations that i have chosen.

 

[jododds]

I recently saw a video by a guy called Merlin Mann that he did for Google that talks about the concept of not just 'checking' your emails, but 'actioning' them. So working offline and not getting your emails unless you're in a position to 'action' them. Since I saw it I have implemented that and had an empty inbox. It has made a huge difference. You can google him if you want to watch it. I've blogged about it and embedded the video but I'm not sure if I can include a link here.

The other thing is to think about using gmail as you can then just search for stuff. He recommended not filing by client or filing at all, just keeping them all in one big archive and using the google search capabilities.

 

[markthedoc]

I use 'Mail' on the Mac.
The spam filter does a great job of filtering out all the rubbish and it has a brilliant search facility, which I'd be lost without.

Then every few months I arrange all emails in my email folder alphabetically and delete a load of stuff I don't need like emails from ebay and newsletters I never got around to reading etc.