Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion
How do you manage your email?
Dormouse:
At one stage, I did a lot of sorting, filtering, creating and refining rules for everything including spam.
Like a few others, I've largely given that up. Took a lot of time for little real gain.
I do have a folder for 'Needs Action (but I'm not doing it now)'.
For everything else I just use the Search - either within the prog or using Mailstore.
I do use a lot of email clients having my fingers burnt in the past when one crashed with some emails lost. Problem could usually be resolved in the end, but there was at least temporary lack of access to some emails. These include Opera, Do-Organiser, Spicebird, Thunderbird, Courier and TheBat!. I occasionally download into Outlook; I just use Do-organizer when it is open to see if there is anything new. I store old emails in Courier, TheBat!, Thunderbird and Spicebird. Main client atm is TheBat!.
The one thing I do intend to change in the near future is too filter all my email through my Gmail accounts as its spam filtering seems to be better than anything else I have running. And without any work from me. The one bit of sorting I have to do now is to take stuff out of my ISP's Junk folder because it isn't spam. I don't have this problem with gmail, so I'll be able to turn off the spam filter at the ISP.
Armando:
The one thing I do intend to change in the near future is too filter all my email through my Gmail accounts as its spam filtering seems to be better than anything else I have running. And without any work from me. The one bit of sorting I have to do now is to take stuff out of my ISP's Junk folder because it isn't spam. I don't have this problem with gmail, so I'll be able to turn off the spam filter at the ISP.
-Dormouse (September 08, 2008, 06:05 AM)
--- End quote ---
I agree with you here. Gmail's spam filtering seems to be working pretty well. That + Outlook : works good.
superboyac:
OK, I use the Bat at home which has much cooler rules, filters, and coloring features, but now at work I am using Outlook 2007. So here is my method, based on the GTD philosophy.
GTD is all about being fast, efficient and productive. With email, especially at work where I get a lot of email, it is not really productive to be moving things around in a lot of folders and categories, etc. For myself, even for different projects, I'm not going to bother making several different folders for the different projects. I really don't need to have all the specific project emails have their own folder, because organizing that is a pain in the ass and there's no good rule system to do it automatically, because often there is no particular data in an email/task that distinguishes it from one project or another. So I'm not going be moving things around manually...no way.
So, everything comes into my Inbox and that's where all the action takes place. I've set of some GTD search folders. I use search folders because they are not actual folders, just filtered views. This way, all the mail stays in the Inbox but I can use the search folders to look at only what I want (like Virtual Folders in the Bat). The GTD search folders are:
--Do
--Respond
--Delegate
--Defer
--Archive
--Done Items
As soon as I get emails, I will look at it and immediately categorize it (using keyboard shortcuts of course). Once they are categorized, they will automatically be detected by the search folders above. So, the only items that will require effort on my part are those in the Do, Respond, and Delegate folders. I go into those folders to see this list of mails. As I finish each email, I check it off as "Done" and it automatically gets removed from those folders and into the Done Items folder. That's pretty much it. It's quick, efficient, and sophisticated.
As an additional level of prettiness, I take advantage of Automatic Formatting in Outlook 2007 (the one in the Bat is WAY better). With this, if I look in my Inbox with the all the emails in all categories all mixed together, then this automatic formatting gives me a nice visual way to see things. So, the items in the specific GTD categories are colored according to their category color. I also have appointments/tasks/meetings italicized to distinguish them from emails.
So, that's basically it. It's nice I think. I like being efficient.
(what happened to that one post about Groupwise?? I was looking for it)
Armando:
OK, I use the Bat at home which has much cooler rules, filters, and coloring features, but now at work I am using Outlook 2007. So here is my method, based on the GTD philosophy.
GTD is all about being fast, efficient and productive. With email, especially at work where I get a lot of email, it is not really productive to be moving things around in a lot of folders and categories, etc. For myself, even for different projects, I'm not going to bother making several different folders for the different projects. I really don't need to have all the specific project emails have their own folder, because organizing that is a pain in the ass and there's no good rule system to do it automatically, because often there is no particular data in an email/task that distinguishes it from one project or another. So I'm not going be moving things around manually...no way.
So, everything comes into my Inbox and that's where all the action takes place. I've set of some GTD search folders. I use search folders because they are not actual folders, just filtered views. This way, all the mail stays in the Inbox but I can use the search folders to look at only what I want (like Virtual Folders in the Bat). The GTD search folders are:
--Do
--Respond
--Delegate
--Defer
--Archive
--Done Items
As soon as I get emails, I will look at it and immediately categorize it (using keyboard shortcuts of course). Once they are categorized, they will automatically be detected by the search folders above. So, the only items that will require effort on my part are those in the Do, Respond, and Delegate folders. I go into those folders to see this list of mails. As I finish each email, I check it off as "Done" and it automatically gets removed from those folders and into the Done Items folder. That's pretty much it. It's quick, efficient, and sophisticated.
As an additional level of prettiness, I take advantage of Automatic Formatting in Outlook 2007 (the one in the Bat is WAY better). With this, if I look in my Inbox with the all the emails in all categories all mixed together, then this automatic formatting gives me a nice visual way to see things. So, the items in the specific GTD categories are colored according to their category color. I also have appointments/tasks/meetings italicized to distinguish them from emails.
So, that's basically it. It's nice I think. I like being efficient.
(what happened to that one post about Groupwise?? I was looking for it)
-superboyac (September 08, 2008, 05:47 PM)
--- End quote ---
Nice.
jdd:
I use Outlook 2007 and have always saved important (to me ) emails, some with very large attachments. Eventually the *.pst becomes enormous and unmanagable, and takes Outlook forever to open unless they are archived in groups and save as separate pst files which can be stored and backed up. For example, create a personal folder file called "My emails from 1_2001 to 12_2004.pst" and another as "My emails from 1_2005 to 12_2007.pst".
In my case, the average size of the backed up pst files described above is 1 gig to 2.8 gigs.
Using the Outlook/File/Data File Management/Data Files tab, you can point to the default pst file (e.g. a pst file that contains all emails from 2007 to the present) that opens by default with Outlook. However, at any given time, you can open a previous pst archive, as needed.
Here's the key to the kingdom. Using the program X1, which is not free but worth every penny, one can maintain an index of all the mail in the old pst files and even MS Exschange files (i.e. *.ost files) and instantly locate and open an old email without having it as the active or default pst file in Outlook. One can search by name of sender, or receiver, or attachment file type and all manner of wild card combinations.
For anyone that manages or searches humungous piles of emails ranging from the recent past to the very distant past, this is a friggin' awesome system.
Note of caution: Be sure to backup the original pst file before embarking on the Outlook archiving feature if you are not familiar with it. I searched the web and found some helpful articles which describe exactly how to do it. I deleted the links or I would have attached them.
p.s. I have always been shackled to Outlook, for business reasons only. However, once you learn, it is relativley simple. Don't overlook the power X1. I have tried many other software products that pretend to manage Outlook mail, and have not found anything better than groups of pst files indexed by X1.
p.p.s. This virtually eliminates the need to categorize anything.
p.p.p.s I use X1 only for Outlook email. I use Locate32 and dtSearch for most other desktop file searching requirements.
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