Home
>
Top Quick Tips
>
10 E-mail Organization Tips

10 E-mail Organization Tips

Who doesn't have issues with organizing their inbox!? I receive close to 600 e-mail each day due to the variety of activities and contacts I have online. Some I am truly interested in their content - most I am not.

A big part of keeping your inbox and your e-mail organized is discipline. Yep, good ole' fashioned discipline! You need to make a consistent practice of checking your e-mail and accomplishing several tasks to keep ahead of the increased traffic of bits and bytes finding their way to your inbox.

What are we to do? Let's get organized!

1. Put your DELETE button to work! If you do not recognize the sender, look at the SUBJECT: field. Are there funny characters, alpha-numeric gibberish or it just doesn't make sense? Delete! Don't fall for tricky SUBJECT: fields that say any number of enticing comments only someone you know would say: "You left your umbrella...", "They said it's free!", "Hey how is it going?", "You blocked my IM", "Meeting is Rescheduled", or the one almost everyone wants to open "About Your Tax Refund".

None of these are from friends or folks you know or even companies you are doing business with. They are from spammers - the worst kind too - the ones who underestimate your intelligence by thinking these e-mail will be something you would take seriously. If you don't know the sender and the SUBJECT: field looks off, send them on their way to the trash!

2. Once you go through all your new e-mail and follow step #1 above, you are now ready to determine what to do with the e-mails that are left. Do you have several e-mail from the same party? Do you have e-mail from folks who e-mail you quite regularly? Do you have some e-mail that is personal business and others that are more serious and therefore, you probably need to keep a copy on hand?

This is where filters come in. Filters are your friends! Filters, or Rules as they are called in Outlook, are what allow you to organize your e-mail on the download. Yes, as you download your e-mail it can go into e-mail folders setup for specific topics or contacts!

You can have a "Mom" filter that sends all e-mail from dear old Mom right into your Mom folder. Set up filters to have e-mail from some of your hobby sites, go directly into their own folder. Your best friend can have his or her own folder. Another example is to have information from your financial institutions automatically end up in a folder specifically divided into further folders - Annuity, CDs, Stock, Bonds. The sky is the limit!

A side benefit of filters is that if you organize your e-mail to go into their own folders on download - your inbox has less e-mail that you requested or were expecting leaving only the questionable e-mail for you to review. Filters only need be setup once and they are in place until you delete them. Get your filters tightly setup and you can literally find only e-mail from spammers are left in your inbox.

One thing is clear about being online and e-mailing - it behooves you to become familiar and proficient with your tools. E-mail software being probably the most important. Check the HELP area or Web site of your e-mail software for further guidance on filters or rules. This is reading and skill building well worth the time when you realize how easily you can control your e-mail's organization moving forward.

3. Another use for your filters? As if filters are not already sounding like the best thing since sliced bread, you can use them to send certain e-mail right to the trash bypassing your inbox all together! You know, the e-mails for certain male enhancement products and adult sites - right to trash. Filters and rules can be used to not only send an e-mail to a certain folder by virtue of e-mail address, company or person's name, they can be configured to find certain adult or offensive terms when listed in the SUBJECT: or BODY of an e-mail message to you can send them right to trash on the download - gotta love it!

4. Back to your inbox... We now have filters in place that organize your e-mail on the download so all the e-mail you requested and or are expecting, is in their appropriate folders for you to read at your convenience. Now your inbox should only have the orphan e-mail with nowhere to go. After following the suggestions in #1 above, begin to review your e-mail.

If you run into an e-mail that is from a new mailing list you've subscribed to and plan on getting regular e-mail from, stop right there and make a folder and filter to accommodate these future e-mail. Set up a filter to look for something specific to that e-mail (usually e-mail address works best) and moving forward, on the download, those e-mails will go right into their own folder. Do this for any e-mail topic or contact you plan to receive e-mail from on a regular basis.

5. Read and delete. Read your e-mail as time permits and then delete any e-mail that doesn't have content worth keeping for future reference. Then, empty your trash daily. Loads of e-mail files use a ton of your system's resources. Not keeping copies of e-mail you really will never need in the future helps remove the clutter and drain on system resources.

6. When reading your e-mail you can prioritize when you want to address them. Many e-mail programs allow you to label e-mail by color when viewing a particular folder. For example you could have labels that at a glance tell you how you have prioritized your tasks. Say, red for urgent, blue for later, yellow for maybe. By opening that specific e-mail box you know, at a glance, which e-mail you have set to address right away and which you can get to as time permits.

7. Empty your trash daily but before emptying your trash, you want to be sure to take a quick look-see just in case any of your filters inadvertently picked up on some terms that were included in e-mail that you possibly didn't want to trash. This happens all the time! A quick once-over before deleting your trash will ensure legitimate e-mail you do want to see didn't get lost in the shuffle.

8. Create a folder called Follow-Up, Interesting or To Do. This is where you will file some of the e-mail from your inbox that peaked your interest that you would like to review in more detail but just don't have the time. Then, when time permits you can go to that folder and check into the e-mails worth keeping. Once you review them, though, either send them to another folder for keeps or send them to trash.

9. To avoid e-mail backup, be sure your inbox is cleared each day. Move e-mail to trash, a specific folder or your "To Do" folder, and then empty the trash. If e-mail is older than 90 days in your "To Do" folder - send them off to trash as most likely the information or offer is no longer current. By doing so each day, you keep your inbox clear and your e-mail much more organized.

10. What about all these folders? Have as many folders as you need to be organized and call them whatever will intuitively work for you with a glance. This system is different and unique to each and every user - make sure you use terms and a system that works for you.

The above 10 tips when practiced daily will make the world of difference in keeping your inbox organized and clutter free. Just a bit of discipline is all it takes to be on the road to less time spent dealing with e-mail which frees you up to do other important things... like responding to e-mail.

About the Author:
Judith Kallos is an authoritative and good-humored Technology Muse who has played @ http://www.theistudio.com for over a decade. Check out her popular E-mail Etiquette site @: http://www.theistudio.com

cleaning help near Mundelein ..

In The News:

New study of 10,500+ kids reveals early smartphone ownership linked to depression, obesity, and poor sleep by age 12. Earlier phones mean higher risks.

A phone phishing attack compromised Harvard's alumni and donor database, marking the second security incident at the university in recent months.

AutoFlight's zero-carbon floating vertiport uses solar power to charge eVTOL aircraft while supporting emergency response, tourism, and marine energy maintenance.

A new phone return scam targets recent buyers with fake carrier calls. Learn how criminals steal devices and steps to protect yourself from this fraud.

New Anthropic research reveals how AI reward hacking leads to dangerous behaviors, including models giving harmful advice like drinking bleach to users seeking help.

The Fox News AI Newsletter gives readers the latest AI technology advancements, covering the challenges and opportunities AI presents.

Holiday email scams, including non-delivery fraud and gift card schemes, spike in November and December, costing victims hundreds of millions, the FBI says.

Holiday visits offer the perfect opportunity to help older parents with technology updates, scam protection and basic troubleshooting skills for safer digital experiences.

Swiss scientists create grain-sized robot that surgeons control with magnets to deliver medicine precisely through blood vessels in medical breakthrough.

Researchers exploited WhatsApp's API vulnerability to scrape 3.5 billion phone numbers. Learn how this massive data breach happened and protect yourself.

Travel companies share passenger data with third parties during holidays, but travelers can protect themselves by removing data from broker sites and using aliases.

Xpeng's humanoid robot moves so realistically that crowds believed it was fake, marking a major advancement in robotics technology ahead of 2026 commercial launch.

Researchers discover phishing scam using invisible characters to evade email security, with protection tips including password managers and two-factor authentication.

iPhone and Android users can reduce battery drain and data usage by restricting Background App Refresh to Wi-Fi connections instead of mobile networks.

Scammers nearly stole an Apple account by exploiting the support system with authentic-looking tickets and phone calls, users can protect themselves with safety steps.

FoloToy restored sales of its AI teddy bear Kumma after a weeklong suspension following safety group findings of risky and inappropriate responses to children.

Threat intelligence firm Synthient uncovers one of the largest password exposures ever, prompting immediate security recommendations.

Viral video shared by Elon Musk shows Tesla's Optimus humanoid robots performing tasks from cooking to construction, garnering over 58.5 million views on social media.

Chinese hackers used Anthropic's Claude AI to launch autonomous cyberattacks on 30 organizations worldwide, marking a major shift in cybersecurity threats.

Apple's new Sleep Score feature gives you a rating for your nightly rest quality. Learn how to set it up on your Apple Watch and iPhone today.

Essential phone settings to enable before losing your device, including Find My network, location services and security features for iPhone and Android.

The Fox News AI Newsletter gives readers the latest AI technology advancements, covering the challenges and opportunities AI presents.

Cybersecurity research shows weak passwords remain a major threat, with simple patterns and number sequences putting millions of accounts at risk.

New Android malware BankBot YNRK silences phones, steals banking data and drains crypto wallets automatically. Learn how this advanced threat works.

FDA approves first human trial for Paradromics' brain-computer interface that could restore speech for paralyzed patients through neural technology.

10 E-mail Organization Tips

Top Quick Tips