Manage Your Email

By David Norton 

Ever been astounded by how many emails you get, and how few are actually real messages? For many people, it's way too many. In this tutorial, we'll give you tips on how to manage your email in a simple, easy way.

Email is both fun and easy to use. Use it so you'll have fun. That's my advice.

Step 1: Trash the junk mail

Junk mail is the biggest cause of most email confusion, although personally I don't get very much junk. In this section we'll tell you how to get rid of all that junk mail:

1) Be careful about who you give your email address to.

Personally, I wouldn't enter in most contests, or give your email out on popular messageboards, or anything like that. If you want to anyway, try to create a "fake" email address (at HotMail, or Mac.com, or whatever), and check that once a week or so.

2) Don't reply to the advertiser's messages.

Even if there is something at the bottom about removing yourself from the list, don't mess with it. Just delete the message. If you do reply to the message, it will automatically flag your email address as an active one, and they'll sell it to more people.

3) Use filters to get rid of the junk.

There are many tutorials out on the web that tell you how filter the junk mail out with filters, and I'm not going to attempt to explain it here. Instead, do a little searching around and try to find a tutorial.

Step 2: Split 'em up

Instead of having all your email go into one box, why not split it up? It makes it simpler, and you can save more time.

1) Make a second email account.

For all those email lists you are on, make a second email, such as yournamelists@domain.com. You can get free POP boxes at Apple's Mac.com, and if you have a web server, you can use extra addresses on that. Now make all but the most important lists send to that email account.

For example, I am a subscriber to the MacMilitia.com Update (see the bottom of this page), Apple eNews, TidBITS, the REALbasic list, and a couple of others. It is a simple matter to change these lists to send to my lists address rather than my normal email address.

Most email programs can handle more than one email account. If you don't have one, try Green Mail, Outlook Express, or Bare Bones Software's MailSmith.

2) Use filters to sort the mail.

If your email client is any good, it will allow you to have it automatically move your email into a certain folder depending on what account it came in through. This is pretty easy to do, as filters are generally straightforward.

3) Subscribe to individual message versions of mailing lists

I know this may sound weird, but it actually helps with the organization of email. If you get the digest version of a mailing list, all the messages come later, and if you want to keep a couple of the messages, you don't have to edit the entire digest.

Step 3: Read it right

Reading your email isn't hard, but reading it right is the difficult part.

1) Use the preview pane.

The preview pane is one of the greatest features of today's email clients. It allows you to view messages without actually opening them up in a new window. This saves time, processing power, and doesn't clutter it up as much.

2) Delete it as you read it

While you are reading your email, delete the unimportant email as you read it - most mailing list messages are unimportant, as well as many forwards (I know somebody who deletes almost all forwards outright, if you need an example).

-David Norton is Senior Editor at MacMilitia.com.

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