Email folders

Most people who use their computer regularly receive a number of emails each day. Although email is quicker than old fashioned mail, it is still time consuming – especially if a lot of emails are coming in.

One of the easiest ways to reduce the amount of time spent on addressing incoming emails is to filter them automatically as they arrive.

By having emails filtered, you can choose which emails to read first; client emails can be dealt with straight away, friends’ emails may be left to a coffee break and ezines don’t need to be touched until you have time.

Once filtered, emails are also easier to find again later. Instead of sorting through of hundreds of emails in your in box, you can look through the fifty emails in the clients’ folder.

The first step in filtering your emails is to decide on the major categories of emails you receive so that you can create those folders. You might have folders for clients, friends, ezines, forums notices, web queries, family and business information.

Having identified the folders required, and knowing that you can add or adjust them later, you then set up rules so that your email software will sort incoming emails into your folders automatically.

Rules can have multiple parts to them or be very simple. You have the choice of an automatic reply to specific emails, deleting some, forwarding some, sorting them or some combination thereof.

But how do you get your email system to do this for you?

Although there are a lot of similarities between email packages, the procedure is not identical for them all. As outlook is the most common program in use, the following steps are specifically for outlook. However, if you use a different package, you may be able to use these instructions to work your way through the process in your package.

When you open outlook, you will have an inbox and an outbox. For now, let’s assume that you want a new folder called ‘business’ for all emails from networking sites you belong to and from your accountant.

Click on file on the top menu, then select ‘new’. You will see a new list to select from, so scroll down to ‘folder’ which is the third item listed.

In the dialogue box, type ‘business’ into the top box (labelled name.)

Leave the central box as ‘mail and post items’.

The third box allows you to choose where to put your folder. Click on ‘inbox’ so that ‘business’ will be part of the inbox.

Click on ‘ok’ and you have a new folder! Look to the left of outlook and you will now see there are 3 folders – inbox, outbox and business.

Later on, you may wish to divide your accountant’s emails form the other business emails. Follow the above steps until you reach the third box in the dialogue box. Click on the ‘+’ next to inbox to see all folders within the inbox then select ‘business’ so that a new folder ‘accountant’ will be a subset of ‘business’.

The next step is to set up some rules top filter your emails into the new folders.

Click on tools in the top menu.

Scroll down to ‘rules wizard’ and click on it.

To the right of the dialogue box, there are some buttons. Click on ‘new’.

Leave the top circle selected so that you can use a template. Also leave ‘Move new messages from someone’ selected.

Click ‘next’.

There are many options for which emails to move, but just make sure the box next to ‘from people or distribution list’ is ticked. This is usually ticked by default and if you click on it, it will no longer be ticked.

In the lower box, click on the underlined phrase ‘people or distribution list’.

A new box will open which will list all of your contacts in outlook. Scroll down the list until you find one of your business network addresses. If you don’t have their email address in your contact list, select ‘new’ and you can fill in a new entry in your address book.

Once you have selected the email address, click ‘from’.

You can select as many email addresses at this stage as you want to include in that folder. Then click ‘ok’.

Click ‘ok’ in the rules wizard.

Again, there is a large choice of what to do with the message. Make sure the box beside ‘move it to the specified folder’ is ticked.

In the lower box, click on the underlined phrase ‘specified folder’.

Click on the ‘+’ next to inbox.

Select ‘business’ and click ‘ok’.

Click ‘next’.

Here you could make some exceptions; perhaps you will separate the ezines from the forums into a different folder or some other differences.

For now, click on ‘next’ without selecting any exceptions.

Type in ‘business forums’ in the top box.

Outlook will go through all of your existing emails and sort them for you now if you select the phrase ‘run this rule now on messages already on “Inbox”’. This maximises the effectiveness of your new folder.

Leave ‘turn on this rule’ ticked so the rule will work on all incoming messages.

Click ‘finish’.

You are now back at the beginning of the rule wizard so you can make another rule or click on ‘run now’ to get it working.

Next time you look at outlook, there will be no business forum emails in your inbox!



Email folders - To learn more about this author, visit Tash Hughes's Website.

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