ERIC SPELLMANN

Tame Your Inbox

A recent study revealed that while surfing the web was the most popular internet activity, e-mail actually comprised the majority of traffic. That’s right; while not as flashy and “fun” as the web, sending and receiving e-mail is the most prominent activity on the net.

Well, if you are going to be spending so much time working with e-mail, how about a few tips to speed up that process? Over the years, I’ve picked up, discovered, or just come up with some tips and tricks that have helped me wade through my e-mail ocean.

For the purposes of this article, all of these tips will work in Outlook or Outlook Express. If you have another e-mail program, chances are, these tips will work also, with a few modifications to the instructions.

Have you ever received a joke via e-mail? Of course you have! Sometimes, however, you have to scroll through quite a bit of junk before you actually get to the joke. That junk is typically what we call “e-mail headers”. When a message gets forwarded to someone, the entire message, including e-mail addresses, dates, and subject, is copied into the new message.

Before you hit the Send button, remove all the extraneous headers from the joke. Here’s how:  Pick a message you want to forward. Hit the Forward button in the toolbar. A copy of the message (with those silly headers) will appear. Highlight the parts of the message you don’t want and hit the Delete key on your keyboard. 

If you are new to computers, highlighting is accomplished by positioning your mouse pointer right before the first letter of the words you want to highlight. Hold down your left mouse button, and, while holding it down, drag the mouse diagonally down and to the right. Highlighting takes practice. Even computer nerds like me get frustrated when I accidentally highlight too much or too little. Be patient.

Removing e-mail headers from forwarded messages is beneficial in two ways: First, it makes the messages easier to read. Second, it protects the privacy of those people whose addresses appeared in those headers. Think about it. That’s how most people end up on junk e-mail lists. Forwarded jokes typically contain hundreds of valid e-mail addresses. Once a junk e-mailer receives one of these jokes, he simply adds all of those addresses to his list!

Another great tip is to organize your saved e-mail. Most people have anywhere from 30 to 500 messages in their Inbox. Once I read a message and deal with it, I delete it. But what if you have a message you need to keep? Don’t leave it in the Inbox! Remember, your Inbox is just like your letter box in your front door. What if you decided to leave “important” mail in the wire cage behind your letter box? Pretty soon, your postman couldn’t cram any more items in it! Your e-mail Inbox should only be for new e-mail.

To save important messages, create a folder. First, make sure you can see the Folder List on the left side of your screen. If you can’t, you need to turn it on. In Outlook Express, pull down the View menu and choose Layout. Then, check the box marked Folder List. In Outlook, simply pull down the View menu and choose Folder List.

With the Folder List pane open, pull down the File menu and choose New, then Folder. A window will pop up asking for information about the new folder to be created. First, give it a name. If you don’t have very many messages to save, simply call your folder Keepers or Archive or something similar. 

If you are using Outlook, you will have an extra option at this point. You can choose what type of folder you want. Will it contain e-mail messages, calendar entries, to-do tasks, notes, contacts? You get to choose. For this example, though, choose Mail Items.

The next option is applicable in both Outlook and Outlook Express. The program is asking where you want to create the folder. Your new folder will be created under whatever item you single click. For ease of use, you may want to put the folder at the same level as your other folders. In Outlook, single-click Personal Folders. In Outlook Express, choose Local Folders. Hit the OK button.

Your new folder will magically appear! Now, comes the fun part. Drag and drop your “keeper” messages into this new folder. To “drag and drop,” position your mouse over one of your messages in your Inbox. Hold down the left mouse button, and while holding it down, move your mouse (drag it) until it is over the new folder. Release the button and the message will “drop” into the folder.

From now on, all of your important messages will be available, without clogging up your Inbox. Keep that Inbox empty! Over the last few years, some people have shared their strategies for storing important e-mail messages. Some people create a folder for every customer so that they can archive all customer correspondence. For most people, a Jokes folder will probably suffice.

If you ever want to delete your new folder, simply single-click it and hit the Delete key on your keyboard. Be careful, though; deleting the folder will also delete all of the messages it contains.

You can also drag folders to different locations in the Folder List. And, folders can contain folders. If you are a true pack-rat, you could theoretically keep every message you ever received in your personal folders.

I’ll see you in cyberspace!

www.ericspellmann.com