Tips & Tricks: Email Tips

Here's one of my favourite ways to handle emails.

One of my biggest frustrations in the past was the proliferation of emails that come into my mailbox. Granted, most email systems have a facility to search, but I find that to be a tool that's something less than adequate for my needs. Over the past couple of years, I've configured my Yahoo email account to basically act as an electronic filing cabinet.

The techniques that I will describe may in parts specifically refer to Yahoo, but most email systems can do the same sort of thing.

The first thing that I will do is to create folders in my email based on how I want to organize my emails. In my case, I always preface the folder name with a dash for these automatic folders, that way it really stands out as the folder names are sorted alphabetically and this sorts my "automatic" folders to the very top. I would create folders called – Invoices, - Bills, - Taxes, - Warranty Information, etc..

Now, here's where it gets neat. What I will then do is to setup rules in my Yahoo mail configuration. The rule would need to be setup for each folder, but the rule would say that if the subject line of the email contains a [ followed by specific text and then a closing ], then it should automatically file that email in a specific folder. To give an example, in my case, the rule would state that if any email comes into my mailbox with the text [Invoices] in the subject, then my email will automatically move that email to my – Invoices folder. There's no worries that it's an email that I haven't read yet, in Yahoo, the name of the folder will still be highlighted in bold so that I can see that there's an unread message.

Normally, this might seem to be a bit "artificial" as I can't really ask everyone to send me emails that have specific text in the subject, but where this really is handy for me is when I'm organizing all of my paperwork. What I will then do is when I'm scanning any documents on my printer, I have an option to scan them to email. As part of that setup, I then have the option of specifying the subject line of the email so this is where I will put in the specific keywords.

Using automatic filters is a great way to file emails a little more effectively.