How do you manage your mail?

re: How do you manage your mail?

Nicole — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 11:40:00 GMT

I would never use "deleted" as a folder to keep important mails - because "delete it when closing" is a default I have run into one to many times.

I use folders for some special things I can sort in there (like announcements, or mails regarding a special topic), rest goes into "ablage" which is the "to much effort to sort out more".

Most of my mails can be sorted out into year.pst because they are done after a usual year.

re: How do you manage your mail?

Mike Griggs — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 12:40:00 GMT

LookOut is your friend! It's an absolutely essential product. I no longer have to waste time sorting things into separate folders.

The biggest issue that I found with the "lots of folders" approach is what to do when a given e-mail spans two or more different categories. Then you end up wasting time digging through a folder that you *think* it should be in, but in fact you filed it somewhere else as it could equally belong there. Finally you end up using search functionality anyway.

re: How do you manage your mail?

Shrink — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 13:41:00 GMT

Great post KC.
I am planning to reorg my mail folders as your recommendation. I invite you to see my post
on
"Writing good email" (http://blogs.msdn.com/shrinik/archive/2004/08/02/205571.aspx)

I hope you will have few good comments to make.

Shrini

re: How do you manage your mail?

Peter — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 15:45:00 GMT

I love the story about keeping the mail in the Deleted Items folder.
It reminded me of a coworker who never had anything in his Inbox either. I noticed unusual messages in his Sent Items folder. I asked him about it and he told me he manually moved all his incoming items from the Inbox to the Sent Items as he was done with them.
He was under the impression the Sent Items folder was for items sent TO him.
I was never able to convince him otherwise and he continues to work that way.

re: How do you manage your mail?

KC Lemson — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 17:58:00 GMT

Mike: I use lookout, and i still find separate folders useful. For me, I don't see search entirely replacing sorting. That's why gmail drives me nuts. The truth is that i'm quite good at sorting and i almost always find what I want without having to search.

re: How do you manage your mail?

Tommy — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 19:58:00 GMT

KC,

Would you be able to point a reference to the VBA IMAP macro you described? I gave up on using Outlook for email at work because of the IMAP mark-purge behavior.

Thanks for all your insights into what you do!

-Tommy

re: How do you manage your mail?

Jonathan Payne — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 20:32:00 GMT

It would be nice if each folder had an option to trigger the new mail notification or not. For example, something that is filtered into a mailing list or spam folder shouldn't put a new mail icon in the task bar (as it is unlikely to require timely attention) while unfiltered should cause a notification.

This would really help with the way I use(d) Outlook as there is some mail I like to read right away and some that can wait a while.

Perhaps this is already possible?

re: How do you manage your mail?

KC Lemson — Wed, 01 Sep 2004 02:31:00 GMT

Tommy: I have long since forgotten or deleted the code (and it wasn't that good anyway). Basically it did things like changed the views to hide items marked for deletion, changed the delete button to do a delete and a copy to a server-side Trash folder, added an 'empty trash folder' button that purged deleted items, etc. I didn't get too fancy and do things like trap the delete key, it was a proof of concept.

Jonathan: In Outlook 2003, the desktop alert is far more configurable than that annoying little envelope icon. You can use rules to say which items should and shouldn't display the notification for example.

re: How do you manage your mail?

Cindy Winegarden — Wed, 01 Sep 2004 14:55:00 GMT

Have you discovered any way (such as Search folders) to combine POP3 and IMAP messages into one Inbox? Not being able to combine them prevents me from making better use of my IMAP accounts.

re: How do you manage your mail?

Ed Hobbs — Thu, 02 Sep 2004 15:04:00 GMT

My biggest headache has always been the Send Items folder. The option require you to either keep a copy of all sent items or none. I would like an option to prompt me, after sending a message, if I would like to keep a copy in Sent Items.

Ed

re: How do you manage your mail?

Tom — Fri, 03 Sep 2004 19:39:00 GMT

Out of interest, what mailbox limits do you have at MS?

re: How do you manage your mail?

KC Lemson — Sat, 04 Sep 2004 03:42:00 GMT

Cindy: Well, you could have a rule to move items you download via POP to your IMAP inbox...

Ed: It's possible to specify this on a per-message basis in the Options dialog when you're writing a message.

Tom: I currently have a 500mb limit, but that is higher than most employees, the Exchange team is in a separate forest and has slightly different rules compared to most MS employees.

re: How do you manage your mail?

Steve — Fri, 10 Sep 2004 15:37:00 GMT

One of the problems that we have is that, especially with OL2003 and the new PST file size cap (20gb), is how we are going to back up these monstrous files. We actually have a desktop backup solution provided by Veritas, but it cannot handle the PST files (even though it does block level backups). Would it make sense to provide some sort of standardized API when installing Office (ala how the backup API gets changed with the install of Exchange) to allow for incremental backups of PST files or is there a better way to go about it?

re: How do you manage your mail?

Weinan Hu — Fri, 17 Sep 2004 06:40:00 GMT

Nice job, KC!

I really want to know the difference between LookOut and the search feature in Outlook 2003, which in my opinion is good enough for me to find every mail I am looking for.

re: How do you manage your mail?

Stewart Whaley — Sun, 26 Sep 2004 21:01:00 GMT

Weinan: LookOut is all about SPEED. It can quickly find any text in your e-mail (or Contact, etc.). It's a LOT faster then Outlook's search feature

re: How do you manage your mail?

Weinan Hu — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 19:06:00 GMT

Thanks Stewart! I will definitely try that then.

How do you manage your mail?

How do you manage your mail? — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 00:27:30 GMT

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