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Computer Tips: How to Eliminate Email Clutter
Posted: Wednesday, August 26th, 2009
The average person receives about 30 legitimate e-mails a day at work, 5 to 10 e-mails at home and 10+ spam messages a day, according to Ferris Research. To make your life easier, you can take advantage of the various e-mail management features within Outlook (common email program). The following shows you how you can use Outlook (which comes with the Microsoft Office suite) and Windows Mail (which is the standard email program on Vista) to help organize and sort your e-mail. If you don't have either of these, no worries. Many of these functions can be adapted to work in other e-mail programs. Get rid of junk and spam Outlook & Windows Mail both include a junk e-mail filter that identifies and filters spam. You can also block an annoying sender that slips through to the inbox by right clicking on the message and selecting an option from the Junk E-mail menu. Email received from that person or website will now be redirected into the Junk Email folder. Conversely, if the programme blocks an e-mail that isn't junk, you can right click the message and select Junk E-mail > Mark as Not Junk to prevent this. You can press "F1" while in your email program, and search for "junk email" to find out more about the specifics of your email client. To prevent spam emails in the first instance, be selective in who you share you email address with. Avoid entering your email on websites unless you trust the company. And if you do receive spam, don't follow the links in them, as this may inform the spammer that your address is active. Create personal folders You'll want to save some of the e-mails you receive. Consider creating personal folders to store and organize them. Name the folders for easy reference. For example, you can create folders entitled Family, Travel, Jokes, Friends, etc. To create a personal folder in your email program: 1. Go to File > Folder > New Folder. This brings up a Create a New Folder dialogue box. 2. Name the folder, choose what it will contain (mail) and select where to place the folder. 3. You can now drag emails to the appropriate folder. Filter to personal folders You can also filter or send mail directly to personal folders based on a set of message rules. By creating a rule, for example, all mail from your sister, could go into the "Family" folder. To create a filter rule: 1. Highlight the message you want to base the rule on. 2. For Outlook: Tools > Rules and Alerts For Windows Mail: Tools > Message Rules > Mail 3. This brings up a Rules and Alerts dialogue box. Complete the conditions and actions you want to apply. 4. Click on Apply > OK. Flag messages To help remind you that further action is required regarding a particular e-mail, flag or mark it. Select the message and then click in the flag column that appears next to it. A coloured flag will appear. In Outlook you can also use the right click menu to assign different colours, and reminders. Delete e-mail Should you delete your e-mail once you read it? Managing your e-mail when you first read it will help you reduce e-mail clutter. It is best to read, respond, tag for follow-up or delete e-mails as you receive them. In short, don't keep e-mail for the sake of keeping it." You can save critical work or correspondence in personal folders and purge non-essential correspondence (like e-mails to schedule a meeting) once a day. Now you have a cleaner inbox and, hopefully, more "peace of mind."
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Showing 0 to 2 of 2 comments.
Can you explain this?
Posted by: Dave | October 2nd, 2009
Mark as Violation
I never get get junk mail. My first email address is 10000 and junk cannot get past a first email address that is junk
Posted by: Jim | September 26th, 2009
Mark as Violation