[gambit]

How do you manage your daily e-mail?

I received 50 to 100 email per day. Not spam but business related work such as projects, meetings, and so on...

How do you sort it?

[Karen]

Only 50 to 100? Gee I should be so lucky. I think I get 400 or more per day. Alot is spam mind you, so that part is easy to sort.

When I first go online, I sort my email on the server, before it is downloaded. Overnight, emails pile up so it easier to check it on the server. I check each mail account individually, and delete the emails I don't want.

Once the initial batch is sorted, I download what is left into my inbox. I then just have my mail program check for mail every 5 minutes.

In my inbox, I have folder set up per company or topic and sort the emails into each.

You could also use rules with your email, or filters, to sort your email into folders. I don't bother, I just manually move them.

Karen

[deleon]

Select all (Ctrl + A)
Delete


Well actually I just organise it into folders according to which company/site/topic. For example, everything from the local paper goes into Local Paper Folder, and all college emails go into the trash bin.

Once you set up a system, its very easy to organise email. I get about 200 emails a day and spend less than 5 minutes getting them ready. Of course about 100 are spam, but they're easy to sort out.

Spam filters, depending on the quality, can also work. Some people complain about filters deleting legitimate emails, but for most cases (ie. if you're part of a mailing list), you can easily set the filter up to ignore emails from that list. I've never seen a single real email get caught by spam filters.

[gambit]

I have spam filter. It goes to 2 servers before it reach my inbox.

I've setup a rules that at the end of the month I delete all the e-mail and save it to a different folders.

The only problem is the on-going projects.
such as web projects, business operations, offers, contratcts, all those daily business/web transactions. I'm just wondering how you guys setup the folders. Is it by bills, sales, support, etc... ?


Since I'm getting busier, I think I have to do it everyday instead of monthly deletion.

[sonnyrizo]

I can't imagine 50-100 emails a day, let alone 400. If my future business grows to the point it receives 400 a day, I may have to hire a person to work on emails.

I suggest you guys check out Gawab.com. Absolutely no spam. No spam! I don't know how they do it, but I NEVER receive spam.

[drewnix]

Most email clients have adjustable rulesets for autofiling e-mail using a custom filter (outlook does this, for instance). If you know the emails of people working on a specific project, set up a filter that will check the From: field for their email and move it to a specific folder for that project.

It gets more difficult if you are working on multiple projects with the same individuals but you can at least set it up so it will automatically differentiate between business, personal etc. And you can always sort your emails manually.

Hope that helps.

[Frozenfox]

I'd like to know what some more people are doing as far as organizing their emails. Getting them into groups is great and easy to do once you automate the process. But how do you prioritize? How do you know which emails to answer first from the ones that are just time waisters? Tell us your methods.

[bigpund]

Once I have mine sorted into my different folders for clients, news groups, etc etc, I just start with the the oldest new email. For instance if I havent checked my email since yesterday afternoon then if there is something from yesterday evening and then a bunch from this morning, i would start with yesterday evening. Read them all from one group, and then decide which ones need to be responded to. Sometimes if they are from clients, i will just respond to each one individually including a copy of the email text so that they know what it is referencing to.

just my method and it works for me. best of luck with those 400 emails.

[mpnetwork]

Three junk mail filters and a lot of cursing.

[dpakman91]

Originally posted by mpnetwork
Three junk mail filters and a lot of cursing.

i see a lot of people mentioning spam and more spam, but i really don't seem to have a problem with it, and i don't even have any special filters...just outlook.

the outlook spam filter also seems to weed out the few spam emails i get, which i saw represent about 2-3% of the emails i get.

anyone else in the same boat?

[mpnetwork]

Im getting over 400 junk messages a day , although thats spread across several accounts.

The fortunate thing is not much comes to my mpnetwork.ca addresses, most of it is to e-mails posted on other web sites.

Over the holidays I plan on sitting down, deleting the really bad accounts, then replacing everything with contact forms so the bots cant pick up my e-mail.

Should be able to get it under 50, and the filter will be able to manage that no problem.

And then of course another major source is the e-mail accounts listed in the WHOIS database, not really sure what I can do about them.