{"id":8497,"date":"2022-12-01T16:03:09","date_gmt":"2022-12-01T20:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tcn.tidbits.com\/?p=9547"},"modified":"2022-12-02T22:08:31","modified_gmt":"2022-12-03T02:08:31","slug":"two-ways-to-manage-your-email-so-you-can-find-it-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/two-ways-to-manage-your-email-so-you-can-find-it-later\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Ways to Manage Your Email So You Can Find It Later"},"content":{"rendered":"

We recently wrote about different ways to organize your files, which prompted some people to ask us about the best ways to manage email. Email may have competition from messaging services like Slack and Microsoft Teams, but for many people, it\u2019s still where the most important communications take place. That\u2019s especially true for anyone who has to work with numerous people outside their organization\u2014there\u2019s a reason why business cards nearly always contain an email address.<\/p>\n

As with file organization, how you manage and organize your email is all about making it easier to find a specific message or conversation later. The big difference between files and email is that you usually care about how other people will be able to find and work with your files. With email, however, you\u2019re the only person who has to sort through your messages. Imagine you run an ad agency that has the Belvedere Hotel as a client\u2014your organizational structure for files needs to work for all your colleagues, but no one but you needs to find your email message about what should change in the next print ad campaign.<\/p>\n

When managing email so you can find what you want later, most people gravitate to filing messages in mailboxes (sometimes called folders) or searching, though we find that a combination is usually best.<\/p>\n

Find Email in Mailboxes<\/h3>\n

Many people have traditionally used a hierarchical filing structure to organize their email, creating a mailbox for each project. (There\u2019s generally little benefit in creating mailboxes for people or date ranges because it\u2019s easy to search for messages from specific people or between certain dates.)<\/p>\n

So, much as with files, you might have a top-level mailbox for Clients and a sub-mailbox for each client, including the Belvedere Hotel. You could make additional sub-mailboxes for different Belvedere Hotel projects, but unless you expect to receive a lot of email for each of those projects, increasing the depth of the hierarchy is often unnecessary and extra work.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unnecessary because date sorting options usually make it easy to home in on the message you want even when the mailbox contains hundreds of messages. Plus, the more granular your filing approach, the more manual filing you\u2019ll have to do to ensure that every message ends up in the right place. Worse, many messages will likely cross projects, as could happen in a discussion of a print ad when your contact mentions that they want to reuse the text and graphics in the next email blast too. Should it go in a Print Ads mailbox or an Email Blasts mailbox? Don\u2019t waste time deciding\u2014just leave it in a general Belvedere Hotel mailbox.<\/p>\n

How do messages end up in these mailboxes? You can always file messages manually, and you\u2019ll spend some time doing that, no matter what. However, whenever possible, you want to create rules (also known as filters) that file messages automatically. Rules look through every incoming message and take actions\u2014including moving to a mailbox\u2014on messages that match the criteria you specify. For sanity\u2019s sake, you want to make your rules as general as possible.<\/p>\n

For instance, you could make a rule that moved messages from your contact at the Belvedere Hotel to your associated mailbox. That would work initially, but it would fail if you regularly work with multiple people there or if someone else fills in while your contact is on vacation. So instead of creating a rule that looks for a specific email address or even a set of email addresses, set your rule to look for all messages from the belvederehotel.com domain.<\/p>\n

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Let\u2019s assume a colleague asks you for details on the latest Belvedere Hotel print ad. How do you find that information? Here\u2019s how we\u2019d go about it:<\/p>\n