Managing your email files

[iris lilies]

One of my friends has hundreds of messages in her email box. That horrifies me. Doesnt it take forever to load? Ack.

I look at my inbox as my “to do” file, and my goal is to have a clean, empty email inbox. If there is a email I need to work with requiring some form of action or potential action, I move it to any one of 25 subject boxes. I clean out those boxes once a year.

I reply to most messages even if it is a “thanks” or ” Got it.” I keep my Sent messages for about a year, and this gives me a record of all even if I don’t really need a record.

I am happy with his arrangement.

Are you happy with your email management system?

[catherine]

Hundreds? I have thousands. And I'm not happy about that. My biggest problem used to be that I never filed away project emails. I found it easier to just "search" one name than to go to my email archive. Plus I was just too lazy to organize them (although I do have many, many folders in my archive). But, this bad habit has been compounded by the number of junk emails that have started infiltrating my inbox. Some I provoked by signing up for things with my email address, but many are unsolicited. I've tried the "Report as Junk," "Unsubscribe," "Block Sender" but I still get probably 75 unsolicited emails a day. If I'm busy they pile up.

It is a problem. Plus, even if I did magically file away everything, my modus operandi is to keep nearly every email indefinitely. This need to hold on to digital ephemera is consistent with my continuing to save letters and cards from my childhood, and napkins I wrote ideas on, volumes of diaries that are never read and when they are, I cringe. I should have been an archeologist because I have this mental attitude that every fossil of my past needs to be preserved.

[Rogar]

In my work days I used to have the hundreds of emails and the inbox would pile up until there was time for house keeping emails. Anymore I see little reason to save any but the most important in a saved folder and delete the inbox as they are delt with. I get very few unsolicited emails, maybe three or five a day. I sometimes have some practical use for sent emails and can keep those for a few weeks before a house cleaning.

[SiouzQ.]

The email at the gallery where I work has something like 18,000 old emails. Since I only work there two to three days per week, I am not at liberty to delete any of them. A lot of it is junk and solicitations, so it makes it hard to find the one WIX order I have to deal with buried within.

Consequently, I clean and organize my personal emails at least every week.

[Tradd]

The people with thousands in their personal email just baffles me. How do you let it get so bad? I use both work and personal email inboxes as reminders. Work inbox currently has about 6 emails and personal about the same.

[catherine]

The people with thousands in their personal email just baffles me. How do you let it get so bad? I use both work and personal email inboxes as reminders. Work inbox currently has about 6 emails and personal about the same.

Haha, maybe we don't think of it as "bad." I wish I were as disciplined and organized as you and IL, but I haven't had any trouble finding stuff I need. There are a lot of filters to find what I want. The only thing that sincerely bothers me are the unsolicited ones. I can't seem to get rid of them!!

[Rogar]

I'm not sure what sort of unsolicited emails people get, but I've had some success hitting unsubscribe if they are from a reliable source, like say, PBS program schedule or fidelity insights or solicitation of money from charitable organizations. I would not touch unsubscribe with any thing hinting at spam. It could be my ISP filters out a lot of junk. I cut and paste certain important failry timeless messages into Word and save as a document.

My quest right now is the semi routine stopping of junk snail mail. I don't know how all of the catalogs get my address, but it gets worse around the Holidays. Usually a phone call to a 1-800 number does it. It's impossibly to stop them all.

[Tradd]

I’ve unsubscribed from a lot of emails (advertising
, etc.). I have a lot of folders for personal email that I’ll sort stuff into. For work, I have loads of emails that I have to keep. Many folders.

[pinkytoe]

My university job email and cloud storage stayed with me when I retired along with its several thousand emails and files. Last winter, the administrators decided that they would cut the amount of space allotted to retirees so I was forced to clean it all up by a certain date. Luckily it was winter so I spent some time every day dealing with it all. I swore I would not go over 300 emails but it is inching up even if I delete daily. I find spending a few minutes a day of deleting is helpful.

[gmiller]

For those of you who rely on Gmail for work or personal use, I was wondering if anyone has had the opportunity to try integrating Bard AI directly into your Gmail inbox yet. It's still in early access, so expect some bugs. I don't use Gmail personally, preferring ProtonMail. My work uses Gmail, but I haven't had the chance to try Bard with it yet. Bard has the potential to help manage our emails.