Get your inbox under control

An inbox that isn’t properly maintained can quickly become unmanageable, and keeping track of your emails can turn into a nightmare. If you find your inbox is regularly flooded by unnecessary emails then one of your first tasks will be to cut down on the new messages you receive.

Send any email you don’t wish to receive to your Junk folder by right-clicking and selecting Junk E-mail > Add Sender to Blocked Senders List. This will also prevent any future emails from the sender going into your inbox.

Organisation is key

Using the subject line correctly will help your recipients organise and keep track of emails, and will hopefully encourage them to do the same. The subject should relate to the email and should be as descriptive as possible; avoid vague subject lines such as “hello” as neither you nor your recipient will know what the message is about.

Most email programs will come with tools that let you create folders and automatically filter emails into the correct folder, and using these will help you categorise and keep track of emails as soon as they are delivered to you.

There are also a number of programs available that integrate with your email application and make organising your emails easier than ever. Xobni works as an add-on to Office Outlook, so you can use it without having to exit the program – and it’s free, too. Its features include super-fast searching – as soon as you start typing a word, name or email address the search begins. Also included are in-depth contact details and threaded conversations, where you can see all emails sent between you in chronological order. Another plug-in for Office Outlook is SpeedFiler (£13.19, snipurl.com/27cd9)which concentrates more on organising your emails. It has advanced filing and folder-management features, keeping your inbox clean and manageable as well as giving you the ability to file messages you’ve sent into folders.

Six ways to beat email overload

It's never too late to get organised – make your life easier today!

CREATE FOLDERS By using folders to store your emails, you can keep your inbox free from clutter while still knowing where to fi nd a certain email. If your inbox is starting to fi ll up with emails telling you what your friends are up to on Facebook, you can create a folder named ‘Social web sites’ to hold all those emails. To create a new folder, right-click on an existing folder, such as Inbox, and select New folder…

SET FILTER RULES To create filtering rules in Windows Mail, go to Tools > Message Rules > Mail. From the next screen set the conditions of the filter; for example the sender of the email. Then choose the action your inbox should take when the conditions are met; for example moving the email to a specific folder. By setting the rules beforehand, you can leave your inbox to organise your emails while you work on something else.

GET RID OF SPAM You can configure your spam filtering by going to Tools > Junk E-Mail Options. Windows Mail scans emails for words, phrases or addresses that may indicate spam. By choosing the High level of protection, fewer emails will be let through. Some legitimate emails may be classed as spam accidentally, so make sure you glance through your Junk E-Mail folder regularly.

USE BLOCK LISTS If you receive a lot of spam from only a few sources, then you can block the address or domain that they’re coming from, so that no emails from them are delivered. From the Junk E-Mail Options page click on the Blocked Senders tab and select Add. Enter the email address you want to block, or if you get emails from different addresses but the same domain, just enter the @ sign, and then the domain, for example @spam.com.

SEARCH WITH XOBNI If you’re having trouble finding certain emails in your Office Outlook inbox, then download Xobni from www.xobni.com and use its advanced search to locate stray attachments, contacts and emails. This is more thorough than most mail program search tools, and as soon as you start typing the search will begin – letting you find what you’re looking for quickly and efficiently.

USE SPEEDFILER The SpeedFiler add-on for Office Outlook allows you to categorise your emails in just a few clicks. Right-click on the empty ‘Category’ square by the subject line and select All Categories. Rename the categories to something meaningful then exit, right-click on the square again and select the category you want to assign to the email. You can create a search folder that contains all emails of a category by clicking the Categorize toolbar button, then selecting Open ‘Category Name’ Search Folder.