How do you sort your email?

[Dink]

Work is gettting busier and busier :rolleyes: and I am getting to the point where I fear I will start forgetting emails/things so am looking for some tips. I'm awful about not deleting emails, but I often need to save them for 6 months or so and I am nervous to.

I have a couple of folders that I move specific non important reference stuff to (use it as a file drawer, really). I have a folder I move oddball notes that I'll need later (project approval, etc). It's the unfinished business I'm not what to do with. I'm afraid to move my pending work to folders because I think I'll forget about it.

What do you do? I've tried moving action needed items to task or whatever is in outlook but haven't quite got this down. Maybe my attempt is too half-hearted and I need to get serious, but it felt "clunky". Currently I simply leave unfinished business as unread until I get to it, but as they get further down the page I'm sure I will start losing some.

[Mrs B]

MIne all stay in my Inbox til they are dealt with, I hate having emails that are off the page though so it makes me deal with things quicker!

[redhed]

Either it stays in the inbox till dealt with, or if it needs to get filed and it's not finished with, I open an action item somewhere for it. Either in something like Task List or whatever equivalent I'm using.

[Sadie]

What the others said. I always leave mine in my inbox and I often mark them as unread until I've dealt with them.

[Corette]

Inbox :nod:

[PoppyHoney]

If it's not in my inbox it gets forgotten about! Anything urgent I keep marked as unread, otherwise I colour code in. In Outlook you can colour code items, so I have a colour for each contract and can easily pull out all the emails related to that contract.

[~Twiggy~]

Inbox, Junk, 'Ebay' and 'Keep' folders.

[LibertyGal72]

Like others have said, if it's not in my inbox it gets forgotten about. For the things I can't do yet, either they are marked as unread until I get back to them or I set a reminder on them and a flag. So my reminder box will pop up and provoke me to look at them

Also, I book time into my diary for catching up on older emails. Or subject specific time, for instance, I have to update a particular spreadsheet and publish it on our intranet. I collate the emails until I have a few before I update it. Have time booked in my diary to do this on Tuesday this week.

I have quite a lot of private folders within my mailbox. I have a broad remit so they get filed in subject specific folders.

Also, there are sometimes when I don't deal with an email, but file it away for whatever reason. Those are still marked unread, and when they are moved to the relevant folder the folder name is emboldened, indicating that there are unread messages in it. Does that make sense?

[Dink]

No magic solutions, then! :lol: Does anyone delete when they've finished an item? I often need to go back to them so I don't.

[redhed]

Oh lord, no. Never throw anything away. :lol: Not proper work stuff, anyway.

What you do is archive it. Outlook will try to run this for you automatically once your mail folders reach a certain size because if they are too big they get slow. Settings for this probably already done by your IT people. Tell it NOT to archive your inbox or sent mail, and only archive stuff older than x years/months/whatever. You can still retrieve stuff from archive, it just lives in a different place so it's not available on search.

[Zia]

I also keep e-mails in my inbox until they've been dealt with. I'm quite organised, and I have a lot of folders for different things, but I only move e-mails once there is no more action to be taken. I do go through my e-mails every so often and delete ones where I know for certain cases have been fully dealt with and there will definitely be no comeback. There's no way I could keep everything.

[Rez]

Email housekeeping is a total pain, I get at least 100 a day and have 1600 just sitting in my inbox at the moment, the ones I want easy access to.

I have personal folders for archiving (though not autoarchive, I need more control) and folders under my main inbox which I try to file with some semblance of logic. I can still never find anything! I flag the ones I need to action with dates which helps.

There are so many people at work who even keep all the read receipts!