You inbox can get out of control, particularly when you are traveling to conferences and away from your office for a few days. Since I just got back from the Spring ERE and am now headed out to the Australasian Talent Conference I thought some of my fellow travelers would find this blog post timely.
 
With a daily average fluctuating between 500 and 700 new messages in my Outlook, Auto responders, Junk Mail and Filtering are simply survival tools for me, specially after long trips when I'm officially working but away from my computer during large parts of the day.

The SEND button is overused and much of what skirts around your spam blocker and manages to land in your inbox is fluff. Some mail you?ll definitely want to keep, even a bit of ?resume spam? can be useful in the future, but other mail is total junk you want to delete unread. However, what about all those messages which require your action? Like good resumes among the bad spam, solid business opportunities could also be lost to inbox bloat.

Like me you may use Outlook but most advanced email programs today offer you solutions to help with inbox bloat. I have been using Outlook for the last ten years and have developed quite the expertise on filtering email using the Organize function and the Rules Wizards. Most email providers, like mine, employ robust, top of the line enterprise grade spam filters, which capture a vast majority of the real trash. What I need is a system that helps me organize and prioritize the pieces that are not clearly trash so I can quickly pick out the real opportunities from the marginal.

For that, I use Folders, Colors, Views and the Junk Mail feature in Outlook. These features are available by selecting Tools in your Outlook, and from that menu choose Organize. Here are some efficient ways to deal with professional, non-commercial, inbound mail, whether it is resume spam, solicited leads or unsolicited ?announcements:?

FOLDERS

I use the folder tab to select from specific senders to go in designated folders. Messages from friends and family go in the Private folder, messages from newsletters I subscribe to go in their respective folders for each newsletter. I do the same with emails from LinkedIn and other online networks. I even create folders for each campaign and automatically move all incoming reply?s to that particular campaign folder.

COLORS

I filter messages from specific senders by coloring them in groups like gray for pseudo-junk, red for internal messages from my co-workers and anything marked Urgent, blue from my close friends, yellow for news, green for external business and so on. You get the picture! It is much easier to distinguish the messages this way and take appropriate action.

VIEWS

I set aside a period in the mid-morning just before lunch, with a cup of coffee, to go through my email and start with selecting my views. I select the view by "Conversation Topic" or ?Thread.? This lists messages with common subjects all together, and this way can take action on or delete entire threads at once without having to comb through the whole mess. Next, I go to the view by "Sender" and again can review all the messages from one person and either take action, move to a folder for later or delete them. Finally I choose the "Sent To" view which sorts all of what's left in a list which lets me view if they were sent to my work or private account, or if I was just copied on a message to someone else, or if it?s a message to a list or group. This is a great view because I can see whom the message was sent to ? and it is not always sent directly to me. If I am not the only one in the TO: box then it is quite likely that the message is of less priority, unless of course it is from a client, co-worker, or someone I know well. For example, messages to a list are addressed to the list and sorted that way unless they were private messages sent directly and only to me. I then take action on all the ones where my primary address is the only one in the TO: box, then I look at my other email accounts, then I sort through the ones where I was copied, and finally I glance through the ones that are from services like lists, groups, LinkedIn, Plaxo and so on. This works best if you have or can set up aliases like jobs@yourcompany.com. It also works great with multiple email accounts.

There are three other organizational aids to help you control inbox clutter: the Junk Mail processing feature, flags, and the built-in Rules Wizard.

JUNK

To access the Junk Mail settings simply hold down the right mouse button while you hover over an email message. You will see a menu where one of the choices is the ?Junk Email? organizer. Select this and you can enter Junk Email Options where the systems lets you manage junk messages and ?adult content? that makes it through your spam filters. I choose to move them - they go in a Junk Email folder so I can keep them on record in case A) it gets out of hand and I want to take action or B) it turns out later they were erroneously marked as spam and it is a real email. You can also right click on a message and mark the sender as a Junk. This way you build your junk sender list on the fly. You can always edit this list yourself and download updates from Microsoft.

When you right click on a message in your inbox one of the Junk Email choices immediately accessible is ?Add sender to Blocked Senders List.? What this does is move that email address to a list of addresses that you are Outlook will block. In the future, any messages from that sender will be treated as junk and either deleted, or moved to the Junk folder depending on what you choose under Junk Email Options.

FLAGS

Some time ago, I took a course in time management where I learned that to be effective handling items on my desk I should only pick them up once and either A) delegate, B) take action or C) create a task. With Outlook Flags, I can do the same thing in my inbox. I can sort by flag status; assign flags with one of six colors. By right clicking on the flag icon on my message in the inbox view, I can quickly assign a color, create a task reminder, or delete the flag. You can create your own arbitrary ?category? for each color. For example, mine are:

1. Red: Urgent Action pending on my part, item requires my attention and has a tight deadline
2. Orange: Action required on my part, and there?s a loose due date but it is neither firm nor impending
3. Yellow: Item requiting further discussion with someone else before I can take any action
4. Blue: Item where I am awaiting response or feedback from someone else and the item needs my follow up before it can be completed
5. Purple: anything that is ?for the record? or FYI like info to read or look at but such that it doesn't require any action on my part
6. Green: item that has received an automated response via my Rules Wizard

In addition to colored flags for messages, I can also add a reminder to the flag. This reminder can have no due date, or it can pop up a notification at a date and time I choose. Once the alert comes up, or at any time once I take action on the item I can mark it completed, clear the flag, or even change the due date. Some default tasks are built into the flag interface. The ones I find myself using frequently are: call, follow up, FYI, reply and review, but I can also type in my own reminder text like ?Call Bob to see if he?s still interested? and so on. Finally, you can sort your inbox by color of flag, or use views to see only specific flags and even sort them by due date. 

RULES WIZARD

Spam will never completely cease but with the Rules Wizard, you have quite a bit of control. You may know some of the more common features like the Out of Office Assistant, which is actually a preset rule, but there are a vast amount of activities you can manage with the Rules Wizard, limited only by your imagination. Here are a few ideas on things the Rules can do, taken from my own settings:

You can use Rules Wizard to:

• Create alerts that show up on your desktop
• Create tasks and ?to do?s? or reminders for specific messages, senders, subjects, emails with certain keywords
• Craft automatic replies (auto responders)
• Distinguish internal from external mail
• Expire or move mail after a certain number of days
• Filter all the items from a mailing list, group or source like Linked, Plaxo, newsletters, etc.
• Filter junk mail that makes it into your mailbox
• Flag items for future activities
• Forward specific senders or topics to your mobile phone or to an assistant
• Handle messages forwarded from another user's mailbox
• Mark specific emails as read
• Search for phrases in messages
• Sort messages by mail account
• Turn emails into tasks, contacts or calendar items

Windows Library offers a great ?primer? on using the Rules Wizard here: http://www.windowsitlibrary.com/Content/191/17/toc.html

Cheers,

Shally 

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