Physical manifestation of what my email inbox would look like

If you are anything like me, you have tons of email.  If you are a user of one of those web-mail sites like Gmail or Hotmail where you have tons of space, you may not even delete old email messages (with Gmail’s archiving option, why would you need to?).  For instance, in my old Hotmail inbox I currently have 3119 messages and most of them I have no intention of going back to organize them any time soon.

This brings up the question of this post: How do YOU organize your email messages so you can go back to find them when you need them?

Many webmail sites use folders that you can set up in order to organize your messages by topic or importance.  You can either drag and drop your messages into the appropriate folders or you can set up filters to automatically send them there.  Gmail uses a different, but similar, but much more flexible system with what they call tags instead of folders.  This way messages can have several different tags and therefore they can be in several different categories at the same time.  Either way, there is always a way to organize those email messages.

You’ll also notice that most webmail sites also have an email search box.  This way if you are looking for a very specific email in a very disorganized inbox (cough, cough!), all you have to do is type in a few search terms and you’ll hopefully find the message without an issue.  In fact, if a message in Gmail is archived, it is removed from the inbox altogether but it’ll still show up for searches.  When I began to hear that people are beginning to lose patience with organization tools and are beginning to rely on searches to find their long lost email messages, I began to not feel as guilty about my own jumbled up mess of an email inbox!

OK, so come clean!  How do you go about finding those lost emails from 5 years ago that you never thought you’d ever need?  Let me know, I could use the help!

Admittedly, I am new to the gmail scene.

I’ve always used Hotmail, even before Microsoft took them over.  Yes, way back then.  I have been hesitating, then hesitating, and even hesitating to move to another webmail service.  There are many things I don’t like about Hotmail, but, hey, there are also many things to get used to somewhere else.  For years I’ve had this struggle, until just recently.

I signed up for a gmail account quite some time ago, but I just never got into using it.  Many parts of gmail are foreign to me, including the whole idea of labels instead of folders.  It’s just one of those things.  Gmail has kind of changed the whole email thing, to the point that sometimes it’s difficult to get into it.  Well, recently I starting using gmail a bit more.  I haven’t tossed out my Hotmail account just yet, but I’m tinkering, and I love tinkering!  I hooked up my domain with Google apps so I can have my domain’s emails handled by gmail and I kinda like that.  I hate using desktop-based email clients because I like being able to check my email from any browser anywhere.  I also didn’t like some of the other options such as Squirlmail.  SO, I starting messing with gmail once again.

Also, since beginning to write for MakeUseOf.com, I’ve had to use gmail for my @makeuseof email address, which is fine.  All of this just keeps pointing me towards taking a real look at gmail.  Well, while handling a large number of emails from MakeUseOf.com readers, I was able to learn a trick or two in order to handle the influx:

First off, I realized how easy it was to create a filter that would filter emails with specific words and give them a specific label.

This was really cool, because I had a lot of emails from people needing the same thing.  This way I could glance at just the emails filtered for me.  That was cool enough, but I can also do that with Hotmail.  I’ve talked about filtering before, but gmail’s ease is overwhelming.  The thing with Hotmail is that it uses folders.  That means that a message is either in one folder or the other.  That’s OK, but I’m beginning to prefer the flexibility of having the option to have the message show up in several places.  In other words, with gmail I’m able to have a message tagged with several labels, helping me to organize them better.  For instance, I can label all emails from a specific person with their name (or whatever) and also label all emails with a specific topic and messages from that person would show in both places.  I like that.

I realized that I could add and delete labels at will.

I could even remove the “inbox” label and remove the clutter from my inbox.  I think that the “archive” option does the same thing (removes the message from the inbox but still keeping the other tags, AND if there aren’t any, the messages will still show in search results – cool!).

I was extremely impressed with how easy it is to create and use canned messages.

If you find yourself replying with the same or similar message over and over again, you can save it and have it ready with the click of a button.  Oh, boy did this feature make my day!  In the situation with all of those emails from MakeUseOf readers, my job got A LOT easier!  All it took to reply was to click reply, click the canned response I wanted, and click send!  It sounds kind of impersonal, but in the situation it was quite necessary and it really wasn’t a big deal not responding personally.

Using filters WITH canned messages sealed the deal for me!

When I figured out that I could set up a filter, and have a canned response AUTOMATICALLY replied to the sender, I almost fell out of my seat!  This means that I could have SEVERAL things going on, people emailing me asking for SEVERAL different things, and all I have to do is set up a few filters???  Now that takes the cake!  And I love cake!

Anyways, I know gmail has been around for some time now, and that there is a possibility that some of the features are very well known, but I am still impressed!  I’m ready to learn gmail!  I’m also ready to learn how gmail can help ease the transition from other email providers.  This should be fun.

TGIFF!  Thank goodness it’s Firefox Friday!  It is that time again!

This time I want to address an annoyance I’ve had through the years fo using web based email.  Are you sick of constantly having to go to the site just to check your email?  Everytime I need to check the mail, I had to open up a new window or tab and go directly to Hotmail.com (not cool).  How much time is wasted?  Well, Firefox and one of its many wonderful extensions has once agai come to the rescue!

I found this nifty extention that shows how many messages you have, alerts of new email, and offers a quick and easy link to the site!  It’s called “Webmail Notifier.”  It’s quick and easy to install and use so there’s almost no excuse!

When I first tried it out, I had to laugh because it showed how many messages I have in my inbox!

It would seem that I’m one popular person but the reality is that I am actually just lazy!  I haven’t deleted old messages in I don’t know how long!  Anyway, now time is saved and I’ll always know when I have new email waiting to be read and returned!

Head over to the download page and check it out: Webmail Notifier

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