If you’re like most people, you’re getting too many emails in your inbox.
An overflowing inbox can create stress and cause you worry that you’re missing important emails.
One way to reduce the number of emails going into your inbox is to unsubscribe to as many automatic emails as possible, such as the ones from shopping sites that add you to their newsletter or promotions list. However, there still may be automatic emails that you would like to receive and read when you have time. Those emails can be filtered so that they’re being saved automatically to folders that you’ve created but not cluttering up your inbox.
Filters are automatic programs that run within your email reader.
As your email arrives, the filters search for specific criteria, defined by you, and then perform a defined action based on those criteria. For example, your filter can search the “from” field for your grocery store name and then save the email to a folder that you’ve created.
I suggest creating filters for:
- Your social media notifications
- Any mail lists that you’re a member of (school, church, community organization, etc.)
- Any newsletters that you’re subscribed to.
If you use Apple Mail, you create the filters using “Rules” under “Preferences” or using the “Smart Mailbox” feature.
A Smart Mailbox is a filter/mailbox combination (Apple calls folders “mailboxes”). However, a Smart Mailbox doesn’t move the original emails out of the Inbox, so it’s more like a saved search.
Apple Mail also has a useful “VIP” feature that creates Smart Mailboxes for your favorite people. To create a VIP when you open an email from a favorite person, click on the star next to the “from” line in that email.
If you use Outlook, filters are called “Rules.”
In Gmail, open the email that you’d like to filter, click on “More”, and select “Filter Messages Like These” from the drop-down list.
You can also create an email filter from the search box. Click on the down arrow at the right end of the search box, enter your filtering criteria, and then click on “Create filter with this search”.
Need some help with your email management? Contact me.
