What is the best way to organise e-mails in MS Outlook? [closed]

Answer 1

Folders! Nice and simple.

I have found these to be invaluable over the years to help organise a separate emails on a customer or project basis. Even when there's multiple parties involved i only have to look in 2 folders at most to find what i'm after.

Edit: Similar to what tloach said, i use the inbox essentailly as a todo list of things i still need to look at.

Answer 2

any email that is auto-generated gets auto-filtered to its own folder. Separate folders for each project, and more for HR and general company junk. Basically the inbox should only contain things that need responses, once responded to messages move into a folder.

Answer 3

Depending on the amt of mail you receive I have 2 strategies that can be used together:

1) As most people suggest above, use your inbox as your todo list, and keep it clean. have 1 folder for Archived mails, and use all the search tools for searching!

2) If you get HUGE amts of mail, then use a filter to move mails that you are only CC'ed on to another folder. Then only check that folder N times a day ( I used N=3, morning, lunch & home time )

You will be amazed how much time it saves you, esp if you find that you feel drawn to reading mails that are in your Inbox trying to keep you Inbox clean.

This stop non-urgent mails from disrupting your flow, and is just quicker because you can now read the entire thread of the conversion by the people who were in the TO list.

HTH

Answer 4

Within my main inbox I have 3 sub folers: Do, Done, Defer and 3 macros to move the selected folder into the relevent folder. (alt-1 moves the selected mail to done and then selects the next mail). Each day I quickly filter my inbox into the three folders. I can process several hundred mails in 20 mins or so.

Do, something I expect to process today. Done, something I don't care about/have read and understood, I dont expect to refer back to these today. Defer, something I will do something about but not today.

At the end of processing I expect my inbox to be empty.

At the end of the day all mail items in Do move to Defer (I dont want to keep things in Done overnight).

At the start of the day all items in Defer are filtered using the rules above, I dont want to leave things in Defer for more then a day or 2. If stuff hangs around for too long I will add it to my diary to process later.

At the end of the day all mail in Done is copied into an archive folder based on the month/year. Done is just a parking place for things to be archived.

I use a tool to index my archive, I actually use X1 but google desktop is an excellent alternative.

I filter out any important facts i would like to refer back to in outlook notes.

I filter out any tasks I would like to recal into omni focus (http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnifocus/) the best GTD I have found.

I DO NOT EVER use my inbox as a todo list or a mechanism for recording subtle facts I want to recall later. I know a lot of people do but IMHO its just a bad way to be.

(cross posted to LJ).

EDIT.

Oh per a post above I also filter any mail not posted to me directly, by the mailing list the mail was sent to. I give different amounts of attention to each mailing list. I do follow the mechanism above for each mailing list but some I glance at and some I process in detail.

ReEDIT

In comments I was asked to provide the source for the macros I mentioned above. I DONT suggest this is seen as an example of good VBA, I am pretty sure it was sourced from the interweb and adapted for my purposes. It has worked reliably for many years.

Sub MoveToDone()
    On Error Resume Next

    Dim objFolder As Outlook.MAPIFolder, objInbox As Outlook.MAPIFolder
    Dim objNS As Outlook.NameSpace, objItem As Outlook.MailItem

    Set objNS = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI")
    Set objInbox = objNS.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderInbox)
    Set objFolder = objInbox.Folders("Done")

    'Assume this is a mail folder

    If objFolder Is Nothing Then
        MsgBox "This folder doesn't exist!", vbOKOnly + vbExclamation, "INVALID FOLDER"
    End If

    If Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection.Count = 0 Then
        'Require that this procedure be called only when a message is selected
        MsgBox "No msgs selected", vbOKOnly + vbExclamation, "NO_MSG_SELECTED"
        Exit Sub
    End If

    For Each objItem In Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection
        If objFolder.DefaultItemType = olMailItem Then
            If objItem.Class = olMail Then
                objItem.Move objFolder
            End If
        End If
    Next


    Set objItem = Nothing
    Set objFolder = Nothing
    Set objInbox = Nothing
    Set objNS = Nothing

End Sub

Answer 5

i use folders!!! we usually get tasks which have unique number!! so folders are named after task numbers!!

Finished task's folders move to archive!! simple and yet powerful! I found it useful and following it for the past 3+years

Answer 6

I use the same principles as this GTD article - link text

Essentially, I keep my Inbox clear, and move everything to the folders as mentioned in the article. Search is good enough these days that you don't need endless sub-folders.