Habithack: Email Filters
Everyday people gets tons and tons of emails (at least I do) and for the most part they were all going into my inbox, which would pile up pretty fast. With filters though, you can easily organize your email as it comes in and decide when you want to read what email when, if at all.
First, have a look at this easy to read chart I drew up and find out Do you need to use Email Filters?
Filters are fairly easy to set up if you’re using Mozilla Thunderbird (it’s not rocket science in other clients either, but we’re going to be focusing on Thunderbird today). The first thing you want to decide is how you want to separate your email. I have my personal email separated like this:
- Family (pretty self explanatory)
- NewLet (Newsletters)
- Confirm (Confirmation, private message notifications, ect)
- Junk (spam)
Though these are very simplistic, it keeps my inbox fairly clean and allows me to see if something new is in, or just old stuff coming up again.
Now, the How To:
- Firstly, create the folders you want to have them put into (File->New->Folder. Put in in ‘Inbox on email@address.com’).
- Once you have all your folders created, it’s time to create the filters. Go to Tools->Message Filters.
- Make sure the email address you want to use the filters is selected (if you have more than one email in the client) then click the ‘New’ button. At the top, enter a name for this filter, we’re going to use ‘Family’ for this example.
- The next step is to decide how it’s going to filter them there by selecting the variables from the drop down menus, we’re going to select ‘From’ and ‘is’ since we’re adding family. Now enter their email address in the text box on that line and click the ‘+’ button.
- On the bottom half of the screen select ‘Move message to’, then click the 2nd drop down box and find your folder named ‘Family’, select and click the ‘+’ button. Click OK. Now all email from that address you entered will go directly into the desired folder.
You’ve added one and it wasn’t too hard right? Well you can continue doing that. It may seem like a lot of work right now, but it will save you time and hassle down the road when your inbox has over 3000 emails in it when you come back from vacation. I find it useful too if you use the ‘body’ and ‘contains’ as well most of the time, more than email addresses. This is simply because I get a lot of ‘buy Viagra’ and ‘replica watches cheap!’, so adding the words and making them go to spam is easier than adding all of the dummy emails they use.
Not all Habithacks are tech-based (we’re not machines after all), tomorrow we’ll be covering Wallets and why you’re better off without them.
Related posts:
- Ticked Tuesday: Google Yes, it