Email organization woes

[genealogygirl]

So, I switched to gmail to remedy my spam problem, on the advice of you good folks. And, yeah, wow. Spam that gets through gmail is truly minimal. I end up with 100 or more spam messages each night, but it all goes into the spam folder

Comments

[madlori]

No folders in gmail. Trust me, after awhile you won't miss them. I don't.

I simply archive any email I want to keep, and delete any I don't. Since you can SEARCH your archived mail, it's easy to find anything so you don't really need folders.

[genealogygirl]

Oh, but the disorganization! It just kills me. Completely OCD about folders. All that mass of disorganized emails .......

I've never proven to be an adept searcher. Tonight, for example, I wanted to DVR the Obama-Clinton debate. I go to uverse and search. I try searching for clinton. Nada. I try searching for debate. Nada. I try searching for democratic. Nada. I finally googled and eventually landed on the fact that MSNBC was broadcasting and DVR'd it that way. I fear that mass of emails would be equally inaccessible to me.

[sageofgodalming]

Yes, Gmail's pitch shocked me when I first came across it - it felt like the equivalent of giving a teenager a bedroom so large that they never need tidy up again: just viscerally so immoral.

[genealogygirl]

Oh, and how does this system work for procrastinators?

I'm the HP Lexicon communications manager. But, I like to tackle those emails once a week (in theory anyway) -- the reality is that I maybe get to it once a month or ......anyway. I usually just shelved them into an incoming Lexicon folder and then grabbed them when I had a spare bit of time. Under gmail, it's either they sit in the inbox generally or they get archived generally. Yeah?

[kiwiria]

Just wondering, what can you do with folders that you can't do with the tags in gmail. I tag and archieve, so the emails are removed from my inbox and only show up under the selected tags, and to me that's the same as if I'd put them in a folder by that name. So I'm just curious what you feel is missing in order to hopefully point you in the right direction :-)

[sageofgodalming]

I assume you are referring to labels.

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ctx=mail&answer=6560

I can't see that you can implement subfolders - sure you can give things more than one label, but there doesn't seem to be anything to enforce that, for example, one label is 'inside' another. Maybe that doesn't matter.

[kiwiria]

Sorry, I've been spending too much time on goodreads, where it's called tags rather than labels.

You're right, you can't make anything similar to sub-folders. I agree that that does get frustrating from time to time.

[genealogygirl]

"only show up under selected tags" ------ this is the part that would be key to me.

If I want to see all the emails that I've tagged as Lexicon to be answered for example and *nothing else* ----- can I do that? I can I sort them by date? Let's just say that I remember something came in last Tuesday for Lexicon, but I didn't even read it. What then? In the folders system, I just go to that folder and scroll up to Tuesday and skim, then I can find it. Does that work with the labels/tag system? I guess I also don't know how to make it only show me all messages with a specific tag.

[elfundeb]

How do other people keep their email organized?

OMG, should I be keeping my email organized? I'm absolutely amazed at the time you devote to organization. I've never been able to muster the energy to use folders, tags, or any other organizational system, even for my work emails. Somehow I am able to find things, but it's more of a knack for looking in the right place.

I admire anyone with real organizational skills, but oddly I have no desire to acquire any.

[genealogygirl]

LOL

I'm a bit of an organization nut, actually. Probably making my kids neurotic.