Sorting out your E-mails
As so
many people nowadays seem to have overflowing Inboxes, I thought I would revisit the topic
of message management. As well as saving time,
it can also save embarrassment as you can make sure unpleasant and unwanted e-mails are
shunted straight into your Deleted Items folder without having to see them at all.
To run the system, first make some new folders
inside the Inbox. Right -click the Inbox and
select New Folder (or select this option from the File
menu) and give your folders appropriate names e.g. Tennis Club, Holidays, Painting etc. You
are now ready to set up the message management system.
This depends on creating Rules. You
can organise things so that messages with specified content, or from named people, are
moved automatically into nominated folders when they first arrive. You will still know you have mail as the usual blue
number in brackets will appear showing unread messages, but next to the folders rather
than simply next to the Inbox. Open the
folders to read the messages in the normal way.
OUTLOOK EXPRESS
Set up rules by going to Tools - Message Rules - Mail and clicking New or selecting a message and
then going to Message - Create Rule from Message. If you want to move messages with particular
content, click the condition (box 1) labelled “Where the Subject line contains
specific words”. If you want to move
messages from a particular person or domain, click “Where the From line contains
people”.
In the lowest window (box 3), you should now see
the same text with the “contains….” in blue.
Click this text and you will open a new window where you can type the
subject or name. People in your Address Book
can be selected at this point.
Clicking Add will return you to the rule and you
can now select a folder to receive the messages (box 2) , or the Delete option for mail
you don’t want to read. If selecting the
Move option, click the blue, underlined “specified” in box 3 to select the
destination folder.
Finally, in box 4 give your rule a name e.g. the
topic of messages or destination folder name, so that you can identify it easily in
future. At any time, go to Tools - Message Rules and amend or delete the
rule.
BLOCKING MESSAGES
If you are receiving unwanted mail from a domain
but the exact details of the sender keep changing, use the wildcard * symbol to represent
unknown characters e.g. *nastyname*. (An alternative is to select the message and go to Message - Block Sender for the full
address to be added to a special list of emails sent directly to the Deleted Items folder,
or go to Tools - Message Rules - Blocked Senders
List - Add to enter part of the name or domain to the list.)
OUTLOOK
As this is a more sophisticated package, the rules
are more complex and offer a wider range of possibilities.
Access them by clicking the Organise button showing above the Inbox
contents and clicking Rules Wizard, or find the Wizard from the Tools menu. Click
New and work through the conditions and exceptions, adding specified text or folder names
in just the same way as in Outlook Express.
JUNK MAIL
The blocked sender option is available via the
Organise menu labelled Junk Mail, and you can
add addresses on new messages to this list by right-clicking and selecting the option - Junk Mail - Add to Junk Senders List. Click Edit to add domain names to the junk
or adult mail filter system so that these messages will be deleted automatically.
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