July 27, 2016 at 10:37 am
DEK46656 (7/27/2016)
Regarding emails (at work), I create an annual PST file. As I get the periodic “do you want to archive” I move anything I received or sent for a particular year into that PST (as well as tasks, appointments, etc.)Then once in a blue moon, I’ll “clean up” the year. Sort by sender and delete emails that are obviously garbage. Then I’ll sort by size and edit or delete them based on content. WHY do people insist on a complete desktop screen capture to show me a 2 line error message produced by a small dialog box?
After that, if I need something, I’ll find it using search from Outlook or “desktop”.
In the past I tried to use category folders, but I spent so much time deciding what folder to put something into. If it matched multiple categories, I then had to decide which was best. I found that I would spend all that time, and then not use / care about it later.
Instead of category folders, tag the messages with categories -- you can have multiple tags and do searches based on categories as well as set up search folders based on categories.
I found Outlook's ruleset to be too limited so I started using Thunderbird at home. I'm using an extension in Thunderbird which allows me to write rules based on just about any criteria imaginable including which folder the email is currently in and I've created a series of rules which makes reading mail much more efficient than anything I've found previously.
I only use my inbox for reading mail from my phone. In Thunderbird I run my rules against the inbox and they tag everything and send them to appropriate folders. Stuff from known senders gets sent to folders appropriate to the sender (after clearing any "junk" tags which Thunderbird has so "helpfully" added). Whitelisted commercial mail (advertising) gets put into a commercial folder which I usually only read if I'm looking to buy something - I will sometimes scan the last few weeks of emails to look for bargains. I have a "Hold" folder which becomes my new inbox for uncategorized screened mail -- as I read through it, if there is something which I can't decide what to do about for the moment or if it is a "To Do" item I tag it as "Hold" and or "To Do" and it will stay in the folder until I clear the tag. For everything else, once it's read, the next time I run rules against the folder they will get moved to either a categorized folder or a generic "read mail" folder.
Junk from blacklisted senders goes directly to the junk folder (which I quickly scan for mistakenly categorized emails). I've had the same email address for over 20 years so its on virtually every spam list in existence and I often get hundreds of spam emails in a day. Those which I haven't categorized as something else (due to whitelisting or some other criteria) go into a "Marked as junk" folder. On it I use a sort order based on the subject line since spammers often send the same message through a variety of spoofed addresses -- using that I can fairly easily scan through even a hundred or so messages in less than a minute to spot any miscategorized messages (which often stand out simply because there was only one copy of the message). I change the tags on any of those then run the rules against the folder and anything I didn't re-categorize gets blacklisted and sent to the junk folder.
It used to take upwards of an hour to sort through all the crap in a day's email -- now I can process my inbox in a matter of minutes. Sadly, the one feature which is weak in Thunderbird is the "search" feature. Luckily, I don't need to use it that often.
- Les
July 27, 2016 at 10:39 am
you should all know about site: searches on search engines
Amen!
Knowing how to use the "advanced" search engine features is huge. Anyone in technology (as an example) who took 20 minutes to play around with the info here instantly gains a small competitive advantage.
I wish Gmail had folders. I've tinkered with a couple Gmail apps in Windows/Chrome and on my Android that gave you "folder functionality" but did not like them.
I decided to move my email from GoDaddy to Google.
At the end of this year (I just renewed) I'm going to do the same. I liked GoDaddy 5-6 years ago but, after my last renewal, I began getting crazy amounts of Spam and a few telemarketer calls/week. I know it was them because I've never had this problem before, it started right after I renewed and, in some cases, I get telemarketer calls about "my web site" or "small business".
It's infuriating to pay someone money who then sells your information to a bunch of people. I loathe them for this.
-- Itzik Ben-Gan 2001
July 27, 2016 at 4:54 pm
I'd like to use search in this way but I'm so disappointed in how outlook search works (or doesn't) Also the fact that Ctrl-F means Forward instead of Find like in every other application I use. So I end up using the inbox more as to do list and folders as categorized history. When I can't decide which folder, I often copy an email into more than one.
July 27, 2016 at 5:44 pm
Ralph Hightower (7/27/2016)
For work, I have folders set up for each project or system and I move the emails to the relevant folders. If my manager wants to know something about the project or system, I can go to that folder and get the information for him.
+1 ! :w00t:
Steph Brown
July 28, 2016 at 3:26 am
Gary Varga (7/27/2016)
Until Windows had search functionaility built into Explorer I used Visual Studio's Find in Files feature as it isn't limited to the current project or solution but can seach on any drive you have access to.As for emails, I use my Inbox as a traditional (read physical) Inbox. It is a todo list of tasks so everything either gets filed or deleted when either dealt with or discarded. This may seem like a bit of an overhead but it allows me to do things like catching up on SSC editorials that I have missed due to being too busy at work as the daily SSC newsletter only gets deleted once I have read that editorial, for example. I found that categorisation doesn't work well in this scenario for me.
Search is a great feature, however, it cannot be a task manager too.
+1 That's how I do it too. Being organised helps searching no end, memory of what was said is never perfect.
July 28, 2016 at 7:58 am
Whilst it is comforting that people whom I respect use the same, or similar, technique to me I see that different people, also respected, successfully apply different strategies. For those looking for something that will work for them try any one, or even a number, of these strategies. Eventually you will either find a strategy that suits or drown electronically. (I am hoping for the former for you!!!)
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
July 28, 2016 at 8:06 am
Gary Varga (7/28/2016)
Whilst it is comforting that people whom I respect use the same, or similar, technique to me I see that different people, also respected, successfully apply different strategies. For those looking for something that will work for them try any one, or even a number, of these strategies. Eventually you will either find a strategy that suits or drown electronically. (I am hoping for the former for you!!!)
Yes, everyone works differently. Every time I go and see one of our senior people (who is very good at his job and a good chap overall I might add) and he consults his Outlook, I mentally facepalm slightly as it struggles to cope with the effort of loading 20,000 emails, mixed read and unread. But, whatever works for you! To be fair it's not so bad now Exchange only loads the emails of the last x period by default.
July 28, 2016 at 10:22 am
RenoChris (7/27/2016)
I'd like to use search in this way but I'm so disappointed in how outlook search works (or doesn't) Also the fact that Ctrl-F means Forward instead of Find like in every other application I use. So I end up using the inbox more as to do list and folders as categorized history. When I can't decide which folder, I often copy an email into more than one.
Yeah, outlook needs help
July 29, 2016 at 12:30 am
Yes, search definitely helps if you are working via a (slow) remote connection.
In terms of Windows 10, it's funny that I do not miss the traditional start menu anymore.
I open all applications via the 'Search Window', even if there are desktop shortcuts.
July 29, 2016 at 5:02 am
We have some web applications at work which I administer. I like to customise the look of some of these. Customisation is easy as the whole UI is held in text files within a web directory. The problem is there are 200 odd files and they are massive screeds of text.
Initially I just guessed the files and searched each file one at a time.
I now use grep
or astro grep
That was a good day when I discovered that.
Its particular good for web development searching. I tried windows search but maybe wasn't correct in my syntax - I haven't tried anything else so there maybe something better out there.
July 29, 2016 at 9:10 am
If we're talking about narrowing down the Object Explorer to only those objects I want to work with, then I typcially use Filter Settings for that, because the objects and schemas in the databases I currently work with follow a naming convention that helps facilitate doing it this way.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
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