Email Filters, Rules, Folders

1. What sorts of filters or rules do you have set up, and for what purpose? + How have you organised the folder structure of your email and why?
   

If you email a lot then expect it back in droves too. Filtering incoming email is a handy way of keeping a semblance of order in your Inbox. I rely on it because it automatically moves email from certain people into their own Folder and keeps it marked as unread so I can see it has arrived.

The rules are ‘usually’ easy enough to set up although it takes a bit of reading and testing to work out. It could take you longer to figure out depending on the email program you’ve got. 

My filters and rules consist of a mix of automatic and manual approaches. If emails come in from Clients, they automatically go into my Clients folder. Inside THAT folder, are more folders each named by Client. It looks like the screenshot on the left.

Sounds over the top you might think? Well I only started filtering like this a couple of years ago when my incoming email got busy and I needed to stay on top of my work. Having my important email automatically placed in the proper folder makes my life easier and I don’t have to think about it, it just arrives in the right spot. I also use a few more folders that I manually move messages into. Two folders I use the most are DO and READ which I hope are self explanatory. I’m thinking about adding another folder called ‘Bloody Good’ but I don’t get email that fits into the rule yet.

Before I started filtering this way, I had set up rules for each email to go into it’s own unique folder but not inside another categorised one like ‘Clients’. This was ok until I got too many folders listed, it was scroll city and felt like hard work just looking all the time, so I decided to categorise my email instead. I use Google Apps and Gmail as a backup and it’s easier for me to run a search filter inside my Gmail account.