5 Tips for Better Email Management

Despite the advent of smartphones, video chat, and instant message, email is still a major outlet of communication. With that said, it's easy to get behind on emails and have your inbox spiraling out of control. Fortunately, there are a few things you can do now to help prevent this mess. Read on to find out how.

1. View Emails as Threads

Organizing your email by threads ensures that you get the whole conversation in every email, without having to backtrack and look through the archives for past correspondence.

To organize your messages this way, select View > Organize By Conversation. Your inbox view will change to reflect the thread view. In the message disclosure triangle, you will be able to see how many messages are in the thread. Clicking this triangle will give you a list of messages associated with the subject line.

2. Use Rules to Label Messages

We've covered how to use rules in the past, but oftentimes the Rules feature is severely underestimated. It's one of the easiest ways to instantly label important reoccurring messages.

Go to Mail > Preferences > Rules, and add a new rule. Name the rule to your liking, and then choose From and Contains, then type in the email address for messages you'd like to highlight. In the actions section, choose Set Color, of background, and choose your color.

When you're finished, click OK. Whenever you get a message from the specified sender in the future, the background of the message will be highlighted in your inbox.

3. Flag Messages with Different Colors

You can also flag messages with different colors to get them to stand out.

To do this, either right-click on the message and select a flag color, or navigate to Message > Flag, and select a color.

You can even go a step further by adding a smart mailbox that automatically gathers all of the messages with a specific color of flag

4. Take Mailboxes Offline

Sometimes, you may want to shut off your inbox so you can remain undistracted. Well, it's easy to take accounts offline.

To go offline, go to Mailbox > Take All Accounts Offline. You won't be able to see new messages flowing in, but any messages you attempt to send will be put into your Outbox.

5. Redirect Messages

Need to send a message, but want to eliminate the details about the original sender?

By selecting a message to redirect, and clicking Message > Redirect (or press Shift + Command + E), the original message will be copied into a new email, but the original sender information will be ommited. Very easy!

Cory Bohon is a freelance technology writer, indie Mac and iOS developer, and amateur photographer. Follow this article's author, Cory Bohon on Twitter.

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Original Page: http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/5_tips_better_email_management

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