Control Your Inbox with Rules and Filters
My wife uses Outlook. I was watching her check e-mail the other day, and I couldn't help noticing that she wasn't using many rules.
That's troubling because she's married to an alleged computer expert (what ever will people think?); besides which, she's missing out on some great ways to keep organized.
(BTW, I haven't a clue why Microsoft refers to them as "rules"; I like calling them e-mail filters.)
Outlook and Outlook Express Rules
Rules aren't difficult to create, but you could probably use some help getting started. One of the best tutorials I've seen is Sitedeveloper's Outlook Spam Tutorial. It covers Outlook Express, and Outlook versions 2000 and 2003. There's another less technical tutorial specifically for Outlook Express users here.
Most of the tutorials available online focus on filtering spam. That’s important, but you can also use filters to maintain a semblance of order to your e-mail folders. I have folders for more than a dozen categories -- newsletters, PC World editors, blogs, jokes, reader e-mail, to name a few. That way everything doesn't land in my inbox and it gives me more control on deciding when I want to read, say, newsletters.
The logic of arranging the order of filters sometimes takes a little work. I discovered Inside Outlook Express -- a site with smart filtering ideas. (The tips also apply to Outlook.)
Filters for Eudora
If you've been reading my blogs, you know I still use Eudora. I think Eudora has the most powerful e-mail filtering feature I've ever seen. Just today I learned about Cecil Williams's "Eudora Spam Filtering with Eudora" site. His filtering strategies and examples are brilliant, and he's explained how to apply controls to every incoming e-mail.
For instance, in a few minutes, I created a whitelist filter that takes everyone in my address book and gives them a free pass into my inbox (or appropriate other folder). Another one filters out e-mail with Asian characters; I have another that finds spoofed e-mail allegedly from AOL, Yahoo, or MSN addresses.
If you're using Eudora, you really need to look over the site; Outlook users may be able to glean the concepts and syntax, and from them, create equally powerful rules.
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Mozilla Thunderbird has a great self-learning spamfilter. Works almost perfectly. It's only seldom that I have to do a manual correction.
Best of all: Thunderbird is free, and available not only for Windows, but also for Linux (tomorrow is the release of Ubuntu Linux 7.04; you might want to take a look at this suprisingly user-friendly Linux, too....)
Greetz, Pjotr.
I also use Thunderbird but am not impressed at all with its self-learning spam filter. I get hundreds of emails per day - only about 5% are legitimate. I get LOTS of spam in my inbox. And what really ruffles my feathers is that many of those spam messages in my inbox are marked "Junk" but aren't being assigned to the junk box. Still, TB is far better than Outlook Express or the new Outlook - I've used them all and like TB the best.
Best,
Joseph