Mail Tips: The Archive
Productivity December 8th, 2006I have Mail set up with many Smart Folders which help me sort my Mail by specific rules without moving the original message. All of my original messages are stores in one big folder called “Archive” (which currently is home to 3146 messages).
Whenever I am finished with an email, either reading, replying to, or taking action with it, I just drop it into this big archive folder. If I want to find something I use my Smart Folders or Spotlight. Using this one big folder scheme saves me time when I’m filing my messages in Mail.
How do you have folders set up in Mail to store your messages? Do you drop them all into one place and use Tiger’s revolutionary technologies to access them, or do you sort them as you go into different folders?
December 8th, 2006 at 7:32 pm
Can someone confirm for me, is Archive a seperate folder outside your inbox that takes the email off your Gmail server etc and directly onto your computer?
December 8th, 2006 at 7:40 pm
Josh, that is correct.
December 8th, 2006 at 9:31 pm
I feel that Smart Folders are not always the solution nor Normal Folders. They have their specific use and why should we have an Archives when the Inbox is the Archives itself. I might missed out mails in my Flagged mails so, I like the Inbox to contain atleast the last months mail. This way I can come to the Inbox when I am free to do a screening.
I’ve a mail rule that archives any mails which are older than 30 days, thus archiving them for future reference in a separate Normal Folders, divided into sub-folders. This is one time and thus - do it and forget it action.
There are mails which you want to receive but never need to look closely into it, like SVN notification of projects, Trac notifications, Mailing List (internal and some external to the office), Daily Company Bank balance mail from my Banks, Site utilities, tools like site uptime notifications. Treat of these as the lesser important mails and thus be sent directly to the Normal Folders.
I would like to treat Smart Folders like Tags and thus be categorized into my Tags - clients, developers, friends, Team, Nanocast, LiveSpeedDating, Oinam and some important individuals. This way I get to concentrate on where I need more of my dedication. I’ve been extremely organized with Emails for that matter. David’s GTD have been of good help and the podcast from 43folders with David is a good one to listen while you drive.
I also used Gmail for Domains to filter my mails first off spams which I found is extremely powerful. Thus, I need to check my spam mails in there once in a while (twice or thrice a month). I even have a catchall mail which I see once in a month or so, just in case I miss any important mails. These are ones that I browse very quickly.
So far, I’ve been very successful with email, have never missed an important mail. Email have not really hindered my other works. I would never like to have a blackberry nor would I like to use Gmail Mobile but let’s see about that in future.
December 9th, 2006 at 1:08 am
Since I don’t receive much posts from the same source I file them mainly by hand.
At least my blogcomments are auto-filtered by a smart folder.
December 9th, 2006 at 1:20 am
I basically do exactly what you and have done it since the summer.
December 9th, 2006 at 6:38 am
Personally here’s my Mail setup:
Smart Folders for: Unread, Today, This week, This Year, Extendmac.
I have a single static (regular) folder named Archives as well, except I use a Mail-Rule to automatically move any received mail to the Archives folder, as I archive *all* of my mail. (No, not junk/spam—SpamAssasin takes care of that).
It seems a ton more efficient to automatically archive the mail than manually dragging it–just a tip.
December 9th, 2006 at 7:02 am
I have an Archive folder, too, Glenn. I have a neat rule set up in Mail that transfers any messages older than 30 days to that folder.
I think I posted it in a comment on a previous post of yours.
December 9th, 2006 at 5:40 pm
Hi Yannic,
If you do mail management by hand, then you should try the Mail Act-On available at
http://www.indev.ca/MailActOn.html
January 3rd, 2007 at 5:52 am
I might start doignthat - my mail.app is very unorganised!
January 30th, 2007 at 11:29 pm
I have currently 2 accounts in mail.app and both have a separate archive folder. For the archiving part I use “Mail Act-On” which has 1 rule per account that checks in which accounts inbox the mail is and then move it to the corresponding archive folder. I’m very happy with this setup because it can be used with much more accounts and is very flexible.