OK this is very quick! I am looking at the new mail app in detail and trying to work out the ‘best’ workflow mix. In particular I am looking at combinations of Smart Folders, rules etc and then I thought why not ask you guys what you had set up AND has your use of mail app changed at all with Leopard?
I find myself not reinstalling mail tags. Never did really bother to tag my mail anyway, as Spotlight does a great job in anything I have to find.
Spotlight does a great job finding emails. I never bothered with folders or smart folders. I keep everything in my inbox and once a month use mailsteward to archive my emails. Started experimenting with todo and notes in email and so far I find this very useful. I try to keep my mail as simple as possible.
@Mac – The only smart folder that I use with any real regularity is my “Current” folder. It’s one that I have all of my accounts dump into for the current day only. (So Message Received is for Today, and Message from Mailbox is Inbox – or something like that.) This way I can only see what todays mail is without too large amount of clutter and things can still stick in my mind.
I do have a few other smart folders, but none used regularly. I have a folder that shows all mail with attachments – so I can delete if not needed or whatever, and one for Flagged mail.
I’ve just re-organised my set up for the new mail. I was using a load of smart folders and folders to file away emails but it was a complicated waste of time once the system grew. I have slimmed down the system to the following:
I have 1 smart folder called ‘unread’. It collects all unread email from every account I have set up. I use that as my ‘inbox’. Once I have read an email I either delete it or just leave it in the inbox. As I have read it it disappears from my ‘Unread’ folder.
The actual inbox has become my archive and I just use the search to find what I need, in the knowledge that I have deleted all the junk.
Like Mac I use mail steward to archive off everything on a regular basis as a backup and to let me clear out mail once in a while.
I also use spam sieve to filter out the cruft – seems to work well.
Intersesting discussion on email and ‘inbox zero’ mentality on 43 Folders and also an article about ideas forsmart folders that may be of interest.
See Chris, 3 people already use 1 folder to collect emails…. called the inbox. I’m trying to take it one step forward, and apply the same mentality to my documents… should be interesting.
@Mac – regarding your documents … isn’t that what the Desktop is for?
This is helping. I have to say that I have never felt so ‘out of control’ with my emails as I do right now. A combination of the new mail app, going IMAP on all my email accounts, and basically not having much time at the moment means that they are all in a real mess!!!
The interesting thing is going to be learning not to see the individual mail inboxes as ‘the’ inbox I guess. Will spend time on this tomorrow I think 🙂
Thanks, and keep the suggestions coming – and if I don’t reply to anything you know why!!!!
@Mac – good luck with that! 🙂 I’m not sure I’d go that far, but I’m interested in how it goes for you!
Jeez Mac you know how to give a guy a sleepless night don’t you!!!!
@Mac – Have you thought about using the Desktop and Hazel?
Had a few nightmares yesterday with both the Mac Pro and the iMac with email. Really didn’t like going down the IMAP route at all.
Ended up reloading all old emails, so at least we can start from scratch.
It finally dawned on me though, you don’t actually use the Inboxes!!! Just leave them as a central dumping ground and only read and access emails through Smart Folder(s). To that end it would be so much easier if the Mailboxes weren’t at the top of the column! So I dragged the Smart Mailboxes up to the top and straight away it all starts to make more sense and be more comfortable!
Now that is what I love about the community – pull ideas from everyone and you get a good system!
Dragging the smart mailboxes to the top makes absolute sense! Why did I not think of that.
I now have smart mailboxes at the top of the sidebar (thanks to Chris)
1 called ‘unread’ – rule = all unread
1 called ‘to do’ – rule = all flagged messages (Thanks to Wayne)
Processing email now works as follows:
Read and make 1 of 4 decisions (Thanks to 43 Folders article)
1. Delete
2. Delegate – forward to someone else to deal with.
3. Defer – Flag it if I need to come back to it.
4. Deal – if I can do so instantly using new to do/notes/address book function etc.
You are welcome 🙂
So far I have gone with:
@today for emails recieved that day
@unread for all unread emails
@active for emails I have flagged to keep an eye on
@recent for emails I have looked at in last 4 days
@sent for emails I have sent in the last weel
@replies for emails I have replied to
@weekly for all emails receive that week
I haven’t set up any rules yet.
I am also considering using the RSS is anybody doing that? I tended not to like that sort of stuff in my minimalist past but in the current structure it may work?
Played briefly but need to look at the preferences to stop the rss feeds mixing into the mail inbox.
Let me know how that goes – I haven’t even looked at it yet 🙂
Ok, had a proper play with rss but initially hit a real stumbling block. All rss posts arrived in my ‘Unread’ smart folder. I only want then to show up in the rss feed folders.
Solution:
Smart mailbox unread rules need to be as follows (note I am using spam sieve):
contains ‘message’ that match ‘all’ the following conditions:
1. ‘Message is unread’
2. ‘Message is not in mailbox’ ‘spam’
3. ‘Message type’ is ‘mail’
This ensures only email messages that are not identified as spam by spam sieve to how up in the ‘unread’ smart mailbox.
It appears you can add single rss feeds using:
File – add rss feed
This puts them in the rss section of the sidebar.
It appears you can also add mailboxes selecting ‘rss feed’ – they appear as folders in the rss area so you can group feeds together.
If you add a smart mailbox and set the rule to be ‘message type’ is ‘rss’ they appear in the smart mailboxes area of the sidebar.
Therefore I could replicate my system for emails for rss feeds also.
Hope this is useful!
UPDATE: Now have a working ‘Unread RSS’ smart folder as per email.
Will give that a try! Cheers.
An interesting aspect of all of this is that with the @today it is naturally very easy to see how many emails you get a day. It is 4pm on Saturday as I type this and I have had 55 today already. Is that normal, more or less I wonder?
Man, you people like your folders. Funny thing is that being an IT manager I bet I get the least amount of emails daily than any of you. My record was 14 in all of my 4 accounts. Rss in mail is not for me. NetNewsWire syncs with their website allowing me to quickly scan my news over the web via my touch. They made a great iPhone version of it, which makes reading rss feeds on the touch actually very nice.
That is a slim down folder list 🙂
NetNewsWire is great – hadn’t seen the iPhone version though!!!!!
I currently use Newsfire which has been great until the Leopard upgrade when it stopped working. I currently have a demo version of Netnewswire which I like a lot and am using while waiting for Newsfire to play nicely again.
However, I think I could cope with rss in Mail as I only subscribe to a select number of feeds and they tend to be 2 or 3 posts a week rather than 100’s daily so it wouldn’t take over Mail.
Keeping folders down to 3 smart folders is manageable and would enable me not to run another app for rss saving a little bit on system resources and dock space.
I like the idea of having one place for all my incoming information where I can archive it, search it and act upon it.
However, need to see how I feel a few days in!
[quote comment=”17632″]I only subscribe to a select number of feeds and they tend to be 2 or 3 posts a week rather than 100’s daily[/quote]
So you don’t subscribe to my site then 🙂
lol!
In fairness, actually ‘topics’ are posted at a steady but not overwhelming rate say compared to subscibing to the BBC news feed for example. And you very kindly give us the option to be notified b y email or not so we can keep incoming mail alerts down! That is the killer for me when a hot topic appears – my blackberry is set to vibrate during the day and I know when a topic on your site is popular as my left leg goes into spasm!
lol 🙂
Now I know what to do – just keep posting comments, soon have you limping all day!
Great post, thanks for the info