ELM Bulletin - May 15, 2009
Email Management
Combining the convenience of a telephone call with the ability to retain conversations for future reference, email has become indispensible to the modern business. Managing email, however, can be a daunting task consuming a great deal of time and space. With this ELM Bulletin we give you the following tips on how to manage your email.
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Control– Move messages you have read and/or dealt with out of the Inbox into an appropriately named folder. You will be able to process new mail much more efficiently when you are not being distracted by all your older mail.
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Archive – Many email programs offer archiving tools to delete and/or relocate email based on specific criteria. Use these tools to allow your email program to work efficiently and minimize overall size of the email data files. Be sure to configure the archiving tools properly so that you do not lose important email by accident.
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Save– Do not use the Deleted Items folder for saving email. Email programs will empty the Deleted Items folder by default when archiving email. If you must keep an email for future reference do not save it in the Deleted Items folder, it could be gone when you need it.
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Sort– Saving all email in a single folder will cause performance problems and increase the time required to locate specific email. It is better to sort and save email in appropriately named folders such as: Church; Clients; Family; Friends; In Process; School. There are no hard and fast rules for organizing email, any system that makes sense to you is better than nothing at all.
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Purge– If you're like me you've kept every email you've ever sent or received. This is a big mistake that leads to huge email data files. You don't have to keep every joke or newsletter that you've ever received (except, of course, the ELM Bulletin). You don't have to keep every email you've ever sent to confirm a dinner date or schedule a meeting. Delete them when appropriate, maybe after a few months, and keep your data files from growing out of control.
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Backup– Just like everything else on a computer, email is data that can be lost. Protect your email by backing it up. There are many programs that you can use to backup your computer; whichever one you use, ensure that your email is included in any backups you do. That way, if your computer goes south, you will be able to recover your correspondence with an old friend or valuable client.
As always, please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about this or any other issue.
Past issues of the ELM Bulletin are available from our website, feel free to forward them to anyone you wish.
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Peter Rhebergen Telephone |
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