What is the best way to organise e-mails in MS Outlook?

Question

Every software development professional (and especially project managers) has to deal with a never ending stream of e-mails. What is the best way of organising them in MS Outlook?

Obviously some fancy issue tracking tools give more flexibility but I am interested in plain vanilla approach that can be deployed within most organisations.

P.S. Finding e-mails is generally the least of the problems that needs to be addressed. Search nowdays is pretty good.

Answer 1

any email that is auto-generated gets auto-filtered to its own folder. Separate folders for each project, and more for HR and general company junk. Basically the inbox should only contain things that need responses, once responded to messages move into a folder.

Answer 2

Folders! Nice and simple.

I have found these to be invaluable over the years to help organise a separate emails on a customer or project basis. Even when there's multiple parties involved i only have to look in 2 folders at most to find what i'm after.

Edit: Similar to what tloach said, i use the inbox essentailly as a todo list of things i still need to look at.

Answer 3

1 folder per project.
1 folder for personal mails.
1 folder for support.

Inbox for most other things.

I usually set up rules to auto-direct mail into the right folders.

Answer 4

Install LookOut, leave everything in the Inbox and just search for stuff.

Ok, maybe do some organisation, but LookOut is pretty good, and the better the search, the less manual organisation you have to do, and that is a Good Thing, IMO.

Answer 5

Files and folders, auto-filtering and a small inbox (i.e. Inbox Zero) are all good practices, but ultimately it's all about being able to find emails when you need them and for that there's only one answer for Outlook at the moment.

Install Xobni.

Answer 6

I use Windows Desktop Search.

I have a huge offline PST where I move everything, and I can easily find anything by searching.

Answer 7

i use folders!!! we usually get tasks which have unique number!! so folders are named after task numbers!!

Finished task's folders move to archive!! simple and yet powerful! I found it useful and following it for the past 3+years

Answer 8

• Use folders - one for each subject ex. project X, Marketing, Personal, TODO etc.
• I use Xobni as well to quickly find emails from specific sender.
• Two "Special" folders: "Inbox" for emails sent to me and "Inbox-CC" for emails I'm CC'd. New emails arrive to one of those folders and then I decide where to store them.

Answer 9

I simply have two folders: my inbox, and a subfolder called "archive". My inbox is my todo-list. If any message needs further attention, or has some action that needs to be completed, or I'm waiting for an answer for something, it stays in the inbox. If it's handled, I move it to the archive.

Therefore, if it's in the inbox, it reminds me of the stuff that I still need to do everytime I check my e-mail.

Search indexing in Outlook with Vista makes searching through e-mails just as much fun as it is with Google Mail, so you can apply the same strategy as they did. Why delete an e-mail?

Also, I turn off auto-archiving and keep all e-mails local with me.

Answer 10

I use the same principles as this GTD article - link text

Essentially, I keep my Inbox clear, and move everything to the folders as mentioned in the article. Search is good enough these days that you don't need endless sub-folders.

Answer 11

Everybody seems to suggest folders; I suggest Categories.

I have 1 active pst and 1 pst per archived year, every mail is assigned one or more categories. Adjust folder view to group by category.

The main advantage is that you can assign several categories to a single mail.

Everything that still needs attention is in the inbox without categories.

Oh yes, and Rules! As already mentioned, rules for automated emails, as well as a rule for known senders, which files incoming mail into a special inbox folder.

Answer 12

I keep anything that needs my attention in my Inbox and move everything completed to my Saved Folder.

I have just started using Categories as of Monday and I think they are something that more people need to be aware of.

I have a few rules which detect Project Names from the Subject and auto assign to the correct Category with my Inbox set to Group by Category.

Finally I use Google Desktop for Searching - much quicker and easier although does not like me moving my messages to my Saved Folder.

Answer 13

Depending on the amt of mail you receive I have 2 strategies that can be used together:

1) As most people suggest above, use your inbox as your todo list, and keep it clean. have 1 folder for Archived mails, and use all the search tools for searching!

2) If you get HUGE amts of mail, then use a filter to move mails that you are only CC'ed on to another folder. Then only check that folder N times a day ( I used N=3, morning, lunch & home time )

You will be amazed how much time it saves you, esp if you find that you feel drawn to reading mails that are in your Inbox trying to keep you Inbox clean.

This stop non-urgent mails from disrupting your flow, and is just quicker because you can now read the entire thread of the conversion by the people who were in the TO list.

HTH

Answer 14

Within my main inbox I have 3 sub folers: Do, Done, Defer and 3 macros to move the selected folder into the relevent folder. (alt-1 moves the selected mail to done and then selects the next mail). Each day I quickly filter my inbox into the three folders. I can process several hundred mails in 20 mins or so.

Do, something I expect to process today. Done, something I don't care about/have read and understood, I dont expect to refer back to these today. Defer, something I will do something about but not today.

At the end of processing I expect my inbox to be empty.

At the end of the day all mail items in Do move to Defer (I dont want to keep things in Done overnight).

At the start of the day all items in Defer are filtered using the rules above, I dont want to leave things in Defer for more then a day or 2. If stuff hangs around for too long I will add it to my diary to process later.

At the end of the day all mail in Done is copied into an archive folder based on the month/year. Done is just a parking place for things to be archived.

I use a tool to index my archive, I actually use X1 but google desktop is an excellent alternative.

I filter out any important facts i would like to refer back to in outlook notes.

I filter out any tasks I would like to recal into omni focus (http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnifocus/) the best GTD I have found.

I DO NOT EVER use my inbox as a todo list or a mechanism for recording subtle facts I want to recall later. I know a lot of people do but IMHO its just a bad way to be.

(cross posted to LJ).

EDIT.

Oh per a post above I also filter any mail not posted to me directly, by the mailing list the mail was sent to. I give different amounts of attention to each mailing list. I do follow the mechanism above for each mailing list but some I glance at and some I process in detail.

ReEDIT

In comments I was asked to provide the source for the macros I mentioned above. I DONT suggest this is seen as an example of good VBA, I am pretty sure it was sourced from the interweb and adapted for my purposes. It has worked reliably for many years.

Sub MoveToDone()
    On Error Resume Next

    Dim objFolder As Outlook.MAPIFolder, objInbox As Outlook.MAPIFolder
    Dim objNS As Outlook.NameSpace, objItem As Outlook.MailItem

    Set objNS = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI")
    Set objInbox = objNS.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderInbox)
    Set objFolder = objInbox.Folders("Done")

    'Assume this is a mail folder

    If objFolder Is Nothing Then
        MsgBox "This folder doesn't exist!", vbOKOnly + vbExclamation, "INVALID FOLDER"
    End If

    If Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection.Count = 0 Then
        'Require that this procedure be called only when a message is selected
        MsgBox "No msgs selected", vbOKOnly + vbExclamation, "NO_MSG_SELECTED"
        Exit Sub
    End If

    For Each objItem In Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection
        If objFolder.DefaultItemType = olMailItem Then
            If objItem.Class = olMail Then
                objItem.Move objFolder
            End If
        End If
    Next


    Set objItem = Nothing
    Set objFolder = Nothing
    Set objInbox = Nothing
    Set objNS = Nothing

End Sub

Answer 15

Merlin Mann has spent a load of time exploring this as Inbox Zero. There's a great video presentation at Google which is well worthwhile watching.

Answer 16

I'm an extreme sorter and have had an interesting time reorganizing my boss's email patterns - she gets 500 emails per day. After spam. And requires that all of her email remain in Outlook (meaning transferring, say, emails form 2001 into an archive file is out). It's still an organic process, but the most effective, and most easily adopted by her, have been to:

1) Use folders to separate functional areas. For example: A Company or Work folder containing Contracts (with a subfolder for each active contract), Business Development (proposals/leads), and Personal Development (education and conference materials, receipts, etc). Outside of the Company folder is a Personal folder for non-work related emails.

My only rule of thumb is embrace the use of folders, but don't go crazy with the subfolders. It's one thing to separate your M&Ms from your Snickers and Dairy Milks, another to separate the colors of your M&Ms.

2) Categories suck. They are not labels or tags. They are deficient. That said, there's little else that can help you highlight/color emails except maybe flags in Outlook 2003. I have a rule set up to categories any email that is sent from other employees within the company, so they don't get overlooked.

Once that's done: Rules, Rules, Rules. I haven't found a limit. I've got all manner of highly refined Spam filters first, followed by News filters that move all the lists and newsletters and RFP announcements to a news folder and mark them as read (unread messages denote priority and require attention; news is optional - it's procrastination, not work). Then there is a rule for each contract filtering any email from the customer domain to the appropriate contract folder.

And of course I would say read Inbox Zero (specifically this one) and Email Zen and take what nuggets of goodness mean the most to you before proceeding.

Answer 17

I just keep it all in my Inbox and let it auto-archive. That way I can sort and search the Inbox to find anything. Google Desktop Search helps too.

I know some people who fastidiously reassign their emails into a huge hierarchy of folders. They can never find anything more than 2 days old! "Maybe I put it under Project X; no, maybe under Oracle Issues; no, ..."

Answer 18

Lookeen is very good tool to organize mails in outlook!