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Vox Pop: Sell me on manual email filing
Merlin Mann | Nov 17 2006
Lots of the kids are excited about the arrival of MsgFiler, which is a neat litte app for helping you file away your messages in Mail.app:
Zesty. But I'll just play devil's advocate on this one: if you find yourself inordinately excited about the arrival of this (admittedly clever) application, there's an excellent chance that your email archiving system is unnecessarily complex and, in fact, is in need of a major streamlining. Discuss. Me? Here's my own folder hierarchy (and the Mail Act-on key I use to send selected messages there.):
That's it. Personally, I abandoned the byzantine filing system quite a while ago, and so far -- given a mindful combination of Smart Folders and Spotlight -- I've yet to find a compelling case for manually filing beyond a depth of more than one folder. So, my larger question for you guys with more than, say, five or so archive sub-folders: How often are you using your archiving hierarchy to retrieve old mail? In other words, give me your success stories and best practices by which the time spent on meticulous manual filing has paid outsize rewards in finding stuff later. Or, perhaps better put: what are the limitations of Smart Folders, and what would need to change about them to get you out of the manual filing routine? Because, I gotta tell you, it kinda seems like a lot of busy work given what seems like modest functional pay-off. But you school me... 66 Comments
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 I have 6 main subfolders:...Submitted by Peter Garner (not verified) on November 17, 2006 - 8:43am.
I have 6 main subfolders: one for work-related stuff, two that are specific to a couple of hobbies of mine (managed by rules), and one for my wife's mail (we have never bothered to get separate addy's--I just created a rule for her that I keep adding to as she gains new contacts whom I'll never want to reply to). I have another one for a mailing list I still subscribe to (hard to believe they still exist) and one that mirrors my gmail inbox. I also have a couple of subfolders and related rules for my .mac account. I set up .mac aliases for my blogs, which allow me to see right away when I get a reply to a post (yes, it does happen from time to time). Interesting to read that I'm not the only one who finds "Today" and "Yesterday" smart folders useful. They're a great way to ensure that something important doesn't get overlooked (which can happen when, like me, you have a fair number of rules set up). » POSTED IN:
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