How organized is your Outlook inbox?

[Anonymous]

Do you always organize your emails?

[Anonymous]

Yes, otherwise I can't function

[Anonymous]

My inbox has 12,431 emails that are not currently in folders (there are a bunch of folders with emails in them, but I rarely use them. I hate that I never take the time to organize them, but the search function usually does the trick.

[Anonymous]

Yes.

[Anonymous]

I organize some but not most. Research showed that as long as it's all searchable it's faster to find things than spending time putting things in folders to organize.
I do move things to project folders after a project is done that way it's in one place

[Anonymous]

I gave up organizing it, I get a TON of email, most of which is not actionable, but b/c of our culture is necessary for me to keep for a papertrail. I used to move everything to folders based on project, but that takes a ton of time, and I found that it was quicker for me to find emails through search then trying to figure out which folder I put it in anyway. I have the following folders, so I only organize the ACTIONABLE emails:

To Do
To Review Later
Waiting

I have created QuickSteps to move things from one folder to the other, and mark them for followup at the same time.
Anything that is not actionable stays in my inbox. I have one archive folder for every year I have been at the company. Works for me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My inbox has 12,431 emails that are not currently in folders (there are a bunch of folders with emails in them, but I rarely use them. I hate that I never take the time to organize them, but the search function usually does the trick.

same here. I did start a folder yesterday to organize a bunch of emails from a client with attachments so they were all in one place. I really want to use OneNote or something like that but haven't invested the time to get up to speed.

[Anonymous]

Really? Every time I try to search for an email, I have trouble finding it, even though I am using good search terms. Is there a trick?

[Anonymous]

It's the most organized area of my life. Filed by client or project name.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Really? Every time I try to search for an email, I have trouble finding it, even though I am using good search terms. Is there a trick?

Folders. Then group the folders alphabetically: A-D, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's the most organized area of my life. Filed by client or project name.

Ditto. I use my inbox as a task list and file or delate messages that don't require action. I have maybe 3 dozen subject folders for filing, and archive every calender year.

The downside is that having email in my inbox nags at me and can be a distraction from longer term projects.

Fwiw, I hate outlook's search function because it turns up incomplete results.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you always organize your emails?

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

[Anonymous]

DH paid for some special program to index all of his email so he can get better search results. He ran it over thanksgiving and it took a whole day to index it all.

[Anonymous]

I have a million folders and file or delete things as soon as my responsibility to do something or respond is complete. I usually have less than 20 in my inbox at any given time which dictates my to do list. Like pp said, it is the most organized area of my life.

[Anonymous]

Extremely organized.

There is a rules wizard function (also in Mozilla Thunderbird, just under a different name) that allows you to automatically filter e-mails into the folders that the user designates.