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General Delivery

Scott Spanbauer

Empty That In-Box

Like toxic waste, the mail clogging your in-box won't go away by itself. Here are a few emergency cleanup tips for dispersing digital debris:

Prioritize. You can't deal with every message right now, but do scan subject lines as soon as you download your mail. You don't want to miss that last-minute departmental meeting. While you're scanning, ruthlessly delete junk mail and nonessential message threads. Some programs, including AOL and Outlook, let you download just the message headers, so you can perform this triage before you download a single message body.

Reply quickly. If replying to a message frees you to delete it and move on, do it. Remember: You hesitate, you get buried.

Delete, delete, delete. If a message doesn't contain information you'll need later (phone numbers, due dates, travel directions), nuke it. Or better still, set up your mail program to delete old messages automatically after a specified period of residence in your in-box--say, three months.

File it. You'll want to keep some mail around. But don't just abandon it in your in-box where you'll never find it again. Most programs allow you to create customized folders so you can sort your mail by topic or project. When the project's over, archive the folder or delete it.

Filter Out the Spam

Most e-mail programs let you set up filters to scan incoming messages, check them against your list of known junk mailers, and discard any matches. But you can also use filters to highlight mail you do want to read. Set up filters to sound an alarm when you receive e-mail marked "urgent" or a message from your boss. Or have this mail sent to a high-priority folder that you check throughout the day.

Reply Automatically

Want to acknowledge incoming mail without having to craft a reply? Create an automatic response. Using a filter that looks for certain addresses or subjects, you can reply automatically to some senders (clients) but not others (Mom).

Skip the Big Stuff

To avoid tying up your phone line and filling your hard disk, tell your mail program to skip messages or attachments larger than a certain size (1 megabyte, say, or 100 kilobytes if you really feel strapped). Any program worth a damn will let you retrieve these large messages later when you have more time.

Stop Repeating Yourself

Never type anything (such as an oft-used e-mail address) twice. Let your mail program do the repeat typing for you.

Remember your password. If your PC resides somewhere fairly safe (if you lock your office at night or work at home), you can usually instruct your mail program to log in to your mail server automatically. Just remember, the office janitor will have access to your account.

Populate your address book. You want to send so-and-so a note responding to a query from last week, but you can't find the address. Next time, add the sender's name and e-mail address to your address book, so you won't have to hunt around for old messages in order to send mail.

Make a list. Do you often send messages to the same group of people? Create a mailing list (your program may call it a group or distribution list) containing their addresses so you don't have to type in each name every time.

Sign off. If you participate in an Internet mailing list or send mail to people outside your company, append a signature file (or sig) to outgoing messages. Be sure to include your name, title, address, phone, and e-mail address. To avoid violating the rules of Netiquette, keep sigs to four or five lines.

Do the Address Book Shuffle

Are you thinking about switching to a different mail program but having unexpected difficulty locating a way to convert your program's address book to the new program's format? Interguru's $20 shareware service on the Web (www.interguru.com/mailconv.htm) converts address book files to and from just about any format you may need, including Eudora Pro, Microsoft Outlook Express, and Netscape Messenger and Mail.