By Catherine A. Fitzpatrick
Do you have a completely wild, untamed e-mail box like me? I had 250,000+ emails going back at least until 2009. When I clicked on the "unread," I saw that half of the e-mails were unread.
I know some people who just abandon an e-mail box like this and start a new one. And I've done that, too, because Yahoo e-mail is so unreliable. I've kept it not only out of habit but because I like the interface better than Google, and since this address has been on all my business cards and translator sites and such, I need to keep it. I forget to go to gmail for entire days at a time.
I have no idea if it is the sheer mass of emails that makes the account perform poorly -- loading slowly or not at all with multiple error messages; not delivering emails directly sent from frequent contacts; repeatedly putting into spam things marked as "not spam"; losing attachments. It's pretty awful, and Google's mail is seemingly better, but not error-free, either (and then there's those hugely annoying threads which geeks love but which make it impossible to tell if you have a new e-mail).
In any event, it can't hurt to clean an email box, and surely it can be done, but there's a huge hobble: they do not make it easy for you, because you can't compartmentalize the search to only the inbox. So when you file a lot of email into other folders, they keep showing up in search as if they need to be filed again.
So here's my trick -- but keep your wits about you.
SORT E-MAILS INTO TRASH
First, empty the trash bin to prevent confusion. Second, search on one email contact or news list you want to sort, and trash it. This is slow because it starts with a batch of 25, then only gets you batches of 50, but put in a little time every day, or do it while you are on conference calls or watching a movie or something.
Once you have the desired email to segregate all in trash, you can now move it all. Why put it in trash? Because trash IS segregated and does NOT show up in search. So while you are searching, you don't keep seeing the same already-filed stuff. You could even go through this process with multiple contacts. It makes it SO MUCH EASIER.
Now that you have all the email in trash -- being careful not to select DELETE and ignore the "do you really..." warnings! -- you can now move it into the desired file folder. Now, Yahoo shows its muscle. It actually can move 100 at a time (not just 25 or 50) when it is moved out of trash. Funny, that.
I don't know why they make it so hard. The "archive" function is stupid because it merely puts it all somewhere else, but not filed. It's pretty useless. Subject or Name files are what you need, so make them.
UNSUBSCRIBE FROM UNREAD LISTS
Now, select UNREAD and look at the unread and decide on entire listservers especially that you need to unsubscribe from. You don't read them. Here is the proof. Bite the bullet and delete them. You can always go and browse the site in question if you really need it, or use Google with search terms.
GET RID OF FUND-RAISERS
The politicians of all stripes are particularly useless. I sign up for them left to right, but with few exceptions, like Stand Up, the conservative alternatives, they don't have hard news in them. They are just fund-raising pitches, constantly. Bernie Sanders is especially pathetic and awful, asking you to "chip in" a dollar all the time. I get Daily Kos and Daily Signal (left and right) which are generally free of the fund-raising, although Daily Kos is also pathetic, constantly telling you how many journalists have been fired as if they aren't bloggers, but journalists, and need you to fund them. I don't. They do fine. I don't care for their ideology nor Daily Signal's for that matter, but I read everything to get some breadth.
MAKE FILTERS
Another thing to do is to set up filters to make some news lists or even people go into folders so you don't have them in the inbox. That may make you feel guilty because you never read them, but at least they are there to read. I did this with Google news terms I have set up like "Snowden". I recently got rid of a lot of those Google news searches because they delivery daily so you are never going to read them.
BTW, perhaps like other people, even though I made filters, they didn't seem to work, and that's because I failed to fill them out completely. Go to "Settings" on the right, then "More" (they don't make this easy!), then fill out every box -- not just "to" and "from" and "body" etc. Then make sure to specify the folder it goes into.
Doing all this, I found a few very important overlooked e-mails -- so it was worth it -- and I got rid of about 100,000 emails. The "put in trash" method is especially useful and fast. I'm now trying to file as I go, and deleting more. If something is in last week's email and you didn't read it, especially not real, live email from real people, but just lists, delete it.
I now have 160,000 I think still to go, but I did succeed in cleaning out completely a smaller email I have and it's a great thing.
E-mail has not evolved. It is incredibly hard to port (the mbx files can't be opened except by that email program often); it's hard to sort; it's hard to manage. The "innovations" Google has brought like template answers (which many people, including me, hate) or the sorts into "promotion" or "social" aren't really what it's about. That creepy program Google launched some years ago and then removed which enabled you to rewrite or delete e-mails from other people in real-time threads just isn't workable.
It would be better if e-mail were on the desk top in a graphical form you could push around. Like the files on the Second Life interface, for example (and I think most online games or worlds). So you push in front what you want and push to the side what you don't need at that moment. You can also open two inventories so you can see the file folders better to file into. Ideally, you could use your own graphics, like a fire to show what is really important, or a treasure chest for gems, etc.
This won't be coming likely in my lifetime, but meanwhile, perhaps you, too, can benefit from these tips.
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