Effective Email Management with Folders and Search

I have come to realize that the best way to organize and find emails is with fewer folders and increased dependence on keyword searches. I still use email folders but in balance with other storage and retrieval methods.

Folders must have high level or general labels such as: accounting, HR, personal, etc.
If you segment your email too much you may end up with about as many folders as you have emails; making a manual search for items very daunting.

Creating message rules in Outlook for an excessive amount of folders is no good either. I have found myself setting aside hours of a work day (please don't tell) just creating and updating message rules. Finally, I could not keep up with the changes. Sometimes an employee would leave our company making their email address and therefore my message rule invalid. This happened with external contacts as well. If a vendor contact left or even moved to another department, I would have to make sure the message rule was relevant or removed. Fewer rules has equaled fewer headaches.

In addition to email, I also use folders in some other programs. Just this week I thought I would organize the Internet Explorer Favorites on my home computer. In our household there are 5 people that use the computer and create bookmarks of their favorite websites.

Creating folders helps keep each individual's favorites seperate and

organized. It also shortens the list of favorites you would have if there were no folders. Without folders in Internet Explorer you cannot quickly go to the bottom of the favorites list to see the most recently added item. You have to expand the pulldown menu and slowly scroll through all your favorites. This is where folders is helpful but again I would take all day to organize the favorites if you have too many specific folders. You still need to have generalized folder names. In my case I simply created five folders. I did create some subfolders under my main

folder but that is probably due to OCD and the fact that bad habits are hard to quit.