Why Is Email like the Weather?

Because people always complain about it but no one ever does anything about it!

I am one of those people. Just like 90% of software users (my estimate), I only use a fraction of the available features - just enough to get what I need done.

Email is no exception. I've been using email for about two decades now. My inbox regularly fills up with spam, unsolicited advertising, emails designed to phish information, dreaded joke emails, mixed in with emails I'm interested in seeing (with varying degrees of importance). Like everyone, I bitched and complained, but never did anything about it.

After a particularly bad week of receiving more crap than meaningful communications, I finally got off my butt and did something about it.

I learned a new (for me) feature.

I use Outlook Express as my mail client. It has this feature which allows me to create a "rule" - describing how the software should handle a specific email. After opening each email, I click on Tools/Rule Wizard, and lo and behold, I'm guided through a myriad of options as to how to handle similar emails. I can have the system delete them before I even see them. I can move them automatically to a folder (existing or new). I can forward them automatically.

A whole host of options!

And this week, I've spent almost no time scanning my inbox for the stuff I need to read.

This feature has solved another issue for me. I've never been very good at organizing my emails into folders. I just leave everything in my inbox. It is not unusual for me to have more than 20,000 messages in my inbox. However, the Rules Wizard has also solved that problem as well. By creating folders and having the application file them for me, I'm much better organized than before.

The feature takes about 5 minutes to learn and will payback many times over.

Now, time to do something about the weather........