If you have a computer and an internet connection (who nowadays has one without the other?), email has probably become an integral part of your life. Pretty soon you start sending and receiving photos, humor, interesting web site URLs, and the like. The next thing you know you’re subscribing to newsletters and product announcements. To further feed your insidious, insatiable habit, you join a newsgroup or mail list, or even, dare I say, eBay. You’ve gone from experimentation and casual user to full-fledged “email junkie”. Confronted by your loved ones, you say, “I can quit any time”, and maybe you scale back for awhile. But then, out of the shadows, comes Instant Messaging, and your downward spiral begins again. Over the next few weeks we’re going to look at some ways to tame the email beast within you and your computer, and get you back on the road to recovery.

First, a quick and simple refresher on how email works. Let’s assume you use Earthlink as your ISP (Internet Service Provider), and your email address is johndoe@earthlink.net. Somewhere deep in the bowels of Earthlink’s mail server is a mailbox (actually a folder) with your name on it. When someone sends you an email, it goes into that mailbox, waiting for you to read it. Depending on what you use to view your email, when you check your mail a couple of different things can happen. The emails can be copied to a dedicated email application on your computer, then be erased from the server. Or, if you wish, the emails can be copied onto your computer and remain on the server. The next time you check your email, your application compares what you have on your computer with what’s new on the server, then downloads the new stuff. If you’re viewing your mail via a web browser, emails generally stay on the server until you specifically delete them.

We just touched on the two basic ways to manage your email – either with a dedicated email application (like Outlook Express or Eudora), or through some kind of web-browser-based email access. Both methods have their pros and cons, and you may find some combination of the two best suits your needs.

If you access the internet via a modem and a dial-up account, using an email application frees you from tying up the phone line or using up those precious access minutes while you are reading your mail and composing your thoughtful replies. You can go online, check your mail, and jump off. Since all your mail is then stored on your computer, you can access and organize it anytime.

Speaking of organization, email applications are loaded with many tools to manage incoming and outgoing mail. In most of these applications, your email arrives in some sort of “InBox”. The application will then sort and list the emails by a couple of user-defined criteria. I like to have them sorted by the time/date I received them, in newest to oldest order. I can also sort them by who they’re from, their subject, etc.

Eventually, my InBox will become an inefficient way to keep my mail organized, especially if I keep a lot of mail as reference material, or as a history of my conversations on a given subject. What can I do? I create other mailboxes (actually storage folders) inside my application. I make a mailbox for emails from a certain sender, another for specific subject matter, like, oh, computers. I then move the emails to their corresponding boxes, and I’m the picture of efficiency.

But what if I could get them to move there by themselves? I can. More next time.

© 2003 Peter F. Zimowski