Managing Your EMail (in GMail)

Last year I taught Middle School Information Science. This year my grandmother is teaching Middle School Information Science. We have had several updates this school year in terms of technology which allow our older students to have access to many different Google products. One of the things they now have access to through our school is email.

So I was sitting in the computer lab a few weeks back and listening to my grandmother explain to them how to manage their email. Now I know how to manage me email. It's not that difficult. I'm just not good at keeping up with it. But based on the fact that these kids had no idea what the concept of email management was, I thought there are probably a great many more people who don't fully understand the importance of or how to manage their email inbox. So I've put together a list of steps to follow to manage YOUR email. And I've used a before and after picture from my own email inbox to show you that I'm not overly on top of things and that I'm only human like the rest of you.

This morning when I logged into my email for the blog, this is what my email inbox looked like.

There were so many emails in my inbox that didn't even need to be there. Some could go to the trash, others could go into folders, some should be kept because they are important.

When managing your email, you should try to keep the clutter down to a minimum. Keeping hundreds of emails in only your inbox causes you to quickly use up the storage space you are allowed. Trust me, that storage runs out fast!

The "Golden Rule" of email management is to only keep what is currently active in your inbox. Most of the time, that's no more than 5-10 emails because, again, we are only human around here. So the email from your Aunt Betty that's been sitting in your inbox for over a year? You can probably send it to the trash. Still want to hold on to it? Create a folder.

Not sure how to create a folder? Just follow these three simple steps!

Step 1.

Open the email and find the toolbar at the top. Click on the "Move To" button.

 

Step 2.

Type in the name you would like to folder to have. It should be short and accurately describe the content of the emails you plan to place in the folder (also called a label). For example, I have a Giveaways folder, a Passionfruit Ads folder and a Blog Hops tab, just to name a few. The titles are short, but accurately describe all of the content within them.

Once you've typed in the name of your new folder, click below where it says "(create new)".

 

Step 3.

You would think that after clicking on the "(create new)" button, you'd be done, right? Wrong. Google has added in another screen for you just to complicate your life. But not really.

Often times once you've created your new label you're good to go. Google gives you the option to "Nest" it under another folder, though. This is a great option if you have sort of a catch-all folder that you put things into, but want some division in that. For example, if you want to create a folder that's called "Projects" but you are working on multiple projects at once, you may want to "Nest" a new label under the projects folder. The choice is yours.

If you don't need your email to be that complicated, simply click on the "Create" button and you're good to go!



Folders are awesome. They store your emails based on the labels you create and keep them from eating away at all of the storage space you have available. Use them! Create labels and actually use them! It will help you to be more organized and keep your email running longer. I promise.

Now that you've set up your folders, how the heck do you find them!? Google likes to be tricky sometimes so they sort of hide things away. But they're not really hidden. You just have to know what to do. So if you've just successfully made 72 new folders for the hundreds of emails you had sitting around in your inbox, just keep reading to locate your disappearing labels!

Look at your email. You have this lovely sidebar on the left hand side of the screen that says things like "Inbox", and "Important" and "Sent Mail". These are all great things to have, but none of them are the labels you just worked so hard to create. Your sidebar navigation currently looks something like this:

Take your mouse and hover over the sidebar. It's like magic, I swear! Your sidebar should now look something like this:

Keeping up with managing your email isn't that difficult. Honestly I should be a lot better about it than I am. It only takes about 3 minutes to move all those emails to the folders they belong in and it ends up saving you a lot of time later when you're trying to find that one email that your co-worker sent three weeks ago that you need to act on about two days ago. It's worth it to take the time to make it happen. Why? Because in the end your inbox looks so much better and you aren't left feeling so overwhelmed! Just take a look at the difference it made in my email!