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Tackling your vastly over-filled Inbox can be as scary as ridding yourself of a ghost or poltergeist. You have probably noticed related behavior like: messages that suddenly disappear, attachments from strangers, e-mail that just sits in your Outbox, and spam that makes you feel as though if you inadvertently opened it, you would be covered in slime.
So when I looked at my e-mail the other day as though it needed an exorcism, I couldn’t help but wish I could treat it like the Ghostbusters. You know, like:
When there’s something strange in your Inbox, dude… Who ya gonna call?
If there’s something weird and it don’t look good… Who ya gonna call?
Well, just try calling your typical IT geek and they will tell you, “Good luck with that!”
Not here, though; we’re going to take a page out of the Ghostbusters movie and apply it to your Mailbox. So, strap on your proton pack and let’s get this party started!
Are you sick of being the Keymaster of Gozer and waiting around for the Gatekeeper to remind you to destroy and release your deleted mail? Be restricted no more by the mystical ties that bind you! All you need to do is set Outlook to automatically empty your Deleted Items folder each time you close the application. Just go to the Tools menu, choose Options, click on the Other tab and enable the checkbox for “Empty the Deleted Items folder on exiting”. You can gain satisfaction knowing that even if you were not able to annihilate humanity, at least you took out your trash.
Next is our lesson on how to use a proton pack to save you from dealing with those little spam slimers. When you see a message that doesn’t even deserve the chance to return from the undead of the deleted items, then whip out your proton pack, set it to maximum, point it at the message to be deleted, and hold your Shift key while pressing Delete. This will prompt you to permanently delete the message. Click OK and that ectoplasmic message can never return again. Just be careful not to cross the streams with a message from your boss, because once you have eliminated a message this way, there is NO way to get it back.
Much like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, your Mailbox size can often become bloated and no one likes sticky mail clogging their Outbox. The first thing you need to know is: “What is your ideal size?” You may feel that you have unlimited capacity for sending and receiving mail, but your e-mail server administrator may feel that he needs to keep the masses slimmed down and set an ideal weight (or size limit quota) to prevent larger network traffic issues. Have you received one of those little nasty grams stating that you’re exceeding your Mailbox size limit? I included a link in this blog entry that gives you a way to check the actual sizes of each folder in your Mailbox so you can choose which marshmallows need toasting first.
If you’re not looking to toast all your old e-mails and send them into the netherworld, consider archiving your messages instead. You can put those little monsters right into a separate containment unit called a Personal Folder file, which will free them from their hold on your Mailbox space and you can go back and visit them any time you want. For an alternative way to access this feature and see other Mailbox clean-up items, check under the Tools menu and select “Mailbox Cleanup”. You may find that this is a great way to identify the larger beasts with attachments that need to be caged separately from the other ghouls.
Don’t be afraid to be a regular citizen; not everyone understands ghost-busting like our professionals. However, if you want to join our Mailbox-busting crew and show off your skills to co-workers in need, why not learn the tricks of the trade by taking this week’s featured eTraining class titled, “Dealing with Large Volumes of E-mail”? Not only can you learn from a trained support specialist, but you can ask your own specific questions on the topic with a live instructor. How many training classes online nowadays do you know of who use real people live to teach the class? Check out our blog posting for a link to the schedule for this class.
Click Here for Class Schedule of ”Dealing with Large Volumes of E-mail”
Finally, if you’re looking to trap the e-mail monsters on your BlackBerry or Windows Mobile device, be sure to check out the links for tricks on managing your little demon pocket devices at www.productiveUpodcast.com.
- BlackBerry – Taming the Email Monster
- Windows Mobile – Taming Your Inbox
Thanks for joining us and we look forward to helping you cross the great barrier of frustration and guiding you into the light on the side of better organization and time management.
Who ya gonna call?
Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum
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