November 27, 2000

...Organize Your E-Mail

That muffled cry for help is the sound of yet another person drowning in a sea of messages

By BECKEY BRIGHT

If you've ever lost an e-mail address, found yourself desperately searching for a crucial memo, forgotten to reply to an important message, had digital junk mail crowd your Inbox, or wondered whether an e-mail you sent has been received, take heart. You're not alone.

Just ask Kaitlin Sherwood. As a Webmaster at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the mid-'90s, she used to receive distress signals like, "Help! I can send e-mail but I'm not receiving any. What should I do?"

Since such users obviously couldn't even open her e-mailed answers if she sent them, Ms. Sherwood figured some really basic tutoring was in order. So in 1994 she started one of the first Web sites devoted to using e-mail, "A Beginner's Guide to Effective E-mail."

But times have changed. While users may have needed help sending and receiving e-mail five or so years ago, today they need help with the other end of the spectrum: bombardment.

A July study by Ferris Research, a San Francisco research firm that focuses on computer-network communications technologies, says that the average office worker now spends about two hours a day dealing with e-mail, and that most don't use the sorting tools their e-mail programs provide to ease the burden.

Users, Ms. Sherwood says, need help damping the flow of e-mail, or at least channeling and organizing it. So now she is hard at work on a book that aims to help e-mail users take control of their Inbox. "Everyone is so overwhelmed," she says.

Since the importance of managing e-mail will only grow as voice mail and wireless e-mail enter the mix of available options, we aim to help.

Below are a few tips on how to tame your messages. For people who use one of the large programs that companies make available to their employees, we chose the ubiquitous Outlook e-mail program, made by Microsoft Corp., Redmond, Wash., as an example. (The tips may not translate directly to other popular programs, such as Eudora made by Qualcomm Inc., San Diego, Calif., or even some versions of Outlook. But similar tools should be available.) The large programs such as Outlook come with an extensive set of e-mail management tools, so this guide is only partial. But in the course of trying some of the tips we suggest, we hope you look around at all the powerful clerical services that come with your e-mail system.

We also show you how some e-mail and messaging upstarts can help you control multiple accounts -- and even manage voice mail as well.

Search Your Mail

Many people leave messages in their Inboxes, and when they want to find them again they just scroll backward -- sometimes for many minutes. But programs such as Outlook give you a slew of nimbler ways -- so-called views -- to look back: according to senders or subject lines, by pulling up just those messages that you haven't opened yet, and so forth.

Most of these views can be found under either of two buttons in the main Outlook window. The most direct way to reach them is to select the "View" button and then select "Current View." You can also go to the "Tools" tab and select "Organize" and then select "Using Views."

Try clicking each of the views available to you. They can all help you ferret out a message. If, for instance, you can remember only the topic of message, select the view called "By Conversation Topic." Or if you just remember who sent the message, select the "By Sender" view, which will show all your messages arranged by senders, in alphabetical order.

Once you've located a certain sender, you still may need help. Let's say it's someone who sends you tons of mail and you suddenly need to find one message in particular. That's one of the ways the "Auto Preview" view comes in handy. With this selected, names pop up with subject lines next to them. If the sender didn't fill in a subject line, the first few words of the memo appear beside the sender's name instead, giving you a quick clue to the contents of the message.

You can revert to your normal Inbox display at any time by selecting whatever that view is -- perhaps "Last Seven Days," which puts all of your mail from the past week, arranged in chronological order, in full view.

Another way to search and arrange your mail is by using the "sorting" feature -- that horizontal bar at the very top of your Inbox or other folder that allows you to display your messages in a number of ways. To search by sender, for example, just click the "From" column. To jump to messages from a particular sender, type the first letter of his or her name. As with the Views feature, a little time experimenting with this feature can help speed your mail searches.

If these searching techniques fail, you also have the "Find" button in the main window, which will search the full text of all your e-mails. This tab also gives you an "Advanced Find" option, which allows you to more selectively search your e-mail by specifying certain parameters. For example, you can search only those messages that have attachments, or you can search only those messages to or from a selected e-mail address.

Control Your Inbox

Limiting your junk mail: If you get a lot of solicitations or other unwanted e-mail -- so-called spam -- you won't be able to eliminate it entirely. But there are ways to limit it. If you look under the "Actions" menu and then "Junk E-mail," you can find the "Add to Junk Senders list." Whenever a message is received from someone you'd rather not hear from again, simply click on the message, and select that option. From then on, Outlook will automatically delete messages from that sender.

You can also set aside low-priority mail and sort your mail into categories -- much as you do when you go through your regular mail on the dining room table or your office desk -- by using folders.

This can help you keep personal, professional and highly sensitive correspondence separate. And if you get in the habit of keeping different work-related correspondence in different folders, it can help you keep closer track of continuing projects. It's also a good idea to set up folders to receive subscriptions and steady mailings that can quickly crowd your Inbox and overload some systems so badly that your program starts "bouncing back" your other incoming mail.

To use the folders, go to the "Tools" menu, then "Organize," and select the "Using Folders." Then choose among the list of possible instructions for automatically forwarding types of e-mail to a specific folder.

There's also the "AutoArchive" feature, useful for people with a lot of mail to store or delete. With auto archiving you can either have messages automatically deleted or moved from your Inbox or folder to another area of the computer that you designate. The benefit? These messages are no longer consuming memory and making your program vulnerable to overload.

Auto archiving is a two-step process. First, click "Options" on the "Tools" menu, and then under "Other," select the "AutoArchive" tab. Once there, you can set the auto-archive instructions for the folders or items that you want archived, and how often. The process runs automatically whenever you start Outlook. Some Outlook folders -- "Sent Items" and "Deleted Items," for instance -- are already automatically archived after two months.

You can also set up even more detailed procedures for organizing incoming mail. For example, a user can instruct the program to flag a message for follow-up within three days, except when the user's name is in the "cc" box. To do this, turn on the "Rules Wizard" -- which can be found under the Tools menu -- and make a selection from the box labeled "Which type of rule do you want to create?," where there is a list of possible instructions.

Tracking Your E-Mail

Outlook also offers a number of alerts such as having a message pop up -- or play a sound -- when a message arrives from a specific person or group. You may want this, for instance, when you've sent a question to someone and want to know as soon as they reply. To enable such an option, select "Rules Wizard" under the "Tools" menu, and push the "New" panel to create a new rule. Just follow the instructions from here by selecting the type of action you want. These rules can be very intricate. For example, a user can instruct the program to flag a message for follow-up within three days, except when the user's name is in the "cc" box.

Outlook also gives you a number of ways to mark your mail for follow-up, just as you would your conventional correspondence-filing system.

"For those e-mails that don't need an immediate response, I flag for follow-up later in the week so I don't forget about them completely," says Leslie Holben, a conference and trade-show manager. To mark your mail this way, go to the "Actions" menu of the main-window toolbar and choose the "Flag for Follow Up" feature.

Some people also like to remind themselves to get back to certain messages by marking them as "Unread" -- an option under the "Edit" button in the main window -- that makes an already-read message look bold, like a new message. Others like to color-code their messages to mark them for different priorities. "I make sure to color-code my incoming mail by the 'to' line," says Ms. Holben. "That way, I can first respond to those e-mails that are addressed to only myself." She gives lower priority to e-mails sent to the entire company.

To color-code a message in Outlook, select "Organize" and then pick the "Using Colors" function. (Color-coding, however, isn't so common a feature, so if you use a program other than Outlook, don't be surprised if you can't find it.)

To avoid nagging doubts about whether someone has received an e-mail, Outlook provides a "read receipt" feature. When this is activated, Outlook will send you an automatic notification if the recipient opens your message or deletes the message without opening it. To use this feature, open the "Tools" menu, and click on "Options." Here, a user can select either "Tell me when this message has been delivered," or "Tell me when this message has been read." An e-mail sender can also choose to delay sending the message until a specified date or have replies to a message forwarded to another e-mail address. These selections fall under the same "Options" tab.

If you'd like to be informed when every message has been received, go to the "Preferences" tab under Options, and click "E-mail Options." Under "Tracking Options," select "Request a read receipt for all messages I send."

If you spend too much time rummaging through old messages to dig up an address, or losing addresses when you clean out your Inbox, you may want to start keeping better track of your correspondents. Do this by using a convenient way of adding them to your "Contacts" list -- for business associates -- or your "Personal Address Book" -- for friends and family. Just open a message from the person and position your cursor above the sender's name on the "From" box, click the right mouse button, and choose either "Add to Contacts" or "Add to Personal Address Book."

Easier-Access Programs

Large e-mail programs found in workplaces are just part of the e-mail picture.

Many people -- even if they have a large e-mail system available to them at work -- like to use a browser-based e-mail service from a provider such as America Online Inc., Dulles, Va., or a free e-mail service such as Hotmail. These not only afford out-of-office access, but they also ensure that sensitive correspondence won't end up inadvertently being sent to a colleague or read by someone looking over your shoulder at work.

Browser-based e-mail services -- which can be operated from any computer with Internet access -- have fewer tools than a big service such as Outlook, which is typically tied to a computer network. Web-based services therefore aren't the best for someone with heavy e-mail traffic. But many novice e-mail users, in fact, appreciate having fewer sorting options and setting preferences. These services also offer one major advantage: ease of access, which eliminates the need for multiple accounts and the attendant duplication and crisscrossing of messages that add up to more time spent dealing with e-mail.

Here are some of the well-known offerings:

• Yahoo! Mail (http://mail.yahoo.com/)

This is the Web-based e-mail provider of choice for many e-mail users. Although Yahoo! Inc., Santa Clara, Calif., doesn't offer nearly as many filtering options as a big program such as Outlook -- it won't search the full texts of messages, for instance -- the free service can filter messages into a few basic folders, such as the sender's name. It also offers a "Bulk Mail" sifter, which identifies unsolicited mail and moves it into a special folder. Yahoo is particularly useful for its ability to download mail from most other e-mail accounts and, by the same token, have its messages downloaded into other e-mail programs. You can also check your Yahoo messages from a handheld device such as a Palm organizer, made by Palm Inc., Santa Clara, Calif.

• Hotmail (http://www.hotmail.com/)

Microsoft's Hotmail was the first Web-based e-mail provider and is used by about 40 million users around the globe. Hotmail, like Yahoo, is a free service that offers a few basic search-and-filtering tools, making it perfect for novice e-mail users. Unlike Yahoo, Hotmail can only download messages to -- or from -- other Microsoft e-mail programs, such as Outlook.

• Bigfoot.com (http://www.bigfoot.com/)

This service, offered by New York-based Bigfoot International Inc., provides a free address to which a subscriber can forward mail from any other account and up to five addresses, helping to consolidate messages. The Bigfoot account can also act as a permanent e-mail address. If a Bigfoot subscriber changes jobs or schools, for example, Bigfoot can be set to forward messages from old accounts into the Bigfoot account.

All in One

On the cutting edge of communications technology are all-in-one accounts for voice, fax and e-mail. Many of these so-called voice portals use voice-recognition technology to make phones and e-mail accounts "talk" to each other. For instance, if you're traveling and are expecting an important e-mail, you can use your phone to call a voice-recognition service that will scan your e-mail account and "read aloud" your messages. Here are some of the players in this emerging field. The software, however, is somewhat developmental and can still make mistakes in translating text into spoken words.

• HeyAnita (http://www.heyanita.com/)

Los Angeles-based HeyAnita Inc. uses voice-recognition software to provide online information, such as e-mail, to consumers who can't get to their computers. Founded by four former senior developers at Microsoft -- who drew inspiration for the name from a waitress at their customary dining spot -- it allows subscribers, for example, to simply dial up HeyAnita's toll-free number (1-800-44-ANITA) using a regular telephone to have their e-mail read to them over the phone. Unfortunately, the free e-mail service is currently available only to Yahoo subscribers, but other applications are in development. HeyAnita recognizes Korean, Mandarin Chinese and Spanish in addition to English voice commands.

• MessageClick (http://www.messageclick.com/)

New York-based MessageClick Inc. offers a "follow-me" service that is helpful for those expecting an important e-mail message while traveling or away from the office. Users are assigned a phone number and can call from any push-button phone to listen to e-mail messages artificially "read" from one or more accounts. (MessageClick uses technology that translates text into digital-audio signals that can relay the e-mail message over the phone.) Likewise, voice messages can be sent to an e-mail account. There are a few service options available, ranging in monthly prices of between $9.95 and $14.95.

Aside from the still-developmental aspect of the voice-recognition software, another caveat: When you subscribe to the service, you get a local phone number, which means that you end up paying long-distance rates if you travel out of the area code. However, MessageClick has set a deal with Genuity Inc., Burlington, Mass., to expand its local-access numbers so that they are reachable from 100 U.S. cities by the end of the year.

• Webley (http://www.webley.com/)

This service, by Webley Systems Inc., Deerfield, Ill., acts as a virtual secretary to screen and forward calls, faxes and e-mail. Webley can forward e-mail, for instance, wherever the subscriber has specified, whether it is to another e-mail account, a telephone answering service or handheld device. The service uses voice-recognition technology to follow commands such as "check my messages," then reads back the message headers or the entire e-mail message, according to the user's preference.

Aside from imperfections that persist in the voice-recognition technology, the main drawback is that users outside of Webley's only current local-access area, Chicago, have to order an 800 number, which can be costly. The monthly access fee for the toll-free service is $14.95, but because there are additional charges per call -- six cents a minute for incoming calls and five cents a minute to make long-distance calls -- the costs can add up. In Chicago, subscribers can opt for a $32.95 monthly package, which includes all incoming and outgoing calls.

• OneBox.com (http://www.onebox.com/)

This free service from Openwave Systems Inc. (formerly Phone.com Inc.), a Redwood City, Calif., developer of software for Internet-based services via wireless phones, provides users with one local number for receiving faxes, phone messages or e-mail. The messages can then be accessed from a computer as text or from a mobile phone or other handheld device as a digitized audio message, with the same shortcoming as MessageClick and Webley of limited access numbers. OneBox also offers users the ability to send e-mail messages over the phone.

• ThinAir (http://www.thinairapps.com/)

This free software by New York-based ThinAirApps, a developer of data-access software for wireless devices, gives individuals using wireless handheld and mobile phones instant access to personal e-mail from their Internet-service provider or Web-based e-mail account, such as Yahoo or Hotmail.

• AmikaNow! (http://www.amikanow.com/)

AmikaNow! Corp., a Canadian software company, goes a step further by offering a service that it says will automatically extract only the most important information from an e-mail, summarize it, and then format it to fit the display window of the target wireless device, to which it passes it along. The attraction of the service is that it doesn't clog the small screen of a mobile phone or other device with a lengthy message. It charges a $249.95 registration fee.

Other E-Mail Helpers

• Mailshell.com (http://www.mailshell.com/)

Mailshell.com, Santa Clara, Calif., is aimed at subscribers of online newsletters or mailing lists -- people with some of the highest rates of e-mail overload. With this free service, users can subscribe to publications, using a Mailshell address, which will alleviate the barrage of messages coming to your main address.

Mailshell also helps users decide which lists best fit their needs by providing rankings and by offering the most recent example of the online newsletter. Because these accounts are free, they are also useful for people interested in having temporary accounts for short-term projects.

• ActiveNames (http://www.activenames.com/)

New York-based ActiveNames Inc.'s software lets people know if you've changed your e-mail address.

Because you may not want to have all messages that were going to an old account follow you to a new address, ActiveNames gives subscribers options.

When you sign up for this free service, you can choose to automatically provide anyone who e-mails you with your new address, or you can choose the "request for authorization" option, which lets you decide on a case-by-case basis whether you want someone to know your new e-mail address.

In the latter scenario, someone trying to send to you receives an e-mail letting them know your e-mail address is no longer active and giving them the option to click on the "request" button for your new address. This message is forwarded along to you, allowing you to decide whether to provide the address.

• Mailbag Assistant

This software, made by Swiss firm Fookes Software (http://www.fookes.com/), helps users view and search both their mailboxes and their e-mail archives. It costs $29.95 and is compatible with most e-mail providers, including Netscape Messenger, Eudora and Microsoft Outlook.

• Nelson Organizer (http://www.nelsonorganizer.com/)

Nelson Organizer, by closely held Canadian company Caelo Software Inc. (http://www.caelo.com/), acts as an interface to Microsoft Outlook, extending the program's filing and viewing options with a large number of sorting capabilities. The program, for example, automatically creates a folder for every correspondent, so that a user just clicks on that folder to see all messages to or from that person. Likewise, messages that have attachments can be viewed under an "Attachments" tab, and grouped according to topic. Or users can elect to view messages by date, and browse all messages from "Yesterday" or "July." The registration fee for this software is $29.95.

• Zoot

Zoot 4.0, made by Zoot Software (http://www.zootsoftware.com/), of Lincoln, Vt., helps a user sort incoming e-mail. It is most useful to those who subscribe to "listserve" messages, because these mailing-list messages build up quickly. With the software, messages can be automatically exported from your e-mail account to a Zoot database, where they can be categorized hundreds of different ways using Zoot's "Smart Folders," which collect, categorize and act on messages based on content, date and other criteria determined by the user.

-- Ms. Bright is an editor for WSJ.com in New York.

Write to Beckey Bright at beckey.bright@wsj.com