Thirteen Simple Ways to Bring Order to Your Inbox

Tips for organizing your e-mail in Outlook 2003, Outlook Express 6, and Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5.

Send your questions and tips to nettips@spanbauer.com. We pay $50 for published items. Scott Spanbauer is a contributing editor for PC World.

Whether you're a grizzled e-mail vet or you just got your first account, these 13 tips for Microsoft Outlook 2003, Outlook Express 6, and Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5 will help you make the most of the medium. (Note that many of the tips will also work in older versions of the programs.)

1. Manage multiple accounts: I check more than a half dozen e-mail accounts regularly, and I don't like opening them one at a time. Fortunately, most mail programs accommodate several accounts handily.

To add an account in Outlook, choose Tools, E-mail Accounts, select Add a new e-mail account, and click Next. Choose the type of incoming-mail server (POP3 is most common), click Next, and then enter the account name and the incoming and outgoing server addresses (your ISP sent you this information when you signed up for the account). Click Next and Finish.

In Outlook Express, click Tools, Accounts, Add, Mail, enter the e-mail address, click Next, add the server addresses, click Next again, and finally add your account name and password. Click Next, Finish, Close.

In Thunderbird, choose Tools, Account Settings, Add Account, Email account, Next. Enter your name and e-mail address, click Next, select the type of incoming server, enter the incoming server address, click Next, add the user name, click Next, type the account name, click Next one more time, and finally click Finish.

2. Keep your inboxes synced: Most e-mail programs automatically delete messages from the mail server after you download them to your PC. This means you don't see all of your old messages together if you use several different systems to check for mail. To keep your inbox reasonably synchronized, set the mail program on each PC you use to leave messages on the server, so the next machine you use sees the messages as new and unread.

To do this in Outlook, select Tools, E-mail Accounts, click Next to modify an existing account, choose the account in the E-mail Accounts list, and select Change. Click More Settings, Advanced, and check Leave a copy of messages on the server (you may also want to check Remove from server when deleted from 'Deleted Items'). Click OK, Next, Finish to complete the process.

In OE, choose Tools, Accounts, select the account under the Mail tab, and click Properties, Advanced. Check Leave a copy of messages on server (and maybe Remove from server when deleted from 'Deleted Items' as well), and click OK, Close.

In Thunderbird, choose Tools, Account Settings, select Server Settings under the account you want to modify, check Leave messages on server (and Until I delete or move them from Inbox if you wish), and click OK.

3. Work faster with shortcuts: Save time by keeping your hands on the keyboard rather than on your mouse. To retrieve new messages in Outlook and Outlook Express, press Ctrl-M; to do the same in Thunderbird, press Ctrl-Shift-T. Start a new message in all three apps by pressing Ctrl-N, and send a message by entering Alt-S in Outlook and Outlook Express, or Ctrl-Enter in Thunderbird. To open a message, use the cursor keys to scroll to it, and press Enter. Close a message window by tapping the Esc key.

4. Send a Web page: If you'd like to share a Web page, you can paste the page's URL into the body of a message and instruct the recipient to follow the link. However, it's just as simple to send someone the entire page as an e-mail attachment. If you use Outlook, enable HTML mail: Select Tools, Options, Mail Format, choose HTML in the 'Compose in this message format' list, and click OK.

Browse to the page in Internet Explorer and select File, Send, Page by E-mail. A new message will open in Outlook, with the page pasted in the body of the message and the subject reading 'Emailing: the page URL'. Enter the recipient's address and then press Alt-S. The Web page will display correctly in Outlook, but not in other e-mail apps.

To e-mail a Web page in Outlook Express, click Message, New Message Using, Web Page. Enter the page's URL, and then press Enter. The page (or at least a close approximation of it) will be pasted into the message. Enter the recipient's address, add a subject line, and press Alt-S.

In Thunderbird, type Ctrl-N, choose File, Attach, Web Page, enter the Web page's URL, and then press Enter. The page will be attached to the e-mail message as an HTML file.

5. Change your outgoing mail server: If your current outgoing SMTP server does not work in a particular situation (such as from your office network), replace it with another. (Of course, this tip assumes that you have multiple e-mail accounts.)

To change your SMTP server in Outlook, choose Tools, E-mail Accounts, make sure 'View or change existing e-mail accounts' is checked, click Next, select an account, click Change, and enter the new server name in the 'Outgoing mail server (SMTP)' field. If the server requires a password, click More Settings, choose the Outgoing Server tab, check My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication, choose Log on using, enter your user name and password, and click OK, Next, Finish.

In Outlook Express, click Tools, Accounts, Mail, pick an account, select Properties, Servers, and enter the server address in the 'Outgoing mail (SMTP)' field. If your server needs a password, check My server requires authentication, click Settings, enter the password, click OK twice, and Close.

In Thunderbird, choose Tools, Account Settings, Outgoing Server, Add. Enter a description, the server name, and your user name. Click OK, and in the Account Settings dialog box, choose Set Default to make the new entry your default server.

6. Teach Outlook and OE to Gmail: Even though Google's Gmail service is noted for its simple interface, you may prefer to use your existing e-mail program to access your Gmail account. You can add it manually as described in the first tip, but Google's own tool for Outlook and OE is fast and simple.

Open your Gmail account, choose Settings, Forwarding and POP, and select one of the two 'Enable POP' settings (for all mail or only new mail). Click Save Changes. Click here to download and then run the Gmail Client Configuration tool. Choose which of the two mail applications (Outlook 2002 or earlier, or Outlook Express) you want to use to send and receive Gmail messages, and click Configure (see FIGURE 1

Figure 1: Teach Outlook how to Gmail with this free setup utility for older versions of Outlook and OE.

). Though this function doesn't claim to work with Outlook 2003, Outlook noticed when I added Gmail to OE and offered to import its settings. To configure other programs manually to send and receive Gmail, click the Configuration instructions link on Gmail's 'Forwarding and POP' settings page.

7. Know when you've got Gmail: The problem with Web-based e-mail is that you have to remember to look for it (unless, of course, you added Gmail to Outlook and OE as described above). Gmail's Notifier (in beta) alerts you when new Gmail awaits.

Thirteen Simple Ways to Bring Order to Your Inbox (cont'd)

8. Sign on the bottom Line: E-mail signatures are the extra text added automatically at the end of messages to identify the sender. They sometimes get in the way, but a brief, well-crafted sig is the perfect finish to a professional missive, especially when you're contacting someone for the first time.

To append a signature to an Outlook message, choose Insert, Signature and click an existing sig or choose More to create one on the spot (see FIGURE 2

Figure 2: Append particulars to messages sent in Outlook using the e-mail program's signature tools.

). In Outlook Express, create a signature (Tools, Options, Signatures, New), and then add it to a message by clicking Insert, Signature.

In Thunderbird, create the signature as a text file using Notepad. Next, open Thunderbird and choose Tools, Account Settings. Select your account, check Attach this signature, click Choose, browse to and select the signature file, and click OK. Thunderbird will insert the text automatically at the end of all new messages.

9. Catch their eye (for better or worse) with stationery: I think fancy fonts and backgrounds just get in the way of the message, but e-mail with such formatting always gets my attention. To add a standout format to mail in Outlook, choose Actions, New Mail Message Using, More Stationery, select a message background, and click OK. In Outlook Express, choose Message, New Message Using, and select one of the listed stationery formats. To see several more templates, click Select Stationery. Choose the Create New button in the Select Stationery dialog box to create a custom style using the stationery wizard. (Thunderbird lacks similar automated stationery tools, much to my relief.)

10. Feed Thunderbird some RSS: Version 1.5 of Thunderbird can track blogs, news updates, and other RSS feeds. Choose Tools, Account Settings, click Add Account, select RSS News & Blogs, click Next twice, and then Finish. Now you're ready to add a news feed: Select News & Blogs in Thunderbird's folders list in the left pane, click Manage Subscriptions, Add, and paste a news feed address into the Feed Properties dialog box that appears (see a list of PC World's feeds). Click OK to complete the process.

11. Add RSS to Outlook, too: Integrating RSS with e-mail is such a good idea, Microsoft is supporting it in the Office 12 version of Outlook, due late this year. But you don't have to wait until then: Attensa for Outlook is a free add-in that keeps Outlook up to speed on the latest RSS buzz. The preview version I tried includes RSS toolbars for Firefox and Internet Explorer, support for podcast playback in iTunes and Windows Media Player, and the ability to publish links to RSS feeds on your own blog. (Note that several other Outlook plug-ins add RSS support to the program as well.)

12. Hide your mailing list: It's handy to send e-mail to many people at once, but sometimes you don't want some or all of them to know who is getting the message. Addresses placed in the Blind Carbon Copy (Bcc) field are stripped away before the messages arrive. Outlook's Bcc option is hidden when you start a message. To use it, click the down arrow next to Options and select Bcc. In OE, create a message and then click View, All Headers.

In Thunderbird, simply click the down arrow next to 'To:' in the message's address header and choose Bcc: (see FIGURE 3

Figure 3: Blind carbon copying keeps recipients from seeing that the message also went out to others.

).

13. Filter Outlook in a flash: It's easy to create an Outlook rule that moves similar messages to a folder and signals their arrival by displaying an alert or playing a sound: Right-click a message, choose Create Rule, pick the criteria, and select an action (see FIGURE 4

Figure 4: Create rules in a jiffy: Outlook lets you easily send messages meeting specific criteria to a folder, and the app can alert you to their arrival.

). When that type of mail arrives, Outlook will shunt it or shout out, as you choose. To have Outlook remind you of an important message, right-click it, choose Follow Up, Add Reminder, and select a date and time in the 'Due by' menu.