kmail: Idea to help tame an uruly inbox... PART 1

If you're like me and sign up for a lot of newsletters, discussions, and other notices which can be very useful but can also make your inbox look like Santa's list of who's naughty or nice, maybe this tip will help...

THE PREMISE...

Instead of manually sorting through ALL your new mail from within your Inbox, filter your least important incoming mail into other folders and use a single Smart Mailbox to view all of those unread items at YOUR convenience. Your Inbox will contain fewer "non-urgent" items but the filtered items will still be easily accessible. After you read an item, it is automatically removed from your Smart Mailbox so only unread items appear the next time you open that mailbox.

THE BASIC SETUP...

[1] Create one or more filters (Rules) to catch some of your least important incoming mail as soon as it arrives and move it into another folder (or folders). For example, go to "Preferences-->Rules" and create a new rule with settings like this but using your own set of addresses and folder (i.e., mailbox) name:

If ANY of the following conditions are met:

From --> Contains --> "book-news@amazon.com"
From --> Contains --> "@pricegrabber.com"
From --> Contains --> "News@InsideApple.Apple.com"
(etc...)

Perform the following actions:

Move Message --> to mailbox: --> "Sales & Events"

(NOTE: You will generally filter mail based on the sender's address ("From") because it's usually the best common denominator but of course you are not limited to this.)

In my example I use only ONE filter to move mail from multiple senders into a single folder (this works fine for starters) but you will need separate filters if you want to filter items into separate folders. Furthermore, in some situations you may need ALL conditions to be met rather than ANY.

[2] Choose "Mailbox-->New Smart Mailbox..." and create a Smart Mailbox with these settings:

Contains messages which match ALL of the following conditions:

Message is Unread
Message is NOT in Mailbox --> Inbox

That's all there is to the basic setup but you can continue to modify existing filter(s) and/or add new filters anytime you want.

WHAT THIS DOES...

The next time you receive mail from any of the addresses specified in the filter, they will bypass your Inbox and go directly into the "Sales & Events" folder (per this example). This allows them to appear in your Smart Mailbox instead, again, whenever YOUR ready for them. Remember: whenever you access an item in your Smart Mailbox, it is automatically marked as READ which makes it ineligible to appear in your Smart Mailbox although it will stay there until you close the Smart Mailbox.

(NOTE: If you're a beginner, be aware that Smart Mailboxes don't actually contain any messages so you do not have duplicates of all these messages. They only contain REFERENCES to messages that meet your criteria but are stored elsewhere in your mail folder. So any action you perform on a Smart Mailbox member is actually being performed on the original item (i.e., moving, deleting, marking, etc.). Smart Mailboxes are really more like dynamic searches than actual mailboxes.)

(CONCLUDED IN NEXT POST)




(CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS POST -- I'm sorry but apparently this post is a little too long for the form)

SOME EXTRAS...

Should you want to re-read any item in your Smart Mailbox without having to locate the original, you must either remember to mark it as UNREAD (command-shift-U) before you close the Smart Mailbox OR you can move it back into your Inbox for longer-term access. If you choose the latter, after you're finished with that message, you can select it from the Inbox list and choose "Message-->Apply Rules" (command-option-L) to put it back where your filter had it originally, or you can file it elsewhere manually. Note that it will NOT appear in your Smart Mailbox unless it is both marked as unread AND the original is NOT in your Inbox.

You can delete original messages from within any Smart Mailboxes or move them to any other folder by moving (so to speak) their Smart Mailbox reference. In some cases, they may still appear in the Smart Mailbox but the originals will have been moved from their previous locations. You can verify this by displaying the "Mailbox" column in list view (control-click on any column head and select "Mailbox" from the menu).

You can also set up your Smart Mailbox so it only displays unread item from the last "X" weeks/months.

If you PURPOSELY (for whatever reason) keep UNREAD item in certain folders but do not want items from those folders displayed in your Smart Mailbox, you can add any number of "Message is NOT in Mailbox --> XXXXX" parameters to your Smart Mailbox settings (don't do this if you already use that folder to filter new items into or else new mail in that folder will not appear in your Smart Mailbox either).

Here's an idea for processing mail from specific addresses which you usually READ but then DELETE:

Set up a filter that moves those incoming messages directly to the trash (be sure your Smart Mailbox also has the option to "Include messages from Trash" checked in this case). The incoming item will appear in your Smart Mailbox but, when you finish with it and it's status changes to READ, it will already be in the Trash so you don't have to put it there. If, however you empty your Mail Trash less frequently than your street trash OR you keep other unread items in there (such as SPAM), this may not be the best way to go. An option for those situations is to set up a temporary trash folder (just a regular mailbox) to filter eventually-trashable mail into and then periodically delete items from that mailbox. This has the added benefit of safeguarding against permanently deleting any item before you're really ready.

Finally, sometimes I have items in my Smart Mailbox that I want to look at again but I forget to reset them to UNREAD before closing -- and I even forget which message it was. For those situations, I created another Smart Mailbox with the following parameters:

Contains messages which match ANY/ALL [doesn't matter which] of the following conditions:

Date Last Viewed --> is today [or any date range you wish]

This allows me to more-quickly locate recently viewed mail no matter where it's filed. It sometimes helps to sort this Smart Mailbox by DATE VIEWED so do not add any parameters other than "Date Last Viewed" or the DATE VIEWED column will not be available (I don't know why but that's the way it is).

I hope this tip is helpful. I'm sure there are more ways to refine this setup, maybe even something using Automator. I'd be interested to hear about them.

Vera