On Fri, Jul 20, 2007 at 03:33:37PM +0200, Kai Grossjohann wrote: > Michelle, > > I think there is a misunderstanding. I wanted to understand how other > people process their email. You are giving me pointers to programs but > don't describe how you use them. > > Here is a potential strategy for handling mail: > > - All incoming mail goes to inbox. > - I process all mails from inbox. > - Some messages I read, then delete right away. > - Other messages I read, then archive by project. > By project means that there is a folder for each project. > - Some messages I read, then respond to and archive (by project). > - Some messages I read, decide that I can't handle them right > away, so I put them in the todo folder. Every morning I go > through my todo folder. > - Some messages (often those sent by me) are waiting for responses > from others. I file those in the "pending" folder. Every > morning I go through my "pending" folder to see whether a response > has arrived. > > Some of the above steps could be automated. The strategy does not > handle mailing lists well. But I hope it shows one possible response > and makes it clear in what way your response differs from what I was > expecting. > The above strategy is a pretty good description of what I actually do.
The only difference in my case is that I use a procmail lookalike (it's a perl sript) to sort incoming mail, basically into a mailbox per mailing list and my main inbox. Which parts of the above would you automate? I can't really see what can be automated except, possibly, the "archive by project". My archive folders don't really correspond to anything that could be gleaned from the E-Mails (except, in some cases, the sender) so the ones I save I just save manually. -- Chris Green
