Use Your Tools - Filtering Joy

by Kera McHugh

Over the past couple days I was at a mini-conference for women and technology. It was very interesting, as the focus was on "what does access look like" and "how can we best use technology to improve equality", and it was strongly geared toward the low-income user and how best to provide information to help them help themselves change their situation.

One of the things that came up was that in a rural area of BC - the hub of our mining and oil industry - the internet access is so poor and so restricted that the woman in question - who runs the women's center there - gets a mere 30 hours a MONTH of dialup access, and thus, checks her email once a WEEK?? (oh my goodness, could you survive???? NOT! ) When she does check it, she often has over 1000 emails, much of which turns out to be spam but it's taking up precious online time to download it and go through it.

So we talked about filtering her email.

Do you filter? Sort? Organize? Rule? Those are the various terms for the process of the virtual mail clerk… There are a couple ways it can be handled - at Server level, and at User level.

Server Level Filtering

First things first - you much check with your hosting provider or ISP about whether or not they have spam filtering - and if its included in your package. MOST do these days. Now, some make it very easy… you get a web based "control panel" or "administrative suite" that you access through your browser and it gives you a lot of control over your domain and how it manages information. Generally there will be a tool called, believe it or not, SPAM Filter. Now, depending on the setup your host provides, this will be either straightforward or confusing to use, but if you run into problems, send an email to your Tech Support contact for help. There are so many different possibilities for SPAM filter setups, that I won't spend time explaining one way here.

At server level, you can avoid receiving a lot of SPAM. You can set the filters to look for very specific words - email addresses, vulgarities, coarse language, certain names even. The catch to this level of filtering is that if by chance you are actually expecting an email from someone that may contain any of the words you put in the filter, you WON'T get it. And often, it's only the subject line that is run through the filter, so clever Spammers can get around it - particularly the ones who are trying to sell you the bridges in Nebraska.

User Level Sorting

This level is a little more customized. We'll deal with Outlook for the moment, because most businesses - home through corporate - use Outlook, and I use Outlook, so that's what I know best.

In Outlook 2000 you have a little button on your Inbox menu bar that says "Organize". If you're deathly afraid of the idea of organizing anything, or convinced that you can't possibly BE organized, then it's time you met these little wizards! It makes it very simple to create "rules" for your email.

There's the quick wizard, lets you set simple rules in "real time". We'll use emails from Acme Supply as our prototype.

First - decide what you want to do with all the emails from "Acme Supply". Generally speaking, you probably want them to be together in a folder of their own.

Depending on how you have your interface set up, you can create a new "Acme Supply" folder in your "folder list" or you can use the "New Folder.." button in the Wizard. If you're using the folder list, make a new folder first. Simply select "Inbox" in the folder tree, RIGHT CLICK and select "New Folder". A new folder will appear on the tree and you type in the name -Acme Supply.

Then - in your Inbox folder, click on an email from Acme Supply, and click "Organize…". You'll get a new section above your Inbox list (the right hand column) that says "Ways To Organize INBOX".

I'm not sure why the wizard is setup this way, it seems backwards to me, but anyway - the first option you get is "Move message selected below to …" The second is "Create a rule to move new messages"

In my opinion, using option 2 is more efficient, because it includes option 1 at the end of the process.

So, in option 2, you get a few choices: Move messages FROM SO-AND-SO to THIS FOLDER OR Move messages SENT TO THIS EMAIL ADDRESS into THIS FOLDER.

The Sent To option is really handy if you have more than one email address that people use (like me, I have 8 different pop3's for different work). If you only use one email address, then you don't really need to use Sent To.

Select whichever configuration you want - in our example, that would be Move messages FROM ACME SUPPLY into ACME SUPPLY

Then the wizard will ask if you want to run the rule on the folder you are currently in (which is probably inbox, but if you've already got some folders and you're subdividing, it may be something else). Now… WARNING WARNING WARNING - if you have 1000's of email sitting around in your inbox, this can either a) take a few minutes, or b) crash your computer. If this is the case, then I recommend moving them manually. We'll get to that in a minute.

So, now you have your Sorter set for Acme Supply, and all the emails you get from Acme Supply will automatically drop into the Acme Supply folder and you will no longer have to manually sort through emails from 30 other supply companies to find them…

So, say for example you DO have 1000's of emails in your inbox, because you hadn't been brave enough to hit the Organize button before now.

To move the 100's you may have from Acme Supply to the new Acme Supply folder in a couple easy steps, do this: Click the FROM label at the top of your inbox… doesn't look like a button, but it is! That will instantly sort your emails in alphabetical order. Scroll to the Acme Supply ones (yes, I know, they're probably at the top). Select the first one, hold down your shift key and select the last one, that will highlight ALL of them, then click on them and drag them to the Acme Supply folder on the left.

Repeat these processes as many times as you need, to organize all your email and take just a little bit of the chaos out of your life.

Now… the Rules Wizard is capable of much more detailed sorting than what we've just tried. If you're up for a little adventure, click Organize, then "Rules Wizard" and explore it… you can move, copy, sort, forward and delete emails automatically based on all sorts of different criteria - who it's from, which email address it was sent to, which words are in the from, subject, or message body, which distribution list it belongs to (if any) and more… there are a lot of options to choose from. Be brave… Be confident. You can do it!

Happy filtering.