Do you, like most bloggers, receive 50-300 emails a day? Is email overload driving you crazy? Then you need 9 Killer Tips to control your Apple Mail. Find plenty of support and advice to manage efficiently your emails and to boost your productivity. Go ahead and try them – you’ll discover there’s more to life than the Inbox!
Clean Up Your Apple Mail Box
- Daily empty your Trash and erase Junk Mail.
- If you don’t need your old emails – delete them – personally, I keep emails no older than one year old.
- Clean out your Mail downloads – when you’ve already saved them in your folders, you don’t need them anymore in your Mail, they are using space and memory. First switch off your Mail, go to your user/Library/Mail Download and select all your files in Mail Downloads and move to trash.
- Empty your cache (at least once per week), go to User/Library/Caches -> move to trash – don’t worry it will rebuild by itself, and doing it regularly will clean your Mail and Mac memory.
- Check your old email addresses and delete the ones you don’t use anymore: First switch off your Mail, go to User/Library/Mail/V2
- Re-open your mail it should run faster – if not, visit Apple Support Communities – and select Mail, Contacts & Calendar there are plenty of questions/answers to help you.
Create Multiple Signatures
If you received often the same emails, and you are sick of re-writing similar answers, create signatures it will save you heaps of time! Go to Mail/Preferences/Signatures/Select the email/ click on the + sign and create your signatures.
Add Rules For When You Are Away
Rules is a great way to send automatic emails when you are in holidays or just on mode off. Mail/Signatures/Rules/Add Rule. If you need more help with Rules, please leave me a comment.
Block Email Addresses
More my blog is growing and more I received junk emails, some are not even in English, it is driving me crazy. Again go to Rules – and create your own – next time you will receive a junk mail it will go straight to your Junk Mail. Don’t forget after to erase Junk Mail.
Create Folders by Category
I have four email addresses in my Mail – so you can imagine the number of emails I receive per day. Around 50 emails is a quiet day. Creating folders (New Mailbox) with sub mailbox help me daily to be more productive and organized.
Personally, I don’t use it but some swear MsgFiler is the best app to do the job for you – This app will move or copy messages for you, create keyboard shortcuts, etc… To find more visit MsgFiler website or click on your App Store Icon, in finder, type msgfiler, $10.49 in Productivity.
Layout and Colors
I am a visual person, it’s important for me to have 3 windows in my Mail, and to have some highlights. To change the layout and coloring, go to Mail/Preferences/Viewing and select what’s suit your eyes and preferences.
Switch Off  Your Incoming Email Alert
Email is not SMS. You need to check it when you want to, not when it chooses to come in. Even if you decide to ignore the alerts, don’t kid yourself: their very presence will distract you and kill your concentration every few minutes. Same rule applies for your phone.
On your Mac: System Preferences/Notifications/Mail and click on None for Mail alert style. You can also go to Do Not Disturb and select a time of the day when you don’t want received any alerts (calendar, Face Time, Google, iTunes, Skype).
On your iPhone: Settings/Sounds/New Mail and select none. Go back to Settings/Notification Center/Mail and select none for alert Style.
Check Your Emails Without Opening Mail
On your desktop you can view your emails without opening your Mail app. Click on the top right symbol and you can see your emails, sender’s name and 2 lines of the email’s content. If you want read one just click on it and it will re-open your Mail.
Only Read Incoming Mail In Few Fixed Time Slots Daily
Checking email every few minutes is a huge killer of productivity and peace of mind. Predefined slots to clear your Inbox – the same ones every day, preferably at those times of the day when you are least creative.
For instance, you might choose an hour at 8am (to see what came in from other time zones while you were sleeping), and an hour or two after lunch. Whatever works for you – as long as you stick to it without compromise. This is not an easy one, but after applying my own rules, I saved time and energy. Don’t worry, you won’t missed an important email. Promise.
I hope those tips will help you to be more productive and efficient with your massive emails volume – if you have more tips to share, please leave a comment. Merci.
