Easy ways to manage your email

As the semester draws to a close, it’s more than likely that your email inbox is piling up with more information and emails than you can handle. However, not more than ever is the time when email maintenance is needed. An important thing to remember about DePauw’s email network is that the more email in the system, the slower the system will run. Being proactive with managing your inbox can help negate the slowness you may experience with Novell. Here are a few easy ways to keep your inbox under control.

Keep your Inbox clear. Your email will work faster if the Inbox has fewer messages in it. To maintain your inbox, it’s a good idea to set aside time in the day to deal with your email messages. If a message can be dealt with in a few minutes, do it and get it out of your inbox. You can also use other folders to organize messages. Keeping your email inbox clear will make it easier for you to find messages and you will likely be less overwhelmed about the amount of pending email that needs attention.

Empty the trash and sent items folders regularly. It’s not enough to just delete your emails because all items in your trash still take up the 50 MB of space that students receive. The system removes items older than 15 days old from trash automatically, but you can empty it more often if you have a lot of email that you delete. Sent items are easy to overlook, but they also take up space and are not as necessary to hold onto.

Unsubscribe to list services that you don’t use. It may have seemed like a good idea at the time to offer up your email address to get that extra discount at Barnes and Noble, but it’s likely that you probably don’t need to get weekly reminders anymore. It’s likely that everyone has subscribed to something at one point or another, but at some point, the messages have stopped being read and are now just deleted automatically. Take the time to read the message and follow the directions to unsubscribe from the list service. Cutting out these messages will drastically decrease the amount of weekly email you have coming through your inbox.

Use a different email service. Obviously your Tigermail account is necessary to function as a DePauw student, but it’s also a good idea to create an off-site email account (GMAIL, YAHOO, HOTMAIL, etc.) for personal or non-DePauw email. This will simplify your DePauw email box and help you separate your personal messages from your professional work messages.

Archive old messages. While there will be email that you will want to store, it's likely that you do not need to keep this email in your inbox. You can help keep your inbox under the quota limit by archiving older messages.  To leran how to archive mail messages, follow the instructions here.