Email Best Practices 2.0

Overall

I think it’s a well-balanced release. There are a few big features, and many smaller ones. But the smaller ones really add up too because they are thoughtful … they improve behaviour of existing workflows and increase productivity.

Before you rush to upgrade …

First, read about the new features:  What’s new in NEO Pro 5

Make sure you have some time available after installing it. Upgrading to NEO Pro 5 requires you to rebuild your catalog, which is easy but can take minutes to hours depending on the number of messages you have.

Also, you’ll want some time to get acquainted with the new ribbon and trying out the new features.

Here are a few of the things I really like

#1 – Conversation View

Jim’s comment to me: “I REALLY like the conversation view. Can fly through email even faster” really says it all (thanks Jim).

The Right/Left arrow commands for quickly expanding/collapsing a conversation make it super easy to drill down.

#2 – Note capability for annotating messages

Very well designed. That you can easily add dates is a sweet touch.

You can use the Note feature for notes to yourself but you can also it for other creative things like managing your workflow. If you do, the new Noted virtual folder (that lives in Status view) will be very helpful. Suggest you make it Hot, and learn the feature’s new keyboard shortcuts.

#3 – The new Ribbon interface

I’m used to the Ribbon interface from other products, and figured it would mostly just help new users. It will, but I was surprised to find how much I like it too.

I love the new clean look and operate with the Ribbon minimized almost all the time. Here are some suggestions for getting started:

• Right-click the Quick Access Toolbar and choose to show it below the Ribbon. For something you click often, it’s way too far away when it’s above the Ribbon.

• Run with the Ribbon maximized until you learn where everything is.

• Add every command you use regularly to the Quick Access Toolbar (this is the secret sauce!). Reorder the commands into logical groups (right-click, choose Customize then drag and drop with the Customize dialog open).

• Then run with the Ribbon minimized (I toggle Ctrl+F1 to view/hide it)

You can stick with the old menu/toolbar if you want, but I suggest you give the Ribbon a shot.

#4 – New layout – “Set Views Left and Right”

Just try this (see View | Layout). You will either love it or … not so much. This has always been possible but tricky to set up without a stock layout. I stack Bulk Mail and Search on the right.

That’s it. I like the other features and fixes too but the above features alone make upgrading worthwhile for me. I also found the release to be very stable even from the very first beta.

The “New Message To” feature

To send a new message to a Correspondent, right-click the Correspondent folder and choose New Message To (or press Ctrl+E).

If the Correspondent has just one email address, a new message will open addressed to them.

However, if there is more than one email address for them, you get to choose:

Click Set as Default which sets it as bold so it’s easy to pick next time.

Notes

• You can right-click any message in List View and do New Message To, but you can only set the default from the Correspondent folder.

Tree order is the default. Have you tried the other sort orders?

Orders that I use and recommend

Remember that you don’t have to use the same order for each view, or even all the time for the same view.

Correspondent View – Alpha order is much better if you don’t care about the New | Current | Dormant top level feature and you tend to scroll to find people. Recently Used order is a perfect choice if you use the Folder List filter a lot. Hint: use Alpha order when combining folders.

Bulk Mail View – Ditto.

Category View – Again, same as above except that if you like to drag and drop to Categories, you may prefer Recently Used order over Alpha because your recent ones will be at the top.

Status, Date, Attachment and Outlook views – These seem to work best in Tree order. The reason is that they have an internal ’system’ ordering that makes sense (e.g., in Date by date, Status by workflow relevance, etc).

Notes

• You have to be in Tree order to add folders and group folders.

• If in Alpha or Recently Used orders you will see a Location field. It shows the in what Top Level folder the appears. Not very useful really, so to make more room you can put your cursor on the left edge of the field and drag it to the right edge to make it go away.

  

Here’s how to get selectively alerted in NEO Pro.

First, set up your New Mail Alerts in Options

Go to Tools | Options | New Mail Alerts tab. Enable alerts only for Hot messages. Getting alerted for all emails is discouraged these days (but of course, do what works best for you).

Now make your Correspondent Hot

You’ll receive a new mail alert for just those Correspondents you’ve made Hot. Here’s my Hot view:

I’ll only get alerted when either Joshua, Marni or Tina contact me – exactly what I want.

The beauty of it in NEO is that it’s a breeze to make Correspondents Hot or not Hot (right-click and choose Make Hot/Remove from Hot, or Ctrl+H). You can change who’s Hot much more quickly than having to configure an Outlook rule (ugh!).

I find it interesting how even minor tweaks can make a big usability difference.

I found moving Date/Time from the far right over to the left where (my eyes are usually pointed) instantly satisfying. And breaking up the narrow “status” columns on the left and pairing them with more complementary columns made them easier to spot.

Here’s my column order

You might want to consider re-arranging yours.

Columns I don’t show:

     Size: I only show it in Attachment view.
     Sent Message: Redundant. Color distinguishes sent/received.
     Importance: A mostly useless Outlook attribute.

How to reorder, select and resize columns

To change order: Drag and drop the column into new position.

To select columns: Right-click anywhere in header and choose.

To resize: Grab the column separator on right side and drag.

Tips in the NEO series are about Nelson Email Organizer, a product we sometimes recommend to clients who deal with high volumes of daily email.

Keep explained

When you set the Kept status for an email, you can’t delete it – the Delete command simply ignores it. The only way you can delete a Kept email is to remove the Kept status first.

I use it for “please keep this email” type emails like product license keys and registration information.

Using Keep

To set Keep	Highlight one or more emails and choose Keep on the right-click menu (or press Ctrl+K)
To remove Keep	Choose Remove Keep on the right-click menu (no hotkey is available)
To tell how an email is ‘kept’	A symbol will appear in the NEO Keep column in List View.
See all your ‘kept’ emails together	Click the Status tab and select the Kept folder.

Using Keep to set keepers in Bulk Mail

I never find time to read all my bulk mail, but sometimes when I’m busy I see a bulk email that I definitely want to read sometime.

Let’s look at my Juump bulk mail folder (Juump is a social networking app for connecting tennis partners).

Here are the emails in my Juump folder. Notice that two are Kept:

And here’s the time-saving part. If I want to delete everything from the folder (which often happens when I’m busy) but keep the “kept” emails I simply:

   (1)  Press Ctrl+A to select all emails      (2)  Hit Delete.

… and I’m left with just my ‘kept’ emails:

Tips in the NEO series are about Nelson Email Organizer, the original and best automatic email organizer available today. We often recommend it to clients who deal with high volumes of daily email.

When it’s useful

Suppose you’re interacting with a new company that involves several people. Before you get to know them, it can be hard to keep track of who sent what.

You can see all their emails together by creating a Correspondent folder for the whole company. Makes it much simpler for searching within a single folder. This is in addition to the individual Correspondent folders which of course you will still want.

Here’s the end result

I’ve created a HP ALL folder that shows all emails between me and anyone at Hewlett Packard.

And here’s how to get it

Step 1 Right-click anywhere in the Correspondent Folder List and choose New Folder.
Step 2 Enter the company name. I’m using Hewlett Packard. Click OK.
Step 3 Locate the new folder, then right-click it and choose Folder Properties.
Step 4 Click Add on the Folder Properties dialog.
Step 5 Enter the pattern. Then click OK and follow the prompts.		* means any characters before @hp.com which is any email name.

A few notes

• Address patterns are powerful. They can be used in many other ways such as combining bulk mail that comes with slightly varying addresses. See NEO Help.

• This is very different from the Group folder feature which organizes Correspondent folders individually within a group folder.

• DANGER: If you want to remove your consolidated folder, don’t delete it or you will delete all the emails from the individual Correspondent folders too. Instead, open up its Folder Properties and remove the address pattern from the list. Your consolidated folder will then automatically disappear.

Tips in the NEO series are about Nelson Email Organizer, the original and best automatic email organizer available today. We often recommend it to clients who deal with high volumes of daily email.

Step 1

Select NEO’s Attachment View by clicking the Attachment tab:

Step 2 In the Attachment View folder list, select All Attachments (shows emails with attachments of any type):		Step 3 Click the Size column heading to sort biggest first (arrow pointing down):

Step 4

Select the email you want, then in the NEO Reading Pane, click on the attachment icon. You can save the attachment first, or just delete it.

Will this reduce the size of your email data?

Yes but not immediately. Over time Outlook will automatically recapture the space.

If the attachment is in an Outlook Data File (aka PST), you can “immediately” reclaim the space by running compact on it. I say “immediately” because it can take many hours to compact your data so you might want to run it overnight.

Here’s how: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/289987

By the way, if you choose to just delete the email instead, press Shift+Delete to remove it permanently (or Delete it then empty your Deleted Items).

Tips in the NEO series are about Nelson Email Organizer, the original and best automatic email organizer available today. We often recommend it to clients who deal with high volumes of daily email.

It’s simple enough but many NEO users I talk to aren’t aware of it. I always use it when returning from a search and also after Jumping to a Correspondent folder.

It’s hidden away over to the right side, just above where Date/Time normally is.

You can also use Alt+LeftArrow to go Back and Alt+RightArrow to go Forward. These are Windows standards for Back and Forward.