Using Gmail to tame the E-mail Archives

[brianc]

As a new user of TNG, I had two problems... where to go to find old mailing list entries, and how to handle all the new mail coming in. Here is my approach...

The incoming mail is easy to solve. You can save it to a folder called "tngusers". Most email clients let you set up a filter to do this automatically.

Outlook Express:

Tools->Message Rules->Mail...

Select [x] Where the Subject line contains specific words "tngusers2"

Select [x] Move it to the specified folder "tngusers2"

Gmail:

Settings->Filters->Create a new filter

Subject "tngusers2"

Next Step

[x] Skip the inbox

[x] Apply the label "tngusers2"

Now, if you like leaving things in your until you've read them, don't check "skip the inbox". You can archive them or delete them after you read them.

Gmail is great because it keeps so much stuff AND it lets you search AND it puts conversations in threads.

But what about the old mails? You send an email. You can only get 100 at a time, and your service provider will probably limit the number cc's you can have (to prevent spamming). So I broke it up into 20 emails that looked like this:

tngusers2-get.16000_16099@lythgoes.net,

tngusers2-get.16100_16199@lythgoes.net,

tngusers2-get.16200_16299@lythgoes.net,

tngusers2-get.16300_16399@lythgoes.net,

tngusers2-get.16400_16499@lythgoes.net,

tngusers2-get.16500_16599@lythgoes.net,

tngusers2-get.16600_16699@lythgoes.net,

tngusers2-get.16700_16799@lythgoes.net,

tngusers2-get.16800_16899@lythgoes.net,

tngusers2-get.16900_16999@lythgoes.net

In this way, I just had to change the first digits of the requests (e.g. 16xxx to 17xxx) and request the next bunch. Gmail will search all of these.

One more thing I did. I didn't like the idea of keeping all those emails in my gmail archive. Who knows, I may fill it up some day . So I created a new gmail account specifically for mailing lists. Now all my TNG mailings go to BOTH my regual account and the mailing list account. I just delete them on my regular account, and the collect themselves in the mailing list account. I like it so much, I will probably start for some other mailing lists I'm on. If you're curious, all the old archive mailing lists say they take up 75 MB of my 2997 MB, about 2%.

- Brian

[javo]

It looks like a great idea and thanks for the post. I also send all my suggest and comment replies to G mail and will try your method on G mail.