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Business News/ News / Business Of Life/  Clean up your inbox
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Clean up your inbox

Inbox 'zero' is all about reducing email clutter some services make this job easier for you

Use apps to manage your mails.Premium
Use apps to manage your mails.

NEW DELHI :

Inbox “zero", in its strictest terms, means a completely empty inbox at all times, or at least, almost empty. The term “empty" means no unread mails, or unfinished tasks on the to-do list. The benefit of this is that you do not have to wade through useless emails to find what you were looking for, and no critical mail slips through the cracks.

Here is what you need to do regularly:

u Go through the inbox at regular intervals, through the day. This prevents an overload of unread mails.

u Delete as many new, unwanted mails as you can, without waiting for an auspicious time.

u In case someone else can respond to a mail better, forward it to them right away. One less to-do task for you later.

u If some mails can be handled with quick responses, get them out of the way at the earliest.

u Create a “to respond" folder. Mails that need longer responses should immediately be moved to this folder.

But, what if the clutter has been accumulating for a while? In that case, deleting mails one by one is out of the question. Unless you want to just tick everything and mass delete, you will need the help of services like Gmail and Windows Live Mail, which have certain tools that make sorting and deleting easier. For intricate cleaning, you will need third-party apps, some of which are listed below.

Mailstrom

This is an all-rounder service that seems to do almost everything within one window. Sign up with your account, and the entire inbox is mapped for you in a few minutes. You can delete emails by size, sender or time. For example, updates from social networks go under the Social umbrella. The most important feature is Unsubscribe, which clubs all potential subscription mails according to each sender, and lets you stop the subscription and delete all mails from the sender, with one click. Currently, this app works with all Gmail and Microsoft Outlook mail accounts, and can be used on any desktop Web browser. The free trial takes a snapshot of just 25% of the mailbox, and lets you clean up within that. The full version costs $4.95 (around 300) per month, and maps all mails in your email account.

Alto Mail

Though technically not a service to clear clutter, this email service is a front that works with your existing email accounts, and makes everything look better. We say it is a front because Alto Mail doesn’t technically give you a new email address, but just lets you sign in with your existing account and utilize a new interface and enhanced mail-sorting features. At the moment, Gmail, iCloud, Yahoo! and also certain other mail services work, if you know the Post Office Protocol (POP) and Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) server settings. AOL says it is working on adding wider compatibility for more accounts. Photographs, attachments, social network updates, mails, newsletters, etc., all get sorted into groups, or stacks. Users get the ability to add more filters, depending on what may be useful for them. This service is free, and since almost everyone seems to be using Gmail, we would recommend Alto Mail.

Unroll.Me

The primary culprits which overload an inbox are newsletters, forum updates, social network notifications and shopping deals. Over a period of time, we tend to absent-mindedly agree to a subscription of a newsletter, or in some cases, websites automatically take the liberty of doing it for us. Soon, there are just so many of them that unsubscribing each becomes a major task. Unroll.Me comes in handy here. After you sign up with it, your inbox is scanned and mapped. All potential newsletters, notifications, etc., are bundled together in one category. Simply select one mail from each of the senders, and select unsubscribe. Unroll.Me will automatically unsubscribe all the mails from that sender, and offers the option to delete the ones already in the inbox.

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Published: 22 Jul 2014, 08:28 PM IST
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