Sunday, May 18, 2008

Save Custom Views as Folders in Thunderbird

Looks like it's a Thunderbird weekend this weekend, and it's about damn time, I feel like I've seriously been ignoring one of my most-used apps out there in this blog.

Anyway, in the last post I alluded to the fact that I organize my thousands of emails (as of this moment, around 3200 pieces of received mail, and 2700 pieces of sent mail, over just the past two years) into folders that separate my various jobs, as well as family, friends, account information, invites, etc. By doing this I keep my inbox completely clean.

Because of this, there isn't a way to view all my recent pieces of mail across the several folders, or one large view of all my emails. But no fear, that's what Saved Search Views are for.



If you hit the drop down View menu, you see an option called "Save View as Folder."


From there you can customize the message you want displayed in that particular view. In the following example, my "Recent" folder, I've set it up so that all messages that are either unread, less than two days old, or are starred, are displayed in that view.


You also have to specify what folders you want to include in this view. I've selected all my folders (and their subfolders) except for the trash, junk, and sent mail folder. Note that you have to update your checked folders whenever you move/add folders in your account, they don't get automatically added.

As you can see in the shot on the right, I currently use the Recent view, as well as an All view, which just shows all my received emails in one. This is useful when I need to do a quick search for a piece of email whose containing folder I can't immediately recall.

How do YOU organize your inbox?

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

simple but fantastic tip. great time-saver!!