About a week ago I installed Thunderbird again and I think I’ve cooked up the ultimate combination of tools for handling email. I was previously (for three years) working just in the Gmail client and while it’s been okay, I have needed a platform and process that allows me a chance to adapt my working process to a higher degree than Gmail does in the browser. I think the TB/GM combination has everything I am going to need.
Here’s what the process I’m currently using.
1. Make sure before you install Thunderbird, you go into your Gmail settings and set the POP forwarding to “new mail only”. Otherwise, if you’re like me, you sit there for hours waiting for Thunderbird to download 2Gb worth of old mail. And, as you’ll find out shortly, you aren’t going to use TB to store email anyway.
2. Once you have TB configured to receive your Gmail (and the latest version of TB makes that very easy), you might want to set up some folders under your Inbox. For example, I’ve got these folders currently set up.
The reason for the folders is that I’m going to be creating some filters.
3. The reason for the filters is that I get a couple of hundred emails each day and I need a good way to prioritise them. So whenever an email comes into my inbox, I try to assign a filter to it so the next time I get an email from that person it ends up bypassing my inbox and ending up in one of the folders. That way I can scan my folders a few times a day and attack the most important emails first.
Why not just use Gmail filters? One reason – right click. I found the whole process of setting up filters in Gmail very slow and frustrating. With TB, you open the email, right click the sender’s email address, and select “Create Filter From Message”. It’s a far smoother process. It’s also easier to colour-code your messages, tag them, etc. And you can drag-and-drop them into folders or into the Trash.
4. Here’s the best tip – once I’ve processed an email, I *delete* it. Yup. Why? Because this is Gmail – access to an old email is a click away by opening up a browser window. No point storing them locally when Google does it for you. So when you re-build your PC you don’t need to worry about backing up old emails. It’s all in the cloud, baby.
So… that’s my current email process. If you have any additional tips to handling large quantities of email per day, let me know.
UPDATE: Something Jodie Miners reminded me of. This solution probably ISN’T going to work for those of you who operate regularly across several machines. These days I don’t travel as much as I used to, so my desktop machine is where I am handling email 95% of the time. When I am away from home, I check Gmail from my phone or my laptop. I can still use the Gmail web interface for these out-of-context situations. However I’m never going to be trying to deal with 200+ emails in these situations, only emergency stuff. The Thunderbird interface is for handling bulk email on a daily basis.
UPDATE 12 July, 2007:
In case you don’t read David’s comments from below, I’ve added these to my TB install! Brilliant!
Another component I’ve added to the TB mix is hooking in Google Calendars using two plugins: Lightning + Provider for Google Calendars, which let me view and update my (multiple) Google Calendars from a sidebar within Thunderbird.
Get it!
Hi Cam
You’re system is very similar to the one I operate and it has worked well for me for quite a few months now so I hope you have the same success.
I would recommend one tweek to your process and that is to archive processed emails rather than delete them so you can look them up when you’re working offline.
All the best
Geoff
Geoff, not sure what you mean by “offline”. I haven’t been “offline” since 1995.
You’re blessed. 🙂
If only I could import my Thunderbird archives to Gmail.
I don’t get it… Why not just spend that time setting up filters in gmail, it seems to be exactly what you described, PLUS the tags that you apply when setting the filters are in gmail for ever and aid in searching later. When the filters are in gmail that means you’ve got the same setup wherever you go and are not confined to just using your laptop all the time. One of the excellent things when setting up my new Vista PC on the weekend was it was so easy – I just turned it on and everything worked – all my email was just there already because it was in Gmail.
Yeah, I can see some reasons why using TB may be worthwhile or better than Gmail, but just not the one you’ve described here.
Good point Jodie! I don’t think I explained my reasons for using TB very well. I’m going to add to the post.
I’m using the very same setup. Nothing more needs to be said 🙂
Thanks for the update Cameron, I knew there must have been more to it… If you think of any other good reasons to use TB, please let us know… I don’t think I will because I’m using my email both at work and home all the time (and of course I’m not popular enough to get 200+ emails per day like you…)
Another component I’ve added to the TB mix is hooking in Google Calendars using two plugins: Lightning + Provider for Google Calendars, which let me view and update my (multiple) Google Calendars from a sidebar within Thunderbird.
Get it!
Lightning 0.5
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/lightning/
Provider for Google Calendar 0.21
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/4631
I too found creating filters for gMail to be obnoxious. I scouted around until I found this GreaseMonkey hack:
http://www.amoszhang.com/gmailfilterassistant
It puts a “Filter Assistant” button right beside the “Reply” dropdown on every mail entry. Clicking it takes you to a prepopulated clone of gMail’s filter creation page. When I get a little time, I will try to hack it & put a “Create filter” in the “Reply” dropdown. It would be useful to have it on the top level “More Actions…” dropdown as well. The general principle is marvelous, but I would like to make the UI a little more orthogonal.
I’ve used it for about a week & functionally speaking, could not be happier.
But going back to something Paul M. said: I wish I could have gMail import my TBird archive files. That was actually what I was googling when I ran across this blog.
Cheers!