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How can I organize my e-mail?

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I'm still looking for some way of better organizing my e-mail.

Up to recently I've been using around a dozen filters/folders but this approach has some disadvantages:

 - if I check my e-mail in Gmail web interface, Thunderbird filters are not respected and the e-mail sticks to the inbox
 - manually running all filters is time consuming (up to a minute)

Is there any way to better handle my e-mail without recurring to a manually-intensive configuration?

Something like Google Inbox?

It's a little bit confusing to have all e-mail linearly stored in a single folder. I daily check all e-mail (frequently check the e-mail of the past week) and this linear organization is not adequate.

I'm still looking for some way of better organizing my e-mail. Up to recently I've been using around a dozen filters/folders but this approach has some disadvantages: - if I check my e-mail in Gmail web interface, Thunderbird filters are not respected and the e-mail sticks to the inbox - manually running all filters is time consuming (up to a minute) Is there any way to better handle my e-mail without recurring to a manually-intensive configuration? Something like Google Inbox? It's a little bit confusing to have all e-mail linearly stored in a single folder. I daily check all e-mail (frequently check the e-mail of the past week) and this linear organization is not adequate.

Chosen solution

That's a lot of messages to handle in one tranche. I don't have any experience of such a heavy throughput, nor any feasible way of generating one as a test case. Sorry.

I think filtering at the server is your best bet. Then it's going on 24/7 without you having to wait, and consistent across devices.

Porting msgFilterRules.dat is OK as a one-off to set things up, but pretty hopeless as an ongoing maintenance; there's no easy way to merge different rulesets. And it requires identical folder systems in all devices. That's not too hard with IMAP, but you might get caught out with internal differences in folder names.

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I move mine into separate folders, segregated by topic or correspondent, hence avoiding your "e-mail linearly stored in a single folder" scenario.

If you use Thunderbird, why complicate matters by also using a webmail interface?

This forum has its own built-in bullet points. Don't use spaces; it interprets these as meaning you want it shown verbatim.

  • if I check my e-mail in Gmail web interface, Thunderbird filters are not respected and the e-mail sticks to the inbox
  • manually running all filters is time consuming (up to a minute)

A dozen filters is slow??? How many messages are they dealing with, typically?

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Zenos said

I move mine into separate folders, segregated by topic or correspondent, hence avoiding your "e-mail linearly stored in a single folder" scenario.

That's exactly what I did until recently, but: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1119080

If you use Thunderbird, why complicate matters by also using a webmail interface?

I don't use Thunderbird in Android.

This forum has its own built-in bullet points. Don't use spaces; it interprets these as meaning you want it shown verbatim.

Sorry.

A dozen filters is slow??? How many messages are they dealing with, typically?

12612 messages, maximum.

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Chosen Solution

That's a lot of messages to handle in one tranche. I don't have any experience of such a heavy throughput, nor any feasible way of generating one as a test case. Sorry.

I think filtering at the server is your best bet. Then it's going on 24/7 without you having to wait, and consistent across devices.

Porting msgFilterRules.dat is OK as a one-off to set things up, but pretty hopeless as an ongoing maintenance; there's no easy way to merge different rulesets. And it requires identical folder systems in all devices. That's not too hard with IMAP, but you might get caught out with internal differences in folder names.

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OK, so using Gmail filters is perhaps the best solution for this scenario.