Email Overload: How to Organise Your Messages with Folders

pensive female worker choosing folder with documents in modern office

Of course, even with email overwhelm, there will be emails that you want or need to keep. Leaving them in your Inbox can definitely add to the overload. Here’s where email folders organisation can help.

At the end of the day, it’s your choice how you organise your messages.

It can be by:

  • Topic
  • Date
  • Person/Sender

Whatever you want or however you prefer to work/think, create the structure that works best for you.

Remember: You don’t have to get it right first time. As this is all digital, you can change things, move things around, until you do find that method that works for you.

Structure Options

As I said, the structure is down to you.

What you do need to know is that any folder you create will be underneath ‘something’.

What we call ‘top-level’ folders, are underneath your mailbox, i.e. your email account.

Then everything else is a sub-folder of an existing folder. This can be either the built-in ones (Inbox, Drafts, etc) or ones that you’ve created.

cutout paper composition of yellow signboard with exclamation mark

IMPORTANT

While you can, please don’t create sub-folders underneath Deleted Items.

That time when you need some space back, the first thing to do is ‘Empty Deleted Items’, and that’s when the folder, and it’s contents will be – deleted.

Please, only ever put items that you really don’t want/need anymore in Deleted Items.

You need to think about what do you want from the email folders – organisation of?

Is it long term storage? Short term storage (for a project or event)?

Because you can both create and delete folders, they can be used to ‘temporarily’ store messages, reducing the overwhelm and the number of emails in your Inbox.

Lightbulb - Tip

TIP/WARNING

It is very easy to use this method, thinking for some things it’s a more permanent solution to the overload. I’m sad to say that it isn’t.
Creating and moving emails into general folders is a temp fix. You still need to review and deal with emails.
I’m guilty of this – I have folders that I moved older emails into – sure it made my Inbox look better, however I’m making time to review these messages and actually deal with each email.
I don’t want to have these folders forever.

Microsoft Outlook

I want to start with Outlook, as it does call the structure folders.

Typically, I create folders and sub-folders as I need them. Changing the structure to suit my needs now.

You’ll be unsurprised to learn that there are a number of different ways to create a new folder.

Shortcut Key

Create New Folder Dialog Box - after using the shortcut key to create email folders in outlook
Create New Folder

This is the option that I use the most.

CTRL + SHIFT + E

You can use this keyboard shortcut anywhere in Outlook, although I use it the most with emails.

Note: You can create additional folders for the other sections.

Type in the Name for the new folder.

Tip: Make sure that it’s something you’ll understand in 6 months/a years’ time.

Check that it’s for Mail and Post Items.

Select where it should sit in your folder structure.

Click OK.

Ribbon Tab – Folder

Strangely, this is the one that I forget about the most – because it’s a relatively new option.

In Outlook, click the Folder Tab on the Ribbon.

Use the Folder Tab on the Ribbon to create a New Folder, to help with the organisation.
Folder Tab on the Ribbon

Then click the first option – New Folder.

You’ll see the same ‘Create New Folder’ dialog box, as above (Shortcut Key).

Mouse – right-click

Finally, there’s the mouse option – which is a simple right-click.

The main decision here, is where to right-click.

Answer: where you want the new folder to be.

Take a look at my YouTube video for more help Quick Tips: How to Create a New Folder in Outlook.

Smartphone and Tablet

After looking into it, there appears to be no option to create a new folder in the Outlook Mobile App.

An alternative is to sign into Outlook on the Web (through any browser), and create the new folder.

When you return to your Outlook App, the folder will appear so you can move files into it.

Google Mail

Email folders in Gmail are actually Labels, in the left menu. They offer email folders organization.
Labels are folders in Gmail

Unlike Outlook, Gmail doesn’t have an item called folders – they are actually called labels.

A little bit confusing, after you create a label, you can either assign it to an email, or move messages to it.

Create a Label

From the left-hand side, in the menu, click on the plus sign (+), next to Label.

Create a new Label for email folders in Gmail
New Label Dialog Box

Type in the New Label name.

Note: As I mentioned above for Outlook. use something that will make sense in the future, not just ‘now’.

If you’re creating a sub-folder, use ‘Nest label under’ to select the folder.

Click Create.

You can click and drag emails into the label to move them, or use the Move button on the toolbar.

Note: You can also label them and leave them in the Inbox.

Watch my YouTube video How to Organise Your Gmail Inbox with Labels to see how. (Released Jan 24th)

Mobile/Tablet

You can create a new Label through your mobile app.

From the email list, list on the ‘burger’ icon (three lines in the top left corner) to open the menu.

Under the heading ‘labels’, click “+ Create new”.

Type in the name for your new label, and click ‘Save’ (top-right).

An empty folder is displayed for the new label.

Use the burger icon again, and return to your Primary folder (i.e Inbox).

You can now either open individual messages, and use the Move option in the ellipses (three dots) icon.

Or press and hold on each message to select it, before using the Move option in the ellipse icon.

Next Steps

Now that your structure is in place, select and move the emails into the folder, and out of the Inbox.

By moving emails out of your Inbox, the total number is reduced not only using email folders organisation, but shrinking the overload down (a bit).

While this is a manual process, the next blog will look at one of the options to automate moving emails.

Need some more help dealing with your emails? Do you need Email Overwhelm Rescue

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