Too many mailshots?
Mailshot mailbox management
I am definitely signed up to too many newsletters and mail shots. You know those newsletters by companies wanting to tell you about the latest products or offers, etc. The ones you generally sign up for in advance that are not junk – and occasionally I read one that catches my eye. But! they definitely clutter up my mailbox and the volume of them can be overwhelming… I’ve had 18 so far today. I’m also aware that for many including my other neurodivergent friends, organising email is problematic where the sheer volume can make it difficult to spot or act on the important emails. So this little trick may be useful.
To make things worse, if you have limited mailbox server space, mailshots take up unnecessary space. Think of a filing cabinet filling up, but mainly with magazines and pamphlets that you don’t want.
So, how do you sort them out? One way is to periodically manually sort them. I.e. sort on the sender’s name, select all from that sender and delete. But you have to do that for each email address and if you have many different charities and firms sending you their daily/weekly/monthly/yearly newsletters, that is a lot of sorting…
If you use Thunderbird as your email client you might be interested in the method I use. I’ve been using it for a few years now and it’s automated. It automatically selects and sorts the mailshots and, after a time, deletes only these. It also uses Thunderbird’s built-in functionalities and does not require any add-ons. These instructions are based on the most recent build of Thunderbird, 140.0.1 (64-bit), but they work on older versions.
- Create a new Mailshots folder
- Set the Retention Policy for the Mailshots folder
- Create a Mailshots Address Book in Thunderbird
- Set up a filter to move any email in the Mailshot Address Book to the Mailshot folder.
Create a new Mailshots folder
Right-click the email account in the Folder Pane (This is normally visible, but if not use the hamburger menu and under View > Layout make sure Folder Pane is selected).
From the pop-up menu select ‘New Folder…‘
Give your new folder a name, something you’ll recognise it for what it is. I just call mine Mailshots. At this point you can also choose whether this is a subfolder of the main account or a subfolder of the actual Inbox. I normally create it as a subfolder of the main email account (default option). I’ve not yet found any advantages or disadvantages for it being one way or the other.
Set the Retention Policy for the Mailshots folder
Right-click the newly created Mailshots folder, select ‘Properties’ and then select the Retention Policy tab.
It’s likely that ‘Use my account settings’ is selected. Unselect this and select Delete messages more than [ ] days old. Set how many days you want to keep messages. (You can alternatively set it to delete any messages over a certain number if you feel that will work better for you).
Create a Mailshots Address Book in Thunderbird
This is perhaps an area that Thunderbird could improve on, but adding an Address Book is ‘not’ under the Address Book menu item. It’s under the main hamburger menu and New Account.
Select New Address Book > Local Address Book
Give your new address book a relevant name, such as Mailshots.
The advantage of a separate address book to handle all the email addresses of companies sending mailshots is its flexibility. The alternative would be to add each and every email address to the Filter in the next step, but it’s a lot more cumbersome and when you find yourself dealing with something like 400 odd companies who send you mailshots (it builds up over time) I find it easier to manage these via a single address book. That and because Thunderbird offers a simple right-click to add any email to the address book.
Set up a filter to move any email in the Mailshot Address Book to the Mailshot folder.
Message Filters in Thunderbird are I feel one of it’s more powerful features. When you start using this feature, if not already, you’ll realise its potential.
Although Thunderbird offers a Quick Filter button with options, Message Filters are not accessed via Quick Filter.
To access Message Filters, you need to use the main Hamburger menu (as previously used to create the new address book). Select Tools > Message Filters > New…
Give your filter a name and decide when you want the filter to be run. Manually and on getting(fetching) new mail are selected by default.
Leave it on ‘Match all of the following’ as you are only applying one rule.
Change the first dropdown from ‘Subject’ to ‘From’
Change the second dropdown from ‘contains’ to ‘is in my address book’. This immediately offers the address books available to you. Select your new Mailshots address book.
Under Perform these actions, set it to Move Message to and then use the second dropdown to select the relevant folder.
That’s it… press OK to set the rule.
Adding email addresses to the Mailshots address book.
The final bit is adding the various companies you want to mark as sending you mailshots to the Mailshots address book.
Whenever you find or get an email from a company you want to mark as a mailshot, when viewing it in the preview pane. Select the email address in the From field (in the current Thunderbird, it automatically highlights blue when you hover over it), then right-click the email address.
Select ‘Add to Address Book’ .
Unfortunately you need to right-click the email address a second time as the first action only adds it to the default Address Book not the mailshots one. Select ‘Edit Contact’ then select your Mailshots address book.
You can always go through a few older emails and select a few to try it with. Once you’ve selected a few and added them to the Mailshots address book, you can manually run the filter to see if it works.
Well that’s my way. I also use message filters to automatically tag with different colours emails from work and a different colour for family and friends. It helps with organising things and spotting what might take priority.
Do you have a different way of managing your mail?
