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Train Your Junk Mail Filter
Mail's Junk Mail filter gets smarter and more accurate as you use it—but only if you tell it
the truth! That means always correcting it when it makes a mistake. If Mail fails to move a
spam message to your Junk mailbox, select it and click the Junk button on the toolbar. In
addition, scan your Junk mailbox every few days or so to make sure Mail hasn't mistakenly
marked a good message as spam. If you find a legitimate message, select it, click the Not Junk
button on the toolbar, and drag the message back to your Inbox.
Bring In the Big Guns
If, despite following these instructions—using server-based filtering, properly configuring
Mail's junk mail settings, and diligently training Mail's Junk Mail filter for weeks—you get
too much spam in your Inbox, you need a third-party anti-spam utility to beef up Mail's
defenses. There are several good choices, but my favorite is Michael Tsai's SpamSieve . It's
freakishly accurate and, for heavy email users, money well spent.
Develop an Email Strategy
All right, suppose you've consolidated your accounts, optimized your mailboxes, set up some
rules, and brought spam under control—but you still get too much email in your Inbox. What
to do?
I've read (and written) about many different approaches to dealing with email overload. I
find I'm happiest and most efficient when I keep my Inbox empty, or nearly so. It's not as
hard as it may sound, but it requires adopting new habits when dealing with incoming mail.
Of course, part of the solution involves creating additional mailboxes and filing messages
there, but if you want a lasting solution, you need to do more than just move the problem
from one place to another!
I described one way to do this in my (award-winning!) Macworld article Empty Your Inbox ,
and you should feel free to use that—or adapt it to your needs—if you like it. But the truth is,
my own system is even simpler, and it comes down to four main things:
• Stopping the flow of non-essential incoming email (such as mailing lists)
• Using rules to automatically move less-crucial messages out of my Inbox
• Reading and processing incoming messages (that is, answering them, filing
them, or doing whatever else is required to get them out of my Inbox) as soon as
possible after they arrive
Not using my Inbox as a to do list
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