People have a lot of different ways of managing email. Some go to one or more websites to retrieve their email while others use a dedicated application like Mail. Some seek to achieve Inbox Zero by funneling their messages into various folders while others lack the focus to look at more than one folder in sequence.

Additionally, some folks use an older email convention called POP while most these days utilize the more modern standard called IMAP. This edition of Mac Mondays seeks to at least begin a conversation on the topic of email management.

Post Office vs. Internet

A little history. Post Office Protocol (POP) offers a way to retrieve email similar to that of mail from a post office. Suppose the post office has your mail. You go to the post office to pick up your mail. When you leave the post office, it no longer has your mail. Further, if you delete a letter or even reply, the post office does not keep a copy.

The more modern approach to email is Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) which offers multiple devices the opportunity to remain connected to a server, access and share messages at will, and keep everything in sync.

Mixing Protocols

Some folks still use POP on one device and IMAP on others. One downside of this approach is that they sometimes end up with different collections of email on each device. This can happen if they delete messages on an IMAP device before the POP device was able to retrieve them.

Additionally, IMAP syncs all mailboxes present on the server with the local client while POP just reads the inbox and prefers to delete messages from the server after downloading them.

Unless managed acutely, mixing protocols can result in a stressful email experience. However, some folks still prefer POP because their email provider limits them to a small quota of server space.

Apple Mail

First, as you may have discussed with me at length, I’m a big proponent of Mail, Apple’s email application that comes with every Mac. While Gmail and other providers have some cool features for filtering email or plugging in third-party tools, most webmail platforms are limited by being based in a web browser and subservient to a limited set of controls.

I strongly encourage using standalone applications like Mail because they offer good user interfaces, have multitudes of keyboard shortcuts and other efficiencies, and make it easy to do the most common email actions: compose, reply, reply all, forward, send, delete, and check for mail.

Best Practices

Do you prefer to triage messages, as Winston Noronha illustrates above? Do you sort messages into various folders either before you read them or for archiving purposes after? Do you rely on search functions for locating messages you sent or received?

There are a lot of approaches to email management and I can’t say which one or more are best for you. However, I’m happy to share with you the several methods I’m familiar with and help you choose a set that work smoothly for your needs.