Clear Your Inbox By Sorting Yahoo! Mail Into Folders

Is your inbox full of new messages every day? It takes time and effort to deal with the incoming mail and you could be doing something more interesting. Here’s how to automatically deal with messages.

The best way to keep your inbox clear is to create filters that automatically sort incoming messages into folders according to the sender or the subject.

A filter is like a rule. For example, ‘if an email is from Bob, then put it in a folder called Bob’s Emails’. Yahoo! Mail will do this automatically once it is set up.

Any number of filters and folders can be created and you could have one folder for personal emails and another for work emails. You could have a folder for newsletters you subscribe to or a folder into which all your messages from family are placed. There are numerous ways in which to organize email messages.

In this guide we will show how to create a folder for storing emails and then show how to create a filter that automatically sorts incoming messages.

1. Create a folder

In the left hand column of the Yahoo! Mail page is a list of Smart views. Just below these is Folders. Go to the icon to the right, which looks like a tiny folder, and click it.

2. Choose the name

A box opens to allow you to enter a name for the folder. Use a descriptive one that reflects the type of messages you will store in it. In our case we will be storing news updates, but you can call yours anything you like.

3.  Select an email

There are a couple of ways to create filters and you could use the gear button in the top right corner and go to settings, but there is a simpler way. Select an email in the inbox that is typical of the type you want to automatically filter.

Click the More link just above the inbox listing and select Filter Emails Like This.

4.  Define the filter

The Add Filter window appears and several of the boxes are automatically filled. You can accept the suggestions or delete them and enter your own.

At the top, enter a name for the filter. We will be filtering news updates, so we called ours News. Yours will be different of course.

By entering an email address into the From box you could filter messages from a certain sender such as a person or company.

However, we will filter messages that contain certain words in the subject. On the right of Subject, enter ‘News update’.

In the bottom right corner is a list of folders the message can be moved to. Select the one you just created. Ours is called News. Click Save to finish.

That’s it. Filters are not applied to old emails already in your inbox, but when a new one arrives, the filter is applied and if the rule matches, such as ‘News update’ in the subject, then it is moved from the inbox to the appropriate folder.

To view the messages, select the folder in the left panel, where we created it at the start.

Filters keep your inbox clear and they can just as easily move important messages to a folder or send junk messages to Trash. Create some more filters.

5.  View your filters

To see what filters have been created, click the gear button in the top right corner of the Yahoo! Mail page and click Settings. Click Filters on the left.

Filters can be added, edited or removed using the buttons at the top. Select a filter and the rule is shown below.

Now there is no excuse for having a cluttered email inbox. Keep it clean with filters.

~ Roland