Few people can say their inbox never got out of hand. Even if you prefer inbox zero, you may find yourself with a flooded inbox after a vacation or when working on a project for a few days.
Let’s take a look at some searches that identify emails that require less individual processing. Using these searches, you can quickly clear your inbox of emails that don’t require individual attention.
To use these six searches, you must first create two email folders. Create “Archive” in Outlook or “All Mail” in Gmail, then “Readings” in any email service. After that, here are six searches to use to find emails that don’t require individual attention.
-
Archive/All Mail all emails older than 7 days
A 2018 study of 1,200 consumers found that only 13% of customers and 1% of coworkers expect an email response within 2 days. A week-old email is unlikely to still be expecting a response. Change it to five or three days to remove more emails.
Identify these emails and move them to Archive/All Mail:
- Gmail: older than:7d
- Outlook: 1/27/19 (replace with the date 7 days ago)
-
Move all cc’d emails older than 3 days to Archive/All Mail
When you are cc’d on emails, you are less likely to need to respond. Find these emails and move them to Archive/All Mail.
- Gmail: cc:meolder than:3d
- Outlook: received: 1/27/19 (replace with the date 3 days ago)
-
Move emails with no signatures and older than 3 days to Archive/All Mail
Non-personal emails are less likely to require a response. The combination of the missing name criterion and the 3-day-old criterion reduces the risk of missing something important.
- Gmail: -matt older than:3d
- Outlook: NOT matt received: < =1/27/19 (replace with the date 3 days ago)
-
Transfer newsletter and mailing list emails to Readings
No need to read a newsletter. Set up rules/filters to send them to your Readings folder automatically.
Finding these emails isn’t easy, but you can get most of them using the following searches:
- Gmail: unsubscribe
- Outlook: unsubscribe
-
Search for common mailing list terms to move remaining emails to Readings
After the previous search, search Gmail and Outlook for “privacy policy” or “terms & conditions” or “preferences” or “view in browser” or “view as web page” to find any stragglers.
-
Delete calendar invitation response notifications
However, you don’t need to keep receiving emails notifying you that someone can attend a meeting when you can see everyone’s responses in the invite itself.
Isolate and delete these emails:
- Gmail: from: [email protected]
- Outlook: (replace with your time zone). Sadly, there is no easy way to isolate these emails in Outlook.
A few emails will be archived, but the benefits outweigh the risks. Plus, you can find emails in folders just as easily as in your inbox.