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Modern mail software lets you sort your mail folders by any category by a single click on the category header.
   technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

Making e-mail easier: Sort it with a single click


Feb. 13, 2000

By Al Fasoldt
Copyright ©2000, Al Fasoldt
Copyright ©2000, The Syracuse Newspapers

   E-mail isn't easy. It's hard. Reading messages isn't difficult, and replying to them doesn't take much effort. But doing everything else related to electronic mail can be mystifying.
   Don't believe me? Take this quick test based on the way modern mail programs work. (AOL users can skip this, because AOL mail is nonstandard and not modern, and Mac users should keep in mind that I'm referring to Windows and Linux software. Mac versions might work differently.)
   Ready? You're reading mail. You get a note from someone identified as "wsmith." The note refers to an earlier note this person sent. How can you locate that previous note with a single click?
   Another test questions: You have your mail program open in front of you. You're worried that you might have missed some important mail. How can you look at a list of the latest letters with a single click?
   A final one: You're in charge of a local club. Members send you information by e-mail. You've told them to put "club notes" as the first two words of the subject of any e-mail letters they send to you. How can you see a list of all the club letters with a single click?
   The secret for all the answers is related to "single click." Modern mail software lets you sort your mail folders by date or subject or any other category by a single click on the category header. Don't fret if this is confusing. I'll explain this step by step. My description is accurate for Microsoft Outlook Express and for Netscape Messenger and might apply to other programs, too.
   When you run your mail software, you should see three separate views (or Window panes). Sometimes you can customize the way the program looks, and your mail program might look different if someone else in your family has already changed the program. But basically modern mail software gives you three panes.
   They are, usually, a left vertical pane, a right horizontal pane on top and a right horizontal pane on the bottom.
   The left vertical pane shows your mail folders. You can add folders of your own to that pane to help you organize your mail. (You'll probably be able to nest folders inside other folders, too. Try it out.)
   The top pane shows you a list of mail. You'll normally see a single line for each letter. In that line you'll see who sent the letter, what the subject is, when it was sent, and so on. The bottom pane, which can sometimes be turned on and off, shows a preview of any letter. You just click on the single-line entry for a letter to have it show up in this preview window. (In some cases you can also get mail to show up in this window just by selecting an entry with your cursor arrow key.)
   In other words, in modern mail programs you never have to open a letter to read it. You can view it in the preview window and save yourself all the trouble of opening the letter. Back up and read that again if you're not sure what I just said, because newcomers often have no idea that they can read mail without opening it. Instead of opening mail, you can read it in the preview pane at the bottom of the mail window.
   I'll explain this more emphatically. You don't need to open the mail for ANY reason. You don't need to open it to reply to it, you don't need to open it to view Web pages that are sent by mail and you don't need to open it to use the hyperlinks that are embedded in messages. Opening each letter just slows you down and serves no purpose.
   Back to our test. Modern mail software for Windows (and, usually, for the Mac and for Linux) shows a single-line entry for each letter in a mail folder in the horizontal pane at the top right of your mail window. That entry tells you who sent the letter, what the subject is, when it came in and so on.
   At the top of that pane you'll usually see category headers. In the Netscape Messenger mail window on my screen, these say "Subject," "Sender," "Date," "Status," "Size" and a few other things. Outlook Express, the mail software most of you use if you have Windows, has similar headers.
   These headers are not just labels. They are buttons. Click one of them once and the mail list is resorted by that category. Click the same button a second time and the mail list is resorted backwards.
   It's easier to understand if you do it yourself. Click the header button named "Sender" (or "From" or whatever it's called in your software) and the mail will be instantly sorted by the sender's name. Click "Subject" and the mail will be sorted by subject. Click "Date" and ... you get the point. Don't forget the quick-reverse trick, too. Click the same button a second time and you'll quickly turn the sorting order upside down.
   Why do this? One of our test questions asked how you could see all the latest mail with a single click. If your mail were already sorted by date but had the earliest letters on top -- a natural order to some folks -- a single click on that header button would turn the list around so that the latest letters are on top. (This is how I set up my mail list.)
   How about the message from "wsmith"? Click the "Sender" (or "From") header button to sort by that category, then click again to reverse the sorting so that "wsmith" will be at or near the top. Easy, right?
   Likewise, to see all the messages that have "club notes" as the first two words, you'd sort by "Subject" in the forward direction.
   I hope this has helped. A final tip: Some mail programs let you change the order of these header buttons. You can sometimes just click and drag them around. If you're not in an office, "Status" probably means nothing, so you might want to make that the last item. (Messages can be sent with high priority, and that's one of the things "Status" reports.)