How to manage mail.

[davidjearly]

I have 9,987 emails in my iCloud inbox, dating back to the early days of .Mac. These are all emails I want to keep but I believe Mail will perform better with less in it.

How do I even begin to sort all of this?

[scarred]

I signed up for Alto (from aol), which has this new concept called 'stacks'. Jury is still out if I'll use it long term, but I kind of like it so far.

Not sure it will handle 10k emails, but I think that is their aim... add sanity to your inbox.

[davidjearly]

Thanks for the reply. I signed up to Alto a while ago as well, but never went much further.

I was just looking for suggestions as to what people do with such a big inbox.

I've never used Folders or Archives and just wanted to get an idea of some solutions others use!

Cheers.

[spykthomas]

I use Mac Mail at work.

When my mailbox starts filling up I copy all the emails from the previous quater into a new mailbox saved on my Mac. That way I can still search through them if I need to but it frees space in the mailbox online.

[EmpyreanUK]

I 'Archive' e-mails once I consider whatever they pertain to to be dealt with. I also have a folder called 'Receipts' which is where I put any e-mail which is an automated confirmation, like order confirmations, receipts and despatch notifications. My inbox therefore has very little in it -- and if it's empty then I'm happy because it means I have no outstanding ******** to deal with -- yet I don't spend much time organising things into various folders, sub-folders and so on. Once I've replied or dealt with the matter, I click 'Archive' and it's filed away for me.