# How do you handle all your emails?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-handle-all-your-emails/700460>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [October 5, 2014, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-handle-all-your-emails/700460 "2014-10-05T15:34:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Lakai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9de0a6/32.png) [@Lakai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lakai)\
**Post date:** [October 5, 2014, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-handle-all-your-emails/700460/1 "2014-10-05T15:34:16Z")

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I’m curious to hear about other people’s systems.

Here is my system for my work emails:

1. I have access to my email address and an email address for the entire law firm. I have a folder for all emails addressed to me, and other folders for all my clients. Emails addressed to me are automatically sorted in their separate folder using Outlook rules.

2. When I look through my inbox, every email I have to respond to I move to the folder that receives emails addressed to me. The rest get sorted by client name.

3. I respond to all the emails that I can respond to without doing any additional work.

4. I make a list of all the remaining emails and prioritize.

At least this is the ideal scenario. What usually ends up happening is that I start working on step two and a crisis develops. The crisis takes up a few hours, emails pile up, I have something scheduled outside the office, and the day ends with half the emails getting no response. Then the next day I have to sort the emails asking for updates on previous emails, and also phone calls from people who want responses.

I also use Outlook signatures for frequent emails that I send out.

What does everyone else do?