Failed love affair with Gmail
I fell in love with Gmail years ago for personal email as it seems to group similar messages in a way that nobody else had done. I have since noticed striking problems with that as I regularly loose messages and hardly anything gets deleted anymore. Back when I used Outlook daily, I noticed that a friend of mine his email automatically grouped by the sender and recipients. Somehow, I must have forgotten how good that could be and ditched outlook entirely in favor of web-based mobilized gmail. Unfortunately, Gmail seems to have failed me. I now have far more email than I can contend with, much less delete. I would like to get back into the practice of deleting huge batches of email from certain senders at once. I know I can do this somewhat at least, in gmail but the auto-grouping by sender and/or recipient stuff just isn't there. I like having a web-based system and my address is Gmail. I can't change that easily. Suggestions are greatly appreciate.
You might try using filters in gmail, or even labeling emails to make grouping them easier.
Settings > Mail Settings > create a filter
from: user@domain.tld
[Test Search] <-- press this button and you'll see immediately how this filter works with your existing mailbox.
Once you get a filter working, use it to find messages.
For mailing lists (from which I later unsubscribe), I find the sending email address in the headers. Type this into the normal search box, and it will bring up all the messages from that mailing list. Select all & delete. I show 50 messages per page, so it goes slow for busy lists. But you can increase this to 100/page, IIRC.
from: user@domain.tld
[Test Search] <-- press this button and you'll see immediately how this filter works with your existing mailbox.
Once you get a filter working, use it to find messages.
For mailing lists (from which I later unsubscribe), I find the sending email address in the headers. Type this into the normal search box, and it will bring up all the messages from that mailing list. Select all & delete. I show 50 messages per page, so it goes slow for busy lists. But you can increase this to 100/page, IIRC.
ASKER
Aleghart, Thank you.
I have oodles of filters set up in Gmail. Unfortunately, I can't set up an automatic filter that will show each sender in it's own group. In Outlook, this can be done but then it's no longer web-based. This is really troubling.
I have oodles of filters set up in Gmail. Unfortunately, I can't set up an automatic filter that will show each sender in it's own group. In Outlook, this can be done but then it's no longer web-based. This is really troubling.
Using filters and setting up a label can work for you. Since you can always bring up the label view.
Something else you can try as a work around, is to mouse over the sender, a menu will pop up, select Video and more --> select Recent Conversations.
This will at least get you to a list of emails from the sender.
Something else you can try as a work around, is to mouse over the sender, a menu will pop up, select Video and more --> select Recent Conversations.
This will at least get you to a list of emails from the sender.
ASKER
Yes but I get a daunting amt of email daily and need that sorting to happen automatically.
The lack of "sort by sender" in Gmail isn't accidental. Google's strengths are search & storage. If you've never learned the old ways of email (long downloads, limited storage size, etc.) then you'd not logically see the need to sort _all_ of your message database alphabetically by sender name.
There are a few reasons for performing this sorting:
Clearing out space by deleting traffic from an less-than-worthy sender. With 7GB free, and small prices for more storage, Google thinks that cleanup is a task of the past. I field more tech support calls for "lost" (deleted) email that problems with not enough storage.
Browsing by sender. It's not really searching if you want a very, very, very long list through which you scroll, pick, then read or delete. That's definitiively _not_ searching, and not using a strength of database and computing technologies. It's making a electronic version of a manila folder or Rolodex card holder.
Personally, I clean out my new messages at least 2-3 times per day. I throw out the junk right away. The rest can be searched by keywords or name when I need them later. If I'm looking for emails from John Smith at ABC company, all I have to do is search for John Smith ABC and I'll get all of them (especially if he uses an auto-generated email signature).
Sorting, browsing, and deleting are counter-intuitive to store and search. To paraphrase Ford, "You can have it any way you want, as long as it's search."
I've found that cleanup and deletion are a "feel-good" thing. I do it too. But it does delete material that I sometimes need. The insignificant amount of storage space saved was definitely not worth the cost of "lost" message traffic that was never really lost.
I can see both sides of the argument. Some people like the artificial cleanliness of filing and deleting. Some people love to leave everything in a heap and let technology do the filtering and sorting on demand. IMHO, letting technology sort the heap o' email is far more efficient. I can't imagine the amount of time spent/wasted by employees in creating hierarchical folder structures that can only perform one level of sorting.
Most messages (whether personal or business) rarely have only one single dimension. It's from "mom". But it was to: "brother", and I got CC'd. The topic was "weekend plans", but specifically mentioned a race, a nephew, some food and prized, and car-pooling arrangements.
If I have that sorted as "mom"...that's terribly inaccurate. Mom ain't running in the race. I can leave the message in the heap, then later search on the name of the race, or the name of any person in it. I might not even remember the original sender, because it's irrelevant in a message thread/conversation that could be 20 messages long.
That's just my 2-cents on the whole "sort by sender" issue. I've retrained most all the staff here to just sort by month or quarter for ease of moving message off the live database and into a long-term archive. Their search abilities are far faster than clicking through folders and trying to remember how they filed something away.
There are a few reasons for performing this sorting:
Clearing out space by deleting traffic from an less-than-worthy sender. With 7GB free, and small prices for more storage, Google thinks that cleanup is a task of the past. I field more tech support calls for "lost" (deleted) email that problems with not enough storage.
Browsing by sender. It's not really searching if you want a very, very, very long list through which you scroll, pick, then read or delete. That's definitiively _not_ searching, and not using a strength of database and computing technologies. It's making a electronic version of a manila folder or Rolodex card holder.
Personally, I clean out my new messages at least 2-3 times per day. I throw out the junk right away. The rest can be searched by keywords or name when I need them later. If I'm looking for emails from John Smith at ABC company, all I have to do is search for John Smith ABC and I'll get all of them (especially if he uses an auto-generated email signature).
Sorting, browsing, and deleting are counter-intuitive to store and search. To paraphrase Ford, "You can have it any way you want, as long as it's search."
I've found that cleanup and deletion are a "feel-good" thing. I do it too. But it does delete material that I sometimes need. The insignificant amount of storage space saved was definitely not worth the cost of "lost" message traffic that was never really lost.
I can see both sides of the argument. Some people like the artificial cleanliness of filing and deleting. Some people love to leave everything in a heap and let technology do the filtering and sorting on demand. IMHO, letting technology sort the heap o' email is far more efficient. I can't imagine the amount of time spent/wasted by employees in creating hierarchical folder structures that can only perform one level of sorting.
Most messages (whether personal or business) rarely have only one single dimension. It's from "mom". But it was to: "brother", and I got CC'd. The topic was "weekend plans", but specifically mentioned a race, a nephew, some food and prized, and car-pooling arrangements.
If I have that sorted as "mom"...that's terribly inaccurate. Mom ain't running in the race. I can leave the message in the heap, then later search on the name of the race, or the name of any person in it. I might not even remember the original sender, because it's irrelevant in a message thread/conversation that could be 20 messages long.
That's just my 2-cents on the whole "sort by sender" issue. I've retrained most all the staff here to just sort by month or quarter for ease of moving message off the live database and into a long-term archive. Their search abilities are far faster than clicking through folders and trying to remember how they filed something away.
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BTW: A Google compatible offline tool will allow you to continue to use Google for reading mail on the web, and sync your email to a tool that gives you the ability to "other" methods of handling email.
ASKER
I may give Zimba a try with imap and see how that works. I agree with both of your comments and Google's way of doing things IS wonderful. I just wish I had a "VIEW BASED ON SENDER OPTION" in Gmail. Thank you for putting my needs in clear terms like that. That's exactly it. Perhaps Zimba with imap will be able to give me that.
Actually, you can use Outlook with pop3 or imap to access your gmail account. No need for 3rd party tools.
I switched over to a web GUI several years ago, but my wife is "stuck" with Outlook and it works well for her.
You need special synching software only if you want to use Outlook to manage your contacts and/or calendar.
My primary contacts and calendar tool is the iPhone, that has built-in synching capabilities with gmail.
I switched over to a web GUI several years ago, but my wife is "stuck" with Outlook and it works well for her.
You need special synching software only if you want to use Outlook to manage your contacts and/or calendar.
My primary contacts and calendar tool is the iPhone, that has built-in synching capabilities with gmail.
ASKER
zimba!!