Procrastination and Gmail

If you are like me, you may be procrastinating a bit on updating your email contacts following the switch to Office 365. Remember, we are retiring the @scls.lib.wi.us email in January and we need to notify our contacts of our new email.

I am a gmail user, so I thought I would share what I am doing to identify emails coming to my @scls.lib.wi.us email address. 

• I created a Label called “Old email”
• I then created a filter that will add the “Old email” label to any email that is sent directly to my old @scls.lib.wi.us email address.  (See directions below).
• The emails still go to my In box and are not archived right away. I was worried that if I archived them, I would miss important emails.

(The image above is from http://www.online-stopwatch.com/christmas/elf-race/)

Here is a screen shot of my “In box” this morning.

Here is what I do:

• Spam. Much of what is currently going to my old email are spam emails (Ringing In Ears, Leading Edge Alzheimer’s). I can just delete those.
• Vendors. There are emails from vendors (ProQuest, FireEye, Spiceworks). Do I want to stay on their list? I can’t decide yet, so I archive these.
• People. Most of the people I deal with on a regular basis are already using my new email address, but if someone isn’t, I reply directly and let them know of my new address.
• Misc. Others I am not sure about. I get the Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 email from way back in the old days when I used to update the LINKcat Best Sellers list. I don’t need this anymore, but do I want it? Is it worth re-subscribing? I can’t decide yet, so I archive it.
• Email lists.  The one thing this filter does not seem to catch is my subscriptions to email lists. I need to apply the Old email label to these and then I archive them so that I can follow up on them later. I have created a spreadsheet to track which ones I have updated.

Remember to Resolve The Archived Emails

Once you have archived your emails to fix, you can’t just forget about them! Here is a snapshot of my Old Emails folder.

 

I have some work to do. Hmmm. It looks like I have not updated my TechBits subscription. Uh oh.

Creating a Filter

• Go to Settings/Filters/Create a new filter
• On the first screen, put your old email address in the To box.

  

• Click <Create filter with this search>
• On the next screen, check the Apply label box and select your “Old email” filter.
• Click <Create filter>