You've Got Mail

I don't know about you but I have tons of email accounts, six business and three personal. Now I know that I probably have more accounts than most of you out there but even if you have two or three accounts keeping up on them can be pretty hard.

So what can you do to cut down the time, effort, and frustration of trying to keep up with all of these accounts?

First you should get the accounts to come into your desktop email program. I have Outlook 2007 and Vista as my operating system (wooh is me...Vista is the bane my existence) so you are going to see a lot about Outlook in here but most of these links will address multiple programs and methods of accomplishing this same goal.

I am including links to other websites and blogs, and I know that this may look a bit complicated...perhaps even scary, but it's really not. There are too many Outlook versions and operating systems for me to do it any other way, trust me you will be fine, the links will link you directly into the method that best suits your individual computer setup.

I am not outlining business email accounts as those are easy to pull into Outlook, if you do not know how to do it talk to your company tech support or web administrator they can walk you through POP, IMAP, or Microsoft exchange servers. If your work email comes in as an IMAP or from a Microsoft exchange server it will automatically separate the files out, but POP accounts need to be manually separated so scroll down to the last link.

Now onto the freebie email accounts.....

Gmail is easy to get into Outlook:

1. Tools

2. Account Settings

3. Add Email

4. Name, email address, password, remember password

Vwala...it's that easy!

Hotmail/MSN email accounts couldn't be done previously on the free accounts, now there are a couple of ways to do it. My favorite and the easiest is downloading Outlook Connector 2007 (which is free) and it will do the work for you. You can also use Windows Live this is the program we talked about in last week's post A Blogger's BFF. Finally if you are still old school and have older versions of Outlook the Other Methods section is for you.

Getting Hotmail and MSN free accounts into Outlook:

Outlook Connector:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7aad7e6a-931e-438a-950c-5e9ea66322d4&displaylang=en

Other Methods:

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/11/02/set-up-and-add-hotmail-account-in-microsoft-outlook-2007/

Now Yahoo, to get Yahoo into Outlook there are a couple of ways to do it. If you have Vista expect problems-well if you have vista you already know that, and I cannot promise that if and when you do get it to work that it will continue to work. Outlook 2007 needs a special download which is the Ypop link below and it too is in testing/beta phase so check out their discussion group for updates and fixes.

Getting Yahoo free accounts into Outlook:

http://email.about.com/od/yahoomailtips/Yahoo_Mail_Tips_Tricks_and_Secrets.htm

Ypop download for Outlook 2007:

http://ypopsemail.com/download

For those Firefox users you can actually get to your email accounts through your web browser, check out this link below for more information.

http://mashable.com/2007/08/27/firefox-email/

Segregation is a Good Thing!!

Now that you have all of the email accounts coming into good old Outlook, you should separate them so they do not come in as a mass jumble to your in-box. The Outlook Connector will automatically create a separate file for hotmail, but for the remainder you will have to do it yourself. The link below will walk you through each version of Outlook and how you can accomplish email segregation. It took me some finagling with the first one, as a new task often does, but from there it is like clockwork!

Separating all those email accounts:

Separate mail coming from multiple POP3 accounts HowTo-Outlook

I highly recommend taking the time to do this, systematizing and organizing doesn't sound exciting, but it will save you time and money in the end. Who couldn't use more time and less headaches!!