E-mail filters.

• Author: Maida, Joseph C.

E-mail has become an important part of the lives of tax professionals. Today, individuals and businesses use it to communicate all types of information that had previously been conveyed by paper mail, fax and the telephone.

Unlike paper mail, e-mail offers the advantage of speed; messages can cross the country in seconds and appear directly on a recipient's desktop. Unlike a telephone, e-mail does not require the recipient to be available. Unlike voice mail, e-mail can be edited, avoiding a quick extemporaneous speech.

Electronic files (such as spreadsheets, word processing documents, graphics, sounds and animation) can also be attached to e-mail messages. Mail can be encrypted to help ensure that only the intended addressee will be able to read a document. With the press of a button, many individuals can receive messages and files at the same time. Professional organizations use this feature to create discussion lists.

Even with these advantages, e-mail has one major disadvantage--information overload. This has led many users to view e-mail as a curse rather than an advantage. The problem, however, can be solved. Just as computers can automate many mundane tasks, they can also automate e-mail organization: The first step in making e-mail work is learning to use an e-mail program's filtering options. These tools can automatically categorize mail as it comes in, flagging important mail for immediate attention, putting less pressing mail off to the side and even filing or deleting junk mail with message subjects such as "Make Money Fast!"

This article addresses mail-filtering options and provides specific examples for using them for a few popular e-mail programs. All programs, however, have similar filtering features and the concepts described here can still apply.

Filtering Mail

Filtering systems for e-mail programs work by scanning messages or parts of a message for certain predetermined patterns. For instance, if a major client has an e-mail address "joe@bigclient.com" the program can be set to locate all incoming messages with that address and file them in a high priority folder.

All e-mail programs can define messages that contain certain words or phrases in specific locations. Others can define filters that give special treatment to messages that do not contain certain words.

Most systems can determine the order in which various filters are applied. This feature is important, because it defines specific filters that catch messages that...