To think everyone who uses email in their work should learn how to manage it effectively?

[FireworksAndSparklers]

I'm so tired of colleagues and managers never replying to emails until days (sometimes weeks) later, usually with the excuse that they have hundreds of unread emails backed up.

I just think there's no need for it. Find a strategy that works for you and do it. Don't just let your emails back up without dealing with them. It's rude and it's counter-productive for both your own efficiency and that of the people you work with.

I know my own strategy wouldn't work for everyone, but I would never just ignore an important part of my work because I haven't taken the time to figure out a system for managing it.

AIBU or is it ok to just let your emails build up and up and leave correspondents hanging for ever for responses?

Well aren't you just great OP. My previous job meant that a day off meant coming back to 100's of emails, most from the public, most who wanted a response very quickly. It was impossible to keep on top of them. If only I'd had you around to tell me I wasn't capable of doing the job 🙄

This is pretty much my approach too, for the same reasons. The quick wins are invariably not where my time is best allocated.

I also don't keep my emails open. I check them periodically and flag things for action because otherwise it would be a massive drain on my energy and concentration.

Not rtft but in my workplace, not replying to emails for ages has become a bit of a status thing.

It's kind of "I get so many emails because I'm busy and important that I didn't see yours sorry". If you reply to things straight away, people assume you aren't as busy or important as the people that don't.

You sound like an unbearably smug twat tbh

What really irks me is when I get ccd into an email chain with the world and his dog, that is totally irrelevant to me and everyone responds to look busy or important.

Some days I can get hundreds of emails and things do get buried.

We use teams a lot, but that comes with its own problems. Just send one message not every line of the message in a separate message ping ping ping ping ping! I turn my notifications off when I'm knee deep in something as it's just a massive distraction.

So you reply to messages immeduately but not to emails? Why?

Messages don't usually run to multiple paragraphs with reams of attachments.

Or maybe…they are managing their emails. And your emails make it into their “bloody irritating sleeve tugger” file.

You can click on ignore conversation for those threads IIRC (the emailed ones with too many people replying to all). No idea how to fix the teams problem!

4,000 emails in my work inbox (sorry)
But I learnt from you lot yesterday about setting rules to go directly into folders .... so I'm making progress with it :)... so many un deleted staff news! (Going back to Feb last year)

It isn't effective. Email stopped being an effective method of communication in a large organisation years ago. Most companies cover the important stuff in meetings. Internal emails are largely a waste of time.

...in your line of work potentially.
This is not universal at all though.
E-mails are crucial in my line of work. The asyncromatic nature of them makes them invaluable in many jobs where it isn't practical to get together in meetings.

"Another meeting that could / should have been an e-mail" is so common that it has made it as a message to be printed on mugs etc, not withstanding people working internationally at different times of day and night, and all those people who spend much of their working day doing their actual job and for whom e-mails are something you squeeze into time at the start or end of a day, or when you have 10mins between doing your actual job.

We use Slack for handling communication. We also have email, but other than for handling incidents with third-parties, I don't look at emails much. I don't think I've ever missed an important email.

In this situation, I would just email your original recipient's boss. Explain that you have tried x methods of communication, but have not received a response, and that the company is about to lose £x in revenue.

Then alert your own manager in either a separate email, or in your weekly report.

Most people I know filter anything cc'd to them into a separate mailbox to be read never eventually.

Phone??!

I agree. My inbox is an inbox, maximum 10 requiring action at any one time. A colleague shared their screen, they had 2,000 in there and then I realised why he never replied to anything!

You can stop all the pointless emails even reaching your inbox with a few rules - just send them straight to delete or an archive folder and you won't have to wade through them.

Can someone help advise on rules I can set up to get the pointless emails out of my inbox? I am reasonably senior with a bit of a Jack of all trades role and often have to approve that things can happen. As a result I find people (often whose names I don't even recognize) who know I will eventually need to approve what they are proposing add me to an email chain far too early while all the details are being thrashed out.

Someone mentioned an Ignore button - is this in Outlook and does this mean I'd never see the emails at the end of the conversation when it was ready for me to approve or reject?

I could send a response asking to be dropped from the chain until ready for me to review but I might have to do that twenty or more times a week which is still a task and I'm not sure how to phrase it without sounding rude. Although sometimes I think sounding slightly tetchy might not be a bad thing.

I am considering sending all mails where I am only cc'd to a folder I only check once a day or even 2-3 times a week to cut down on the inbox scrolling I need to do to find what I need. Does anyone have any better ideas?

This link is quite good: https://usingtechnologybetter.com/blog/how-to-get-cc-emails-out-of-your-inbox-in-outlook-for-windows/

Outlook rules are pretty flexible so you can move all emails where you are cc'ed to a folder except those from your CEO or those with particular words (ie your name, nuclear meltdown) in the subject line or body text etc.

Thanks @InWalksBarberalla. I am currently working in front of the tv as my manager is on holiday and I have a backlog of emails from trying to do two jobs. I have just set up the cc email rule as, if there was ever a week I needed to not see unimportant stuff, it's next week.

I will report back on whether I miss the nuclear meltdown or cause one. I only picked several people above me to be the exception to moving mails I am only cc'd on to a folder. Hopefully that will be enough to ensure I just see the important stuff.

You're probably right, there's an assumption that people just know how to do things and how to use software where most people probably only know about 5% of functionality. It's that "you don't know what you don't know" scenario. Most people are very inefficient and ineffective

Can someone help advise on rules I can set up to get the pointless emails out of my inbox? I am reasonably senior with a bit of a Jack of all trades role and often have to approve that things can happen. As a result I find people (often whose names I don't even recognize) who know I will eventually need to approve what they are proposing add me to an email chain far too early while all the details are being thrashed out.

I could send a response asking to be dropped from the chain until ready for me to review but I might have to do that twenty or more times a week which is still a task and I'm not sure how to phrase it without sounding rude. Although sometimes I think sounding slightly tetchy might not be a bad thing.

But surely this is something you need to sort as a process thing - whether you are senior enough to instigate this or whether you have to take it to a manager. It needs to be made clear to the people copying you in before you need to be involved that this is inappropriate rather than you finding a way to 'hide' the e-mails. You shouldn't be individually saying to 20 different people a week "don't do this", you need to take it back to to the process an the people need to stop doing it.

I could send a response asking to be dropped from the chain until ready for me to review but I might have to do that twenty or more times a week which is still a task and I'm not sure how to phrase it without sounding rude.

If you ever figure this out, please let me know. There's a canned reply feature in the Outlook "fat client" called Quick Parts that you can use to store replies that you have to send a lot, but annoyingly it's not available in the browser version.

Between logging off on Thursday night and logging on again on Tuesday morning I can have anywhere between 300 and 500 emails. I filter them to "from" so I can see ones from my line manager then ignore the rest 😐I've given up tbh.

This is the kind of thing that a ticket system or an Approvals workflow in Power Automate would be great for.

I can have a system, but I can’t control what people email me about and how often. If I get 500 emails in a day instead of 100, then in between the spam and the ‘reply to all-ers’ and the people who cc me on everything even though there’s no actions for me, on top of my actual day job and meetings and reports to write and things that are a priority for keeping our company afloat… then maybe I’m going to miss a few emails.

I guess I don't understand why you wouldn't use the IT tools available to filter all that guff out so it doesn't appear in your inbox and reduce the chances of you missing something actually important.