Writing.Com 101

"Folders" Tab

Just like folders in your portfolio, folders in your email can be a great way to organize all the messages you receive, making them easier to find if you need to reference them later. The folder tab will help you create and organize those folders.

Important Note: If you're on any other tab in your email, there will be a plus sign (+) on the Folder tab. By clicking on the +, you can expand your folders list, without actually clicking and going into the Folder tab itself. This is a very handy tool, as it's the quickest way to access a folder without having to leave the page you are on.

At the very top of this page, you'll have a list of links to email folders that you've created or have been created for you by the Writing.Com system. Below that, you can click on Go to Folder Summary, which will take you to a new page that contains a table with each Folder Name, the number of Messages in each folder, the number of Unread messages in each folder, and the total Size of the folder. This information can give you a quick snapshot of your Inbox, and let you know where a good portion of your storage is being used, which is particularly useful if you're running out of space on your email account and need to delete things to make room.

Beneath the folders list and Folder Summary links, you have the following fields:

Create an Email Folder: Generates a new email folder. Note that there can be no spaces in an email folder (only dashes [-] and underscores [_]). Therefore, if you want a folder called My Items, "My Items" is not a valid folder name. It would either have to be "My-Items" or "My_Items" in order to be created.

Delete an Email Folder: Allows you to select the desired folder from the drop-down box and delete it (and all of its contents) from your email account.

Rename an Email Folder: Allows you to select the desired folder from the drop-down box and rename it to something else.

Subscribe/Unsubscribe to Folders
Under the folder creation, deletion, and renaming tools, you have the ability to Subscribe / Unsubscribe to Email Folders. Subscribing to an email folder is what makes it appear in your Folders list, either at the top of the Folders tab, when you expand the + sign, or when you want to Move or Copy email to a folder (for more information on moving and copying email messages in your inbox, see: ""Inbox" Tab" ). By default, you are Subscribed to every folder you create (with the most recent at the top/front of the list), and you must manually Unsubscribe to a folder.

Reorganize Email Folders
If you want to reorganize your subscribed folders into a particular order, you must Unsubscribe to all the folders first, then Subscribe to them again, in the order you'd like them to appear, with the top/front folder being the last one you add. For example, let's say you have the following standard and already created folders: Inbox, Spam, Trash, and SentMail. If you add a new folder (we'll call it Blog and pretend it's to save all communications related to your blog). The system will automatically create the "Blog" folder in front of, or on top of the Inbox, Spam, Trash, and SentMail folders, wherever a list of them pops up. But if you don't use your Blog folder that often, and want it at the bottom or end of your list of folders, you would need to Unsubscribe to all of your folders, then Subscribe to them again, one at a time, in order, starting with Blog first, and subscribing to the folder you want at the top, last.

When you only have a few folders, organization isn't a big deal, but depending on how organized you want your inbox to be, and how active you are on Writing.Com, you may end up having email folders for a dozen different groups, contest entries, saved newsletters, donations, etc. and want to organize those folders so that the most-used ones are on the top, regardless of when they were created. In that situation, the Subscribe and Unsubscribe features can help you organize your email folders into whatever order works best for your needs.1

Recommended Reading

1. "Inbox" Tab
2. Email

Footnotes
1  Written by Jeff