In a recent article, I discussed the emerging Sieve e-mail filtering language, and how it could help IT professionals manage their overflowing e-mail inboxes. In that article, I pointed out that it’s already possible to do filtering both at the client and server levels, using the technology provided by your e-mail software.

The possibilities promised by Sieve have got me thinking about how I set up the filtering on my laptop. (I’m running Outlook 2000 on top of Windows NT 4.0 on my HP laptop). As you know, client filtering is a real pain to set up, and if you’re like me, it never works quite as well as you’d hoped. Since I recently changed laptops, I’ve got an opportunity to set up a new folder structure.

Here you can see how I’m setting up the folders on my Outlook client. I’ve also included a brief explanation of each folder.

Setting up e-mail folders is a never-ending process, but here’s my best take right now.

I’d like to know how you set up your e-mail folders. Post a comment to this article, and tell us how your folders are set up. I’d also be curious as to what you think about client-side filtering in general and any problems you’ve had to overcome setting up filtering on your e-mail client.