I’ve been using KMail for several years, but I get in ruts and don’t notice new features until I trip over them by accident. One such feature is Templates, which has become one of my biggest time-savers.
I have a certain number of messages that I send out every week that are nearly identical- only the dates and the attachments change. Believe it or not, I used to slog through the Sent folder to find an old one, then go to Message -> Send Again, modify it, and send it. Yeah, how 20th century is that! Using Templates is the same, except the template messages sit in a special easy-to-find directory. Any email can become a template, just put it in the Templates folder.
I love KMail’s filter dialog- it’s easy to create complex filters from a graphical menu. I have dozens of the usual kinds of filters that route messages into certain folders according to the sender, subject, or mailing list, and do some basic spam-catching.
My favorite filters are the ones applied to outgoing messages. Instead of leaving everything in the Sent folder, I have them routed into other folders. For example, there is a special folder for each of my awesome LinuxPlanet authors. I route all my sent-messages to each author into their folders. This is a big time-saver for me, because I have both sides of our conversations all in one place.
I’ve been using KMail for so long I’m not current on what goodies other email clients have, so if yours has cool time-saving shortcuts, you’re welcome to email me at cschroder@jupitermedia.com, and I’ll share them with the world. Or at least the part of the world that reads this blog.