I use Comcast’s web-based email and it works great for me, but it’s a hassle to have all my email messages live in the Xfinity email inbox. Is there a way to organize all my messages?
Props to you for wanting to learn how to manage your email and organize things better, rather than just be resigned to the chaos of digital non-organization. It’s surprising to me just how many people shamefacedly admit that they have 700, 1000 or even more unread messages in their inbox. How can you possibly keep track of things and know the important info from friends and family if they’re lost in such a jumble?
Having said that, however, it’s worth pointing out that Comcast hasn’t done much to bring its web-based email system into the 21st century, particularly in terms of capabilities and interface. It looks like a webmail system that was deployed 10 or more years ago, and is missing some vital features. Top missing feature is the ability to automatically identify, filter and move email messages directly into folders, a feature that services like Gmail have.
If you’re willing to select and move messages as you go, however, it’ll work just fine. So let’s have a look!
To start, log in to any Comcast site and click on the envelope icon on the top:
As you’re already used to, the main view of your email is split into two panes: On the left is a list of mailboxes and on the right is a display of messages in the particular box or folder you’ve selected. Notice in the below that there are also two toolbars of options, the grey bar has Email, Voice, Address Book, Calendar, Text Messaging, Preferences and Help.
Below it is what I call the action bar: New, Get Mail, Reply, Reply to All, Forward, Delete, Move, Spam, Print, View and Actions. The most important one on that list for our task is “Move“. But let’s check the overview first:
You can select and move messages at this point, but many people click and read a message before they file it to ensure that it’s on the topic, from the specific person or part of a mailing list. So let’s click on the message with the subject “We’d love your feedback“. Now the view changes to show you the message:
At this point, let’s click on the “Move” link to bring up a list of mailboxes / folders to which I can move this email:
Ignore everything there but the button on the lower left: NEW.
Let’s create a new folder! Click on “NEW”.
At the top I name the folder: “Surveys”. You can ignore the “Subscribe” link (though it’s a cool feature if you do want to research what an RSS/ATOM feed is). Pick a color for this folder too: I’ve chosen green, as you can see.
Now a single click on “OK” and the new email folder is created and the message is automatically moved out of inbox and into the folder!
You can also now check the box adjacent to multiple messages and move them en masse to the new folder with the “Move” link. Once done, your folder will show the number of unread messages, so don’t be confused if it’s different to the number you copied:
That’s all there is to it. Now that you can create folders, move around them with the folder / mailbox list on the left of the webmail interface screen. Easy!