Unclutter Gmail from Mailing List Email with Mailbucket
December 6, 2007 – 11:27 pmMailing list is good because it help people discuss problems or solutions on a specific topic. The only thing that I hate about it is that most of them comes in bulk and will start to fill your Gmail mailbox very fast.
To solve this problem, I use Mailbucket, an email-to-RSS gateway that will help forward pesky mailing list email to your favorite RSS reader, making them more manageable and readable there.
Step 1 - Forward Email from Gmail to Mailbucket via Filters
In this example, I will use a combination of:
- Gmail - my mailbox, full of mailing list email (for example)
- Mailbucket - as the email-to-RSS gateway
- Google Reader - my RSS reader of choice
1- Login and access your Gmail mailbox. You can see here that I’ve got humongous number of Ubuntu Linux mailing list email in my mailbox.
2- Open any mailing list email document. Click “Show details“. Then, click “Filter messages from this mailing list“.
3- Make sure the “Has the words” field are filled automatically with your mailing list ID. Click “Next Step“.
4- Select “Forward it to” and “Delete it“. This will forward your mailing list email to Mailbucket for processing AND will delete it from your mailbox to reduce clutter.
IMPORTANT: For the Mailbucket’s email address to forward to, you must select a UNIQUE name for your soon to be created Mailbucket RSS feed, for example, mine is tmmb@mailbucket.org. It must end with @mailbucket.org.
WARNING! Don’t select “Also apply filter to..” , or else you will LOSE all your existing mailing list email. This filter will only forward new mailing list email only, existing emails will be left untouched.
Click “Create Filter“. Take note of your Mailbucket RSS feed name, mine is tmmb.
5- Review your filter to make sure it was successfully created.
Step 2 - Subscribe to your Mailbucket Mailing List RSS Feed
6- Open your Mozilla Firefox. At the address bar, type http://www.mailbucket.org/<your-mailbucket-RSS-name>. For example mine is http://www.mailbucket.org/tmmb (derived from tmmb@mailbucket.org)
7- The Google Reader subscription page will then load. Select “Add to Google Reader“. You may required to sign in to your Google account in order to add it.
8- Your Maibucket mailing list feed have been successfully subscribed in Google Reader, leaving your Gmail mailbox clean of mailing list emails.
End Note
This is yet another option to clean up / unclutter your mailbox from mailing list email. I use this method because I find it easier to read all those mails via Google Reader or any other RSS reader, rather than let it filling up my Gmail’s mailbox.
If you still don’t understand the role of Mailbucket above, just imagine it as a bridge between your mailbox and your RSS feed reader. I hope this post will be useful for you, or at least will appeal to the fans of mailing list.
Tags: gmail, google reader, mailbucket, unclutter, rss, gtd
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