You may recall that my last Tip of the Month, "Remembering the Past," related my brother Greig´s shocking diagnosis of Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML). Since then he´s endured several chemo treatments and a bone marrow transplant in his desire to live. I admire his courage and determination and want to match that with my sustained hope for his recovery.

Since I´m only a five-hour drive away, I´ve made many trips to South Carolina to assist him with responsibilities at home and also to visit him in the hospital. Though grateful for the extended time with him and the chance to help, my own responsibilities at home and at work stare me in the face the moment I swing back into town!

Always the most immediate need is to work on my e-mail. Seeking easy ways to handle the most important messages first and reduce the size of my inbox, I developed a quick checklist from an earlier Tip of the Month. Following is my checklist, along with links to a previous tip and article for your convenience.

Do you have shortcuts and systems that save you time and hassle on your e-mail or other tasks? E-mail me at Tips@gailporter.us. I may share them with other viewers...with credit to you, of course!

You share this problem with me, don´t you? We all receive unwanted and unsolicited messages every day. I like to quickly scroll through my incoming messages and delete those kinds of messages first. Psychologically the remaining list seems less daunting!

Especially when I have a lot of messages to check, I sort my messages alphabetically. I do this by double-clicking on the "From" column or field, which automatically alphabetizes the entire list of messages by the name of the sender.

Quite often a person will communicate with you on a similar topic, so this trick groups all of that person´s messages together and enables you to deal with them at one time. You can easily trace the thread of messages and often will be able to respond to the latest message and delete the earlier messages.

By working with an alphabetical list, you can easily spot the messages that you might have responded to earlier but forgotten to delete in your inbox.

Perhaps you desire to communicate first with certain people. Sorting by sender allows you to review all e-mails from that person without having to scroll through the other new messages.

If you are looking for a particular incoming message but you are unsure of the date or the name of the sender, try sorting the "Subject" line. Double-click on the "Subject" column and all messages will be alphabetized according to the first word in the subject line. This is a great trick if you know there have been a string of messages about a project or a person and you have an idea of some of the words the subject line might include.

Sorting by subject also allows you to review all the responses you´ve received so far related to a project or assignment and determine what action you may still need to take.

To reduce the size of your inbox, you will want to review the size of individual messages. Double-click on the "Size" column to group the largest messages together for review and possible deletion.

Begin with the largest files since these are often the ones that include an attachment that is taking up space. If you want to save the attachment, right click on it and choose "save as." Locate the place on your hard drive or another specified directory where you want to save it and rename your document as needed. Remember to delete the attachment from your e-mail message.

If you want to simply remove the attachment, right-click on the attachment in the body of the message and choose "remove." The content of the original e-mail will be preserved. If the subject line does not mention the attachment, you may want to add the name of the attachment to your subject line before closing that message for future reference. You can do that by clicking on the subject line and rewording it as desired. When you exit your message, you will be asked if you want to save the changes. By indicating "yes," your adjusted subject line will then appear in your e-mail listing.

If you have an attachment icon at the top of your e-mail listing, this also provides an easy way to identify large messages. Click on the icon and all messages with attachments will be grouped together in chronological order. Delete or save the attachments.

You may want to take a few moments to identify attachments in your "sent" messages as well. Since sent messages are out of sight, it´s easy to forget about attachments that are taking up space. Usually you already have the attachment saved elsewhere, so remove it from your message. Remember to add the name of the attachment to your subject line if needed.