How to Keep your AOL Emails Organized and your AOL Inbox Clean in 2022

Updated on Jan 26th, 2023

Staying organized with your AOL mails can be challenging, especially in the digital age where most of our communication takes place online. It’s easy to let emails pile up and end up with a cluttered inbox filled with unwanted newsletters and spam. However, neglecting your inbox can lead to wasting time and energy trying to find important messages. Here are some tips to help you keep your AOL inbox organized:

There are a few simple steps to get your AOL Inbox organized and keep it that way, and we’re going to go through them one at a time so you can get back on top of your email management.

How to Clean an AOL mail Inbox

Cleaning up your AOL inbox can seem daunting, but it is necessary to keep your email organized and manageable. Here’s a guide on how to clear out clutter and maintain a clean inbox:

Sort and Delete your AOL email

To get the process started, you’re going to have to put in some leg work and there is no way to avoid it. That means manually deleting messages that you’ve let build up – don’t worry, it doesn’t take as long as you might think and after this one time, you can automate everything!

To delete individual emails in AOL, you need to:

Go to the folder containing the emails (unless you have set up multiple folders this will simply be “Inbox”)
Check the box next to each email you want to delete
Click the delete icon.

To give some structure to your cleaning, try sorting your AOL inbox by date. There is a good chance that you’ve still got emails hanging about from years ago – what is the chance they’re still relevant in 2023?

Go to the folder containing the emails (unless you have set up multiple folders this will simply be “Inbox”)
Press and hold the “Ctrl” key while selecting the messages you wish to delete OR press and hold the “Shift” key, click the first email you want to delete, then the last (on that page) OR press "Ctrl” and “A" to select all of your email messages
Click the delete icon.

Create Folders and Organize your AOL Mail

A great way to keep your AOL inbox clean and organized is to create folders for different types of emails. For example, you can create folders for work-related emails, personal emails from family and friends, and any other types of messages you regularly receive. This will help you separate important emails from less important ones and make it easier to find specific messages when you need them. Once you’ve created your folders, you can easily move emails from specific senders or subjects into the relevant folder. By keeping your inbox organized in this way, you’ll be able to quickly and easily find the emails you need, while keeping your inbox clutter-free.

Additionally, you can also set up filters or rules in your AOL mail account. These filters allow you to automatically sort incoming emails into specific folders based on certain criteria, such as the sender, subject, or keywords in the message. This can save you a lot of time and effort in manually sorting through your emails and moving them into the appropriate folders.

Another tip is to use labels or tags to categorize your emails, this will make it easy to find specific emails when you need them, and also to know what action you need to take with them.

It’s also important to review your folders regularly, to delete or archive emails that you no longer need. This will help keep your inbox clean and organized, and prevent your folders from becoming cluttered.

Download Things That Matter

This is mainly a step for attachments, which can be downloaded to free up space in your AOL inbox. Downloading attachments also makes them available if anything were ever to happen to your email account. However, it’s not only attachments that can be taken offline – emails can be downloaded as well.

AOL actually has its own offline feature called the Personal Filing Cabinet (PFC), which allows you to download, store, organize and read emails offline. To download multiple AOL emails:

Go to the folder containing the emails (unless you have set up multiple folders this will simply be “Inbox”)
Press and hold the “Ctrl” key while selecting the messages you wish to download OR press and hold the “Shift” key, click the first email you want to download, then the last (on that page) OR press "Ctrl” and “A" to select all of your email messages.
Press the Save arrow, select "On My PC" and the location to download the email.

Alternatively, you can download individual messages by:

Open the email you wish to download.
Select the "File”, click "Save" or "Save As", select a location to save the file, enter a name, and click "Save."

Now, it’s time to look at how to keep it clean!

How to Keep Your AOL Email Inbox Organized in 2023 and beyond

Maintaining a clean and organized AOL inbox requires ongoing effort and the use of effective tools. One such tool is an email productivity software, such as Spike. With Spike, you can centralize all your email accounts into one place, making it easy to manage and organize your emails.

Spike also offers a variety of powerful tools to enhance your email management capabilities, such as video meetings, voice messages, and a unified calendar. By utilizing these tools, you can streamline your email management process, save time and energy, and make your inbox less intimidating.

Use a single platform that provides a unified communication tool to become more efficient.

Get Spike Free

Unsubscribe from Anything You No Longer Need

If you’ve been surfing the web for more than a day, chances are you’ve signed up for one or two mailing lists that you either no longer need or never really wanted to be on in the first place. Unsubscribing from these is a great way to ensure that your inbox isn’t filled with junk again.

However, there will also likely be plenty of emails that aren’t really urgent, but aren’t quite junk – this is where filtering your AOL mails helps. You can do this manually with folders, as mentioned above, but realistically the task should be automated. Spike offers Priority Inbox for exactly this.

Priority Inbox delivers your most important messages to your inbox and sends everything else – those mailing lists and e-receipts – to the “Other” inbox. This keeps your inbox clean so you can focus on the important emails and deal with the rest at your leisure.

Archive Emails on the Go

Archiving emails is a vital part of keeping an organized inbox while not losing important emails to the void. The way archiving works is essentially by taking emails from your inbox and storing them in a separate, secure, yet easily-accessible location. To make sure you don’t get overwhelmed, try to archive emails as soon as you no longer need them. This will stop them from piling up and cluttering your inbox.

To archive emails with Spike, you:

Right-click on the email or select multiple messages within your inbox
Click Archive

It’s as simple as that! More importantly, Spike lets you archive your AOL emails on the go with a mobile app for Android and iOS. This means never falling behind and getting overwhelmed – and it’s super simple to do:

Swipe left on the email on your phone
Select “Archive” in green

Organize Your Emails in a New Way

Sometimes, email inboxes get cluttered because it’s hard to deal with all those confusing threads and jumping conversations. After a while of trying to detangle the web of messages, you give up and your inbox slides back into a mess. How do you fix this? By approaching emails in a whole new way.

Email is slightly unnatural because the message is messed up by headers, signatures, and all the other clutter that’s included with them. Spike has created Conversational Email to solve this problem – delivering your AOL mails in the style of an Instant Message. This makes everything clear and to the point, so you won’t get cluttered again.

What’s more, Spike doesn’t have to be built around email chains and confusing threads, it offers People mode, which arranges all your emails by contact, along with any relevant information such as attachments, social profiles, and more. Communication as it should be – from one person to another.

Clean Up your AOL inbox and Keep it Clear

Managing your AOL inbox can be overwhelming, but with a little bit of organization and strategy, you can make the task manageable. One effective method is to sort your inbox by date, which will help you identify and delete old emails that are no longer relevant.

Another tip is to make use of email filters, which allow you to automatically sort new incoming emails into specific folders based on criteria you set. This can help you keep your inbox organized, and make it easy to find specific emails when you need them.

Additionally, it’s also helpful to make use of labels or tags to categorize your emails, which will make it easier to find specific emails when you need them. This can be done manually or with the help of a third-party tool.

It’s also important to keep on top of your inbox on a regular basis. Set aside time each day or each week to go through your inbox, delete unnecessary emails, and organize the ones that are important.

Finally, don’t be afraid to unsubscribe from email lists and newsletters that you no longer need, this will help keep your inbox clutter-free and make it easier to manage in the long run. Remember, the key to keeping your AOL inbox organized and manageable is to tackle the problem head-on, and to use the tools and strategies that work best for you. Of course, if you need a better email app to manage your overwhelming AOL inbox, check out Spike!