Like pretty much everyone else in the known world, I get way too much email. Given how much time I spend in Entourage and how important it is to my workflow, I have an extensive group of folders to manage all of the email that I send, receive, and keep. My incoming mail gets sorted into one of 34 different folders [1] automatically using rules. Then I've got several dozen other folders where I sort my mail after I've dealt with it.

There are some folders which I care about much more than others. My main inbox is the most important one. Emails that are specific to the applications that I work on are also important, as are emails from my user experience peers. But they're buried in my folder structure. What's a girl to do?

Enter Entourage 2008 and the favourites bar. The favourites bar is right below the toolbar. Here's mine:


I love so many things about my favourites bar. It means that, no matter where I am in Entourage, I can quickly jump to my most important folders. It shows me when there's new mail in those important folder. Entourage's dock icon is helpful in that it tells me when I have new mail, but this gives me much more detail. The favourites bar lets me I tell the difference between new mail that needs my attention now and stuff that can wait until later.

So how do you add folders to your favourites bar? It's easy: in Entourage, choose a folder from the folder list, then drag it to the favourites bar. If you ever make a change to that folder (say, if you change its name), Entourage automatically changes it in the favourites bar, too. If you decide that you don't want something in your favourites bar, select it from the favourites bar and drag it off.

I mostly just use the favourites bar for mail folders, but you can put anything there that you like. I sometimes use it to quickly access a specific project from the Project Center if I find myself referring to it a lot. I've seen some folks put a shortcut to their calendar there, which is especially useful if you have multiple Exchange accounts set up in Entourage.

What's in your favourites bar?

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I have to admit that I didn't realise that I had 34 folders just for incoming mail! So I decided that I don't want to know how many other folders that I have. Let's just say that when I have Entourage maximised on my 24-inch monitor in my office, it takes six clicks to scroll through them all ...