[Evolution] Re: email tips and tricks ? - [kinda OT]

[William Case <billlinux rogers com>]

Hi;

I have had to be absent from my computer and email for a month.  When I
opened evolution today I had close to 2,000 emails.  I know many of the
people on this list get that many in a morning, but it is a huge amount
to me.  

Perhaps some of you heavy users could take a few moments to give me and
other SOHO users some tips and describe the tricks you use to get
through a large amount of mail (using evo of course).

I have spent 30 to 45 minutes vetting just my personal emails and
commercial spam.  At that rate it is going to take me 8 hours to go
through everything else.

Most of the 1,700 email that is left is from mailing lists.
I have set up vFolders and filters for each of these lists and have set
them to thread mode.

I have been flagging my mail as read/unread, keeping it for a few weeks
or so in its vFolder and then archiving those I want to keep.

Is there a way to flag just the parent email and have all child mail
automatically flagged as well.  Same with 'mark for follow up' or
'labeling'.  Do I have to create a script bound to an accelerator key to
do this?  If so how do I get started?  Do I use a BASH script?

Can I start with all the thread trees in the message list closed so that
I can only see and work with the parent?

Or, are there any other suggestions or better ways of doing the vetting
quickly?

In frustration I have been thinking of deleting everything -- but that
is not what I really want.

Regards Bill