A method is provided to assist a user in selecting, identifying, and handling email messages. A display of color coding and selection highlighting may be provided. A secondary highlighting color may be provided to indicate messages related to a selected message. One or more of the following may also be provided: an indicator that provides the user with a number of items that are off the screen for a particular category, a command that causes the first entry for a category to be scrolled into view, a label to indicate the number of items in a particular category matching a particular criteria, and/or a control for scrolling between next or previous categories.