Welcome to the TweetDeck Learning Guide, where I’m going to walk you through using TweetDeck and making it work for you.
A neat feature TweetDeck offers is columns, individual Twitter streams of like material. TweetDeck uses these columns to offer the results of searches, so smart leverage can improve your TweetDeck experience!
To make a new column, we need to check the three primary controls in TweetDeck:
The plus sign is the control we’re worried about. This is the ‘add Column’ button. Clicking it gets us a dialogue box.
As you can see, I have a number of searches saved. This first section of the dialogue is the search function. This works just like Twitter’s search bar, type in a user, keyword, or hashtag and get a unique stream of tweets related to your search.
In TweetDeck this opens a new column with your search results. This column lets you follow your main feed and this search simultaneously!
Column controls are situated at the bottom of each column
The arrows, on the left and right side of the column, swap the position of the column with its neighbor. You’ll notice that your far right column doesn’t have a right arrow and your far left will be missing the left.
The cloud is a ‘trending’ button and tells you what hashtags and keywords show up regularly in the column. This is good if you’re following a hashtag so you can tell what’s being talked about!
The down arrow is a filter button. You can sort by name, text, source or time whether you want to see only what’s filtered or remove what is filtered, and then you can add keywords to complete the filter. There’s no accept button, it filters automatically!
@RobinLythgoe
The eye button marks all Tweets in a column as read. How can you tell if a Tweet is read or unread? There’s a tiny white dot next to their handle marking unread posts. Once they’re read, that mark goes away.
The scissors clear the column of read messages. I don’t often use this, but if you like a clean inbox it’s the tool you’re looking for!
The trashcan clears the column regardless of status.
There’s all the column controls, with this in hand we can tackle lists and filtering your main feed into multiple parts!
A Digital Magician 
So… Patrick … though it’s lovely and most people would like two or three of them, how can I get rid of the [to me] annoying box in the upper right hand corner at least until I have time to learn your current lesson. I mean, I suppose it has its use (though I don’t see what it is) but I just want it to go bye-bye for a certain period of time. Is that possible?
Are you talking about the notifications? The pop up that informs you you’ve gotten new tweets?
If so, I already have a tutorial for removing it: https://pathunstrom.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/control-the-birds-notification-settings/
Trust me, it annoys me, too. The only column I use it is the Mentions column.
Don’t know whether it’s called “notifications” but is should be called annoying. I’m sure it has some use, but I want to get a good handle on how to use the system without it. If I remove it now will I be able to add it back later?
Thanks,
Jay
Absolutely, every setting in tweetdeck can be reversed if you liked it better default.