Help organizing emails?

[Dave McReynolds]

I use Outlook Express and am not on a local network.

 

I typically make a back-up copy of my sent items folder when it gets too big and cumbersome (about twice a year), and then delete my sent emails. If I let my sent items or my deleted items folders get too big, it takes a long time to compact the messages when Outlook Express periodically decides that needs to be done.

 

Sometimes I need to find a copy of something I sent someone, and it is quite a process to recover it from the backup copy I made of my sent items folder.

 

Does anyone know a way to save old emails in a way that they can be easily retreived, and yet would not be an active folder that Outlook Express would feel the need to compact?

[Aluminum_Butt]

I putzed around with this for a few minutes, and came up with a couple of ideas. They're not slick, however.

 

1. Instead of storing the emails in an OE folder, just highlight them and drag/copy them out onto a folder on your hard drive. You'll end up with individual .eml files for each email. Double-click on one and it'll launch OE to display it. Obviously you'll lose the ability to display a list of messages/subjects/dates, and that may be huge to you. You could still search for text using standard Windows search.

 

2. Create a new folder when you want to archive Sent Items. Creating the new folder will create a new foldername.dbx file in the OE data store folder. You can always see what's in it just by clicking on that folder. It would be my hope that OE would not have to spend much time on compacting that folder in the future if it didn't change, but I don't know the algorithm it uses so I could be wrong. If Windows accosts you to compact, you can always say no then manually compact your active folders (e.g. Inbox, Sent). To manually compact, just click a folder then click on File -> Folder -> Compact.

 

Edit: Make sure you don't let an OE folder go beyond 2GB (or really even approach 2GB). You will begin to have problems.

[stubble!]

Dave, I'm sorry, but I'm going to be "that guy". While I can't offer much directly applicable to your question, I've found Thunderbird is a huge improvement in so many areas, not the least of which are security, spam filtering, and how well it handles large folders. I simply don't archive anymore. If you haven't checked it out, it might be worth a try.

[Jerry Johnston]

Bob's idea #2 is what I use. If you open the email and go up to File then Move to Floder, it wil show your current email folders and allow you to create a new one. I have make several folders under diff. names such as Jokes. If I rec. a joke I like I can then easily store and recover it from the set of folders called jokes.

[Dave McReynolds]

1. Instead of storing the emails in an OE folder, just highlight them and drag/copy them out onto a folder on your hard drive. You'll end up with individual .eml files for each email. Double-click on one and it'll launch OE to display it. Obviously you'll lose the ability to display a list of messages/subjects/dates, and that may be huge to you. You could still search for text using standard Windows search.

 

This method seems to work quite well for my purpose. I can highlight all the ones I want to store, which would be everything before a certain date, and move them all at once to a destination folder, which is quicker than making a backup copy of the sent-items OE folder. Actually, you don't lose the ability to display the subject line of the email, since it becomes the new file name in the destination folder. Also, as Bob said, you can use the search function to find a particular name or word within any of the files. So resurrecting a particular sent email is pretty easy to do.

 

A nice side benefit is that many of my emails are for the purpose of sending draft copies of tax returns to clients. None of these need to be saved long-term and they are relatively big files, and I considered deleting all of them before saving them in the new folder, but that became tedious as they are scattered randomly through my sent-items folder, so I gave up. But in the destination folder they are all listed together, since they all have the same file name, so I can just delete all of them at once.

 

Thanks for the tip!

[UberXY]

Use Gmail. Vast storage for free.

 

When my kids write a big term paper, I have them gmail it to themselves as an attachment. The term paper lives on gmail's servers forever.

 

Simple, easy, free.

[Dave McReynolds]

Use Gmail. Vast storage for free.

 

Two problems with that from my perspective:

 

Client confidentiality. I'm not sure I would be keeping client records confidential by storing them on Gmail's server.

 

"Forever." We hope. But if I get called on some big transaction where I need to prove that I did or did not make some key recommendation, it would worry me that my ass depends on finding something on somebody else's server.

 

I realize that we're talking about sent emails, so they all probably live on somebody else's server already, so how much confidientiality am I risking by saving it on Gmail? But the client knew and accepted the risk of my original communication getting hacked, whereas he didn't accept the risk of something getting hacked after I decided to store it on Gmail.

 

As to "forever," maybe the risk of losing something stored on Gmail is less than the risk of my own computer and related backups blowing up, I don't know, but I do know I would worry more about it.

[Twisties]

Dave,

 

I use Outlook, not express. It has a number of advantages over express, which I have used in the past. With outlook a pst file is made and can be up to 2 gB in size. Although I receive and send lots of data in mB+ sized chunks, I am able to make one pst a year. This means searching is by year. I do not break down my folders beyond inbox and sent. By the end of the year searching is getting a bit slow, but compared to the problems I see other have trying to figure out what folder things are in.... my way is a dream. I can always find what I'm after.

 

I have every business email going back to 1998, and here at home going back to about 2000. And yes, sometimes I do need those old business records.

 

Jan

[SSchuckman]

Starting with Outlook 2003 the PST file can be in excess of 20 GB, but if you upgraded from a previous version of Outlook then the file still has a limit of 2 GB. A new file (with larger capacity) can be created and the data can be moved from the old to the new file. Even though the file can handle 20 GB of data, it is definitely not a good idea to let it get that large. You can create one or more archive files and manually or automatically move emails to the archives. The archive files are still searchable in the same manner as the main file.

[questrider]

Dave, I'm sorry, but I'm going to be "that guy". While I can't offer much directly applicable to your question, I've found Thunderbird is a huge improvement in so many areas, not the least of which are security, spam filtering, and how well it handles large folders. I simply don't archive anymore. If you haven't checked it out, it might be worth a try.

+1