Posted on 09/28/2004 12:49:38 PM PDT by Joe Republc
I work for a Fortune 500 company, and I'm a pretty happy user here of Outlook. The only major problem with it is that we can only keep about 30 Meg of space on the central server for all of our Outlook items. So the big hassle is staying under this limit, and putting the email someplace where it can be quickly searched for later reference.
I figured out a reasonable way to move lots of email to another one of my drives. But the problem is that it is VERY slow to search through these old emails. I've searched via Windows Explorer text search, but even opening the folder up in Windows Explorer is doggedly slow.
I also realize I can copy old emails to Word and Excel or other files, but it's time-consuming to do this, and the results are ugly.
Anyway, I figure I'm not the only FReeper in the corporate world who has battled this. So your suggestions will be much appreciated.
-- Joe
P.S. Officially at my company, you aren't supposed to use email to store information that you need to refer to later. Yeah, right, gimme a break!
You can synch a Personal Folders message store to your corporate mail server. The setup is too complicated to detail here, but is adequately described in Outlook Help.
Is there any reason you can't download your mail to your own computer?
Joe,
Why don't you get a web based email account? There's lots of free or inexpensive ones out there. You can check your email anytime, from any computer, anywhere in the world. I've never liked Outlook. That's my 2 or 3 cents.
Good idea and easy. Even I could do it....
In Outlook 2003 you'd go to tools/options/mail setup/data files/add/ok (uses default) and then create a personal folder where you can store up to 500 megs of mail. If your computing environment uses its own patches and security you might want to keep the .pst folder under 300 megs.
I will watch it closely with the hope that someone has a method/program for storing emails as text files in an alternate folder.
Under the file menu go to archive. Set the location to a network drive (if IT allows it) or hard drive. Establish a date and choose the folder to archive. This will create a .pst file that you can open from the file menu. Good luck.
Got enough probelms, Microsoft endowed me with one of their finest products (sevice pack II) In a month or so I might get over my urge to toss the whole computer in the lake.
I believe you can create a 'personal' folder on your computer and archive it anytime you wish. It would then be available anytime, through OL of course. We use Exchange Server where I work.
Set up a personal folder in Outlook - that way, it gets stored on your hard drive instead of on the server. When your hard drive gets full, make a copy of your Outlook file, store it on a CD/USB stick/whatever. Then delete whatever you do not need from the original Outlook file.
Have you created Personal Folders? Also known as .pst files. This will allow you to pretty much store as much as you want and have it interface within Outlook itself.
Search on Google for instructions on how to add personal folders in outlook based on your Outlook version.
Create a "Personal Folder" and set it up so that it saves to your local hard drive (set the path to your C drive or whatever, under Properties). Then grab and drag your messages over.
Look at post #8. Outlooks has a way to take care of this.
The following works in Outlook 2003 and should also be similar in Outlook 2k.
To do this, go to Tools >> Options... Then select the Mail Setup Tab. Then go to the Outlook data files button. You can add a new Outlook folder that is archived on your local machine.
It is much quicker to search and move old emails that way. It is also only limited by the size of free space on your drive.
Mark for later reading.
.pst files, also known as Personal Folders, are exactly what you are looking for. In fact, Windows 2000 and above even come with a tool, scanpst.exe, to help make sure the file stays in good shape. Outlook can easily make a Personal Folder whereever you tell it to (although the default location will normally be in documents and settings/blah blah).
For searching... use Lookout - a free plug in from Microsoft. See http://sandbox.msn.com/
I use it everyday. It is an amazing tool that even more amazingly... is free.
NeoKen
All your mail can be stored here - the only limit is your available disk space.
You can do this. One way is just to drag an email out of Outlook onto your desktop. It will create a .msg file.
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