E-mail Management (2000 SR1a)

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I’m looking for a web site, or links to articles, where I can locate information/discussions on e-mail management. I currently use Outlook. I’ve seen where some people save messages as .txt or .rtf files on their computers and store attachments separately. I’ve also seen utilities that can be used as an add-in to Outlook that automates these tasks. Others apparently archive to .pst files. I would like to see some discussion on these issues where users have detailed what method they use and the pros and cons of each.

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Boy, I haven’t seen anything quite like this. Gartner and the other “consulting” outfits have a lot of info. like this – for a price. Slipstick.com has a lot of good information. The newsletters can be handy. Also, they just started a discussion area; maybe you could get a thread started…

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I think this issue will get a LOT of attention from now on as users inbox folders bloat. It constantly amazes me how unsophisticated Outlook is and I read Woody’s newsletter on this subject with great interest. I may be just being primitive but I do not trust myself to restore info from the .pst, and I may only want one folder not all of it.

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Boy do a lot of us ever need this! I found 2 applications that are low cost, but neither serve my purpose. I want to archive my pst, e.g. quarterly, and have it saved to txt or rtf or html or something I can browse and sort with when I’m trying to find something. I would like it to include attachments, even if I have to use the original application to view them. One archiver I found seems stable and useful because it compresses the archive, but it makes a proprietary file you need to restore to use. You might check it out at AJSystems.com, its called OutbackPlus. A second offering that seems much closer to what I’m looking for is SMTArchivER at smtechnologies.com…. but it only works with Win2000 or NT. Since I use Win98SE right now, that is not a solution either. Most really useful sounding tools seem to be for MS Exchange administrators, not the individual user. I would love to hear of any other reasonably priced tools!

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Hi All – .pst files all the way!!! Keep them below 500mb, compact them quarterly and all will be fine. I educate my users to make numerous .pst files (no more than 24) that are appropriate to their subject matter and make sub-folders accordingly. User accept this method and are appreciative because their Outlook client runs faster for them.

.pst records so far – 4.25 gig .pst that was still somehow stable
largest amount of items in Sent Items folder = 16384 (apparently strange things will happen when that number is achieved)

Just my spin on using .pst files in Outlook from a remote dialup and VPN perspective. Thanks!

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I tend to accumulate a lot of Deleted Items. When it hits 16,383, it will not accept any more, and when attempting to delete I get a dialog to the effect of: “The interface has returned an unknown error.” I’ve managed to keep Sent Items below 7,000.

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That error message – Messaging Interface has Returned an Unknown Error…does it also say that Outlook must be closed? Very strange solution that worked for 1200 of our remote users but try unchecking the box in Outlook that automatically saves a draft message every three minutes. See if the problem goes away. Give it a whirl.

I support corporate fieldstaff so they save every single solitary thing they say and do. I’ve resorted to having them make .pst files called “deleted items archive” and “sent items archive”.

Thanks!

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The error that triggers when Deleted Items is full never tells me I have to close Outlook. It seems genuinely clueless about what its problem is. It just won’t move the item. In a way, this is good. I “should” clean those out more often.

For purposes of not losing work, I think I’ll leave the “Save unsent messages” option turned on unless I start having serious problems. Thanks for the pointer.

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I filled it up again, and the dialog does suggest that “If the problem persists, restart Outlook.” As we know, that won’t do any good, unless you have Outlook set to clear the folder when you close. In which case, it’s extraordinarily unlikely that you could have filled it up in one session! Anyway, sorry for the incomplete recollection in my previous post.

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I am just wondering why people don’t use folders and rules to avoid all this. I never have more that 10 messages in Sent Items

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I guess some people are just not too complicated with their Outlook – they keep everything in a couple of folders and perform searching and sorting of those folders to find items from months ago. In my work environment I see many end users make their Sent Items and Deleted Items folders into store houses for e-mail messages (the record being over 16,000 items in Sent Items box). I do my best to discourage this of course.

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What’s the best way to help discourage people from doing this?? I’ve got a user that has 17000+ msgs in his Sent Items box!

Kris

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Well, if you saw the back seat of my car, you’d know that I don’t place too high a priority on cleaning up the “out of sight, out of mind” stuff in my life.

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