Filing the Emails

[SShinde]

Forum Members ,
I would like to have your views on filing of emails.

I deal with multiple areas of a project.

I get and send information to client,vendors and my supervisors.

As of now I use a basic method of filing the emails
for given area in subfolders named "pending", "replied","for info".
I find the above system to be lacking for dealing with many
situations, like for e.g the client may send a scanned copy of a document pertaining to more than one area,making it difficult to decide to which area of the project the mail has to be stored in.

Is there a more efficient way of filing the information.

I would like to know the opinion of members on this topic.

Regards
sshinde

 

[RDK]

Keep the same scheme for e-mails while they are active. If it works for you then don’t change it.

Once they have been replied to or otherwise overcome by events, transfer them to a single folder for each area for long term saving. This can be in a separate PST folder for ease of backing up.

Then get an indexing program like Lookout for Outlook and use this to find them quickly.

My system is similar; I leave them in the inbox until they have been dealt with then them to a separate folder for each project. Once the project is inactive I export it to a PST file to reduce the backup load on my back up program.


Of course thie is only one way to do it, you have to find something that works for you.

Rick Kitson MBA P.Eng

Construction Project Management
From conception to completion

http://www.kitsonengineering.com

 

[TheTick]

I file emails by project, and do my best to keep my inbox clear. Items requiring a response dwell in the inbox until a response is sent, then the message is filed in a project folder.

Once I set my boss's email up so that anything I sent to him where he was "cc:" (not "to:") was put into an "FYI" folder. That was for things that needed to be in his records but didn't require a response from him.

 

[EngineerDave]

There is a way to back up Outlook somehow too. I did it one time put it on my own laptop, but the laptop got stolen.

 

[SlideRuleEra]

With freeware such as Yahoo Desktop Search

http://desktop.yahoo.com/

or Google Desktop

http://desktop.google.com/about.html

you don't need to file anything - the installed software a dedicated search engine on your computer.

Both of the above are still in Beta editions, but they might be worth a try.

http://www.SlideRuleEra.net

 

[epoisses]

Same as TheTick, filing by project or job. A couple general folders like HR, etc. The inbox works very well as a to do list, provided you keep it short (avoid having a scroll-bar).

Avoid filing large attachments in Outlook because they slow it down big time, save them elsewhere.

Multi-topic notes remain a problem in Outlook. I have one customer who requires separate emails for separate topics, it's great if you can make everybody respect that rule. Your co-workers obviously won't

Last tip: if a project retires, I just print relevant mails and delete the whole folder, for the sake of my harddisk and my successors.

 

[Rheinhardt]

I use Preoject directories, and then sub directries for quatation , correspondence, design, orders ect.

Keeps it nice and clean, projects normally go on for months, what i did was make a template of the various sub-directories, adn i just copy the template , rename and start saving..

Helps me quite a bit

RP



--Off all the things i've lost , i miss my mind the most--

 

[jmw]

In Outlook 2002 under file menu is the backup option.

I have to confess that "Archive" means "vertical filing" since i have never found this very satisfactory. I can't seem to extract one email, only an entire folder and then again the emails are identified by whatever title the sender put on it, not always the best. Plus i can't bothered to set up archive settings on every folder.

For some (fortunate) reason my setup of Outlook prompts me to save a backup every time I close and every once in a while I will accept this option even though it takes some time and saves a big *.pst file.

This would have been very useful for my wife who suffered a problem with outlook and had to reload it and then found she had lost all her account settings, contacts and files. Fortunately we both use PLAXO which meant that as soon as she re-installed plaxo it went on line and downloaded her contacts for her.

Over the years I have become more disciplined about deleting emails on receipt that have no long term retention value but not very good at reviewing old emails and deleting those no longer needed.

Attachments are a pain so if needed I save somewhere else and delet them in outlook.

I do like "Contacts" because the activities tab will let me bring up all previous emails, journal entries etc. but i am sure a proper relational data base will manage the correspondance and activites much better. I have been recommended to use ACT. Anyone use this and can comment?

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[ctopher]

I do the same as TheTick,
I do not keep anuthing in my Inbox, it is all files away in project folders on the server...which is backed up every night.

Chris
Sr. Mechanical Designer, CAD
SolidWorks 05 SP3.1 / PDMWorks 05
ctopher's home site (updated 06-21-05)
FAQ559-1100
FAQ559-716

 

[TheTick]

Attachments!

I don't keep attachments with emails. I file them on the network, then edit the email to show where they are filed. Outlook can automatically make directory locations into hyperlinks to open folders if you add "file:\\" before the driectory name.

 

[MikeHalloran]

Outlook does a terrible job of retrieving stuff from its archives; it doesn't put it back where it was.

But that's not its worst problem, this is: There is a 2Gb limit on the size of the single (well hidden) database where _everything_ is stored.

I found that out because Outlook warned me that I was approaching the limit ... AFTER the file was not recoverable. I lost everything.

MS has promised to fix this, in some future release. In the meantime, they suggest using a tool they provide to 'truncate' the database. Somehow, truncation of the last ten percent or so removes every piece of content from the database.

Okay, 2Gb sounds like a lot. It is, for text. Drawing files and photos will consume it very quickly.

For years, I've kept a Notepad text file for every project. Since the disaster with Outlook, I've copied associated emails to those files, too, delimited with meta-tags <email> and </email>.

DO NOT TRUST OUTLOOK.

If you do nothing else, save your Contacts to a DOS comma delimited file, every time you add or change a contact.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[JRNorman]

I also set up sub-folders by project. I keep my inbox clean (1 - 5 e-mails max) by setting up three other folders: 'Waiting for Response', 'Temporary', and 'Unread'.

I move e-mail from 'Waiting for Response' to project folders after receiving responses or once discussion is complete. I move e-mail into 'Temporary' if I receive an e-mail with a short timespan but only need to keep it temporarily, such as a colleague's vacation notice. I move any news e-mail or junk that does not need my immediate attention to 'Unread' and read it as time allows.

As our network space is limited I set all of these folders up on my harddrive in a personal PST. All of these folders show through the Outlook folder pane for quick access.

JN

 

[wes616]

I have had better success with keeping things in one location and using searches to retrieve items when I need them.

Thunderbird works much better than outlook for filing into project folders than outlook does. It is much easier to retrieve stuff from Tbird.

good luck

Wes C.