Outlook Express house keeping

[Welly]

At work I've got 375 emails in my inbox at the moment and 449 in my sent box - I just don't get the time to tidy up!

I've created some sub folders to archive stuff into but being a business I need to keep most things for legal reasons (contracting).

Do you find it's easy to miss some emails because Outlook has a habit of 'unmarking' the top email if the curser hovers on it for a second or two? then it goes greyscale and you can miss it.

I also get inundated with "read receipts" which I don't know how to disable and these are annoying clutter.

How do you keep your emails?

[steve_earwig]

No, scrub that, I've opened it and it doesn't give you the option to archive stuff, how crap is that? Can't you use outlook? Hmm, I guess you'd need to pay for that but the only export options on Outlook Depress are to Outlook or Micro$oft Exchange. What's the mail program like on Open Office? Oh, there isn't one

Oh crap, now I've got Mess-enger bothering me, I'll have to see if I can remember how to delete it.

[steve_earwig]

Ok, who's using Thunderbird?

[Welly]

What's up with the emoticons today? they look scary!

[mjb]

Ok, who's using Thunderbird?

I use Thunderbird. Used Seamonkey/Mozilla/Netscape for about 10 years previously. It's all the same thing...

[steve_earwig]

Aha! What I want to know is how can you archive stuff? I'm using Outlook (it was free with my breakfast cereal) and it has the option to export anything I want to a file, then I can delete it but bring it back if I need. Outlook Express talks about compacting, I can't work out how to compact it to somewhere useful (i.e. another drive) nor how to bring it back again, or even if there's a possibility to do this - the help file is typically unhelpful. There seems to be all sorts of options for archiving in Thunderbird, I've downloaded Buttons! but all it seems to do is move messages about, not squeeze them up and stick them on my back-up drive.

[mjb]

Aha! What I want to know is how can you archive stuff? ...There seems to be all sorts of options for archiving in Thunderbird, I've downloaded Buttons! but all it seems to do is move messages about, not squeeze them up and stick them on my back-up drive.

I just shove older stuff in different folders on my mail server... but TB does have options for storing stuff locally. At the bottom of the folders pane list is 'Local Folders'. Right click that, go to properties then set 'Local Directory' to your backup drive. Don't know if it compresses or not, but email doesn't take up too much disk space. Mine takes just a couple of gig for over 10 years worth

If you want to move stuff there automatically you could probably setup a message filter to move stuff there that's so many days old

[Welly]

I've had Outlook ask me if I want to compress but I say no. I'm bothered about growing an enormous email pile and not knowing here to put it all!

I've got a plug in hard drive back-up doodad (freecom) can I back up to that thing? can you then recover old emails from a back up?

[steve_earwig]

Outlook? Yes, easily; Outlook Depressed? I don't think so.

[steve_earwig]

... but TB does have options for storing stuff locally. At the bottom of the folders pane list is 'Local Folders'. Right click that, go to properties then set 'Local Directory' to your backup drive. Don't know if it compresses or not, but email doesn't take up too much disk space. Mine takes just a couple of gig for over 10 years worth

I tried that but it looks like it's just the space TB uses for storing all the email data, not somewhere you can shove stuff, I moved it to my back-up drive but then it said it couldn't find it, so I moved the files out of C:\Documents and Settings\xxx\Local Settings\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\etc and shoved it in the file I'd created in my back-up drive, with the result that there were NO folders on TB So I quickly moved them back again and moved the local directory back where it was but they're still missing, I think I broke it

[teamster1975]

I've had Outlook ask me if I want to compress but I say no. I'm bothered about growing an enormous email pile and not knowing here to put it all!

I've got a plug in hard drive back-up doodad (freecom) can I back up to that thing? can you then recover old emails from a back up?

It's perfectly safe to compact the folders in outlook express. When you delete emails it leaves slack space in the outlook express database files; compacting removes this slack, it does not remove any data.

If you want to backup your email folders do a search on inbox.dbx.
It will live in a folder similar to this, make sure you have exited outlook express & copy the contents.
c:\Documents and Settings\Matthew\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{14D03A91-83EA-425C-8ACD-392225092FCF}\Microsoft\Outlook Express

[nick]

There is a setting in Outlook Express to change the amount of time needed before the email is marked read. I cant remeber off hand where it is, but you can change it to something more managable like 20 seconds.

Yeah, I was playing about with the board last night - I updated to the latest version of the board software, and noticed some old DB tables that were still there from old mods. In the process of cleaning that up, I, er.. might have messed it up a bit. I got it sorted, but still to work on one or two things.

Theres going to be a new bit installed sometime in the next month hopefully, but int he meantime, we might be looking for around 3 moderators to help with some new anti-spamming measures..



Nick

P.S Just noticed the smileys.. I'll have a look just now.

[nick]

Smilies fixed btw..

[teamster1975]

Smilies fixed btw..

Good man

[nick]

At work I've got 375 emails in my inbox at the moment and 449 in my sent box - I just don't get the time to tidy up!

I've created some sub folders to archive stuff into but being a business I need to keep most things for legal reasons (contracting).

Do you find it's easy to miss some emails because Outlook has a habit of 'unmarking' the top email if the curser hovers on it for a second or two? then it goes greyscale and you can miss it.

I also get inundated with "read receipts" which I don't know how to disable and these are annoying clutter.

How do you keep your emails?

Tools, Options, Read and change the 5 second value to something more managable, or untick the box if you dont want them auto marked as read ever (you have to double click the email to mark as read, or right click and click mark as read then..)

N