BleepingComputer.com: Filing Emails In Outlook 2003

In my job I have hundreds of emails for numerous different matters that I really hate to delete. I can create subfolders for each separate matter and store the old messages there, keeping my inbox streamlined. That creates a lot of folders!

I also have a separate folder on a separate harddrive for each matter. In those folders I store Word docs, Excel sheets, etc. Can I store the emails related to each matter in these folders instead of the folders in Outlook?

Hi Hal06,

Yes, it is possible to do that. The only downside that I find with storing the emails in a folder outside of Outlook is that they do not stay in cronological order (i.e. they are listed by Subject and the date that you copy/move them). The only work around that I can find for this is to move the emails to a Task for each Subject then copy and store the Task in the other directory on the hard drive.

You can play around with this as when you copy or cut the emails from Outlook the originals remain in the Inbox or Folder unless you delete/move them. Just remember that you will have to select all the emails in the seperate folders when copying and then you must select copy from the Edit menu for this to work.

If this doesn't make much sense let me know and I will try to explain further.

HTH

Thanks. What's a Task?

A task is like in a things to do list. You can find more info in this link. You don't have to assign the task to anyone, it can be just for yourself as in my previous reply.

There is a way you might be able to store your messages on your other drive and keep them in
chronological order. This method works for Outlook Express, it might work for Outlook. You can do a test with one folder to see what the order is.

On your other drive, create a new folder-name it Mail or whatever you like.
Open up the folder, create subfolders using the names of the ones you have in your mail.

Reduce the size of the page, so that you can still see it.

Open Outlook, open up one of your folders. Reduce the size of that one so that the mail folder and Outlook are side by side. Using ctrl A, highlight all the messages in the folder. Drag them to the newly created one.

Repeat the process for each folder. This will not delete them from your email, you will have to do that
yourself.

I re-read your post, and noticed something so I'll add to what I said above. If you want to store your mail in already created folders, open a folder, resize, and use the above method to copy the mail to the folder. Or you could create a sub-folder in the existing ones, and move the mail related to the documents to the sub-folder.