Computer TIP

Determine a Cutoff Point for Emails

We could name lots of things that get better with age but email wouldn't be one of them. Its primary purpose is immediacy. As your messages get older, they lose immediacy and therefore their value. You might determine a cutoff point of 14, 30, or 60, days. When an e-mail reaches that age, just delete it. Or archive it and then delete it.

The concept of archiving should be part of any e-mail organisation campaign. Most email is of no value after a short time. (Some e-mail is of no value before you even get it.) You may need to keep other email, however, for historical purposes. Archiving comes in handy here.

Most e-mail clients include some facility for archiving your messages. Archiving capabilities are typically date based, which means you can automatically archive messages that are older than a particular date.

* Here's how to archive (Compact) your OUTLOOK EXPRESS emails:

1. Click on the Start menu, select Find or Search and click Files or Folders.

2. In the Named box, enter *.dbx In the Look In box select, or enter, your system hard drive (usually C:). Click Find Now. You should now see a list of your Outlook Express mailbox files. "Inbox.dbx", "Outbox.dbx", "Sent Items.dbx", "Deleted Items.dbx" and "Drafts.dbx". Any additional mail folders you have created in Outlook Express will be displayed with the .mbx extension.

3. Note the name of the folder containing the mailbox files, then every two weeks copy them to a safe location. Now you can delete your unwanted emails from their folders knowing that they are safely tucked away on a floppy or flash disk.

* And here's how you do it with OUTLOOK.

Outlook has AutoArchive capabilities and it allows you to configure it in the following manner:

1. Choose Tools, Options.

2. On the Other tab, click the AutoArchive button.

3. Use the controls in the dialog box to specify how you want archiving performed by Outlook. If you get an average amount of email, archiving every two weeks (the default) should be okay. You should make sure the other settings result in moving older items to the archive folders and deleting them from your regular inbox area.

4. Click OK twice to close all the dialog boxes.

It's a cinch really!

Barnabas Report

hibberd [at] melbpc.org.au

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"God promises a safe landing, not a calm passage" (author unknown)