The Best Way to Save Emails From Outlook

While using Microsoft Outlook for your email account, you will want to make sure that you can keep track of all your messages, and that you can refer back to them whenever you need. This is why it is important to understand what is the best way to save and store your email messages from your Outlook account.

According to Microsoft, the best practice is to keep the inbox for the messages you need to read and process yourself and create other folders that you can use for certain types of mail. Create a "1-Reference" folder. Manually drop any message that you need to go back to later or you haven't had time to read yet. Put a "1" in front of it so it shows up right below your inbox. Create other folders, such as "Personal" to file personal emails away and keep them separate from your work emails. That way, you will not have to worry about your co-workers looking over your shoulder at personal messages. You can create a set of folders for mailing list emails, so that those messages are rerouted into a folder. That way, you don't have to crowd your inbox with tons of messages you may not even need to read.

Set all your folders to auto-archive annually. The archiving system allows you save the emails that are important without you having to do anything. Outlook may prompt you to answer whether you would like to auto-archive all your messages. Click "Yes," and the archiving process will begin. Your messages are moved from the inbox or other folders into an "Archive" folder, which you can access at any time. All your folders will be mimicked in the "Archive" folder. For instance, if you have reference, personal and business folders, you will see the same three folders under "Archive."

The "AutoArchive" feature in Outlook is turned on by default, but you also can customize the archiving system. To do this, click the "Tools" menu. Click "Options," and click the "Other" tab. Select "AutoArchive." Select "Run AutoArchive Every n Days," and specify how many you want that to be (for example, every 14 days). Select any other options you want to change. If you want to apply the changes to all your folders, select "Apply These Settings to All Folders."