Cover Your Tracks: E-mail Archiving

Do you back up your e-mails in Microsoft Outlook? What would happen if your company gets audited or your manager asks you for an e-mail from a few years ago? What if someone told you that you did something wrong, but you remember sending an e-mail with the correct information?

This happens to office workers all of the time. It even happened to me a few times, where people would create files themselves, then send it around to others to review and make changes, but never save it on the network drive. Then a new person comes in, taking over the work and wonders why they can't find the old file.

At this point, I was able to search through my old e-mails from a few years back and find the file that was e-mailed to me.

There are two ways of backing up your e-mails. One is the easier way, where you download a file; the other is the longer way. The reason I use the latter method is because our company policy is that we can't download any software that IT doesn't approve. You can read my post on 8 Steps to Archiving E-mails, if you fall into this category. You can also read my post on 4 Easy Steps to Finding Old E-mails.

To back up your e-mails in Outlook, simply download Microsoft's Outlook Add-In file here. It's compatible with any version of Outlook 2002 or later. Then just follow the instructions to installing and using the software.

Now you will have yourself covered if any issue may arise that you can prove with an e-mail or two.

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Take care - of your clutter!


Post from: Administrative Assistant

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4 Easy Steps to Finding Old E-mails

Do you have trouble sifting through hundreds or even thousands of e-mails? Does your boss come up to you and ask you to find information on an e-mail that you've received and needs it yesterday?

One of my colleagues asked me this same question a short while ago and she was very surprised to hear that there is an "Advanced Find" function on Microsoft Outlook.

To use this function, follow these 4 easy steps:

1. Make sure that you have the "Find" icon highlighted. If it isn't, click on it and a new toolbar will pop up.
   
   
2. Then click on Options, Advanced Find.
   
   
3. Here you can enter all of your criteria, whether it be a specific folder that you want to look in (make sure to select "Search Subfolders", just so that it will look for your particular criteria in those folders as well. You can even specify who sent the e-mail, who it was addressed to, date fields, etc.
   


4. A new window will pop up with results that will populate as the system retrieves this information.

If you need to archive e-mails that you don't need right away and is cluttering up your hard drive (you shouldn't keep a file that is larger than 1GB), please read my post on 8 Steps to Archiving E-mails.

So next time someone asks you to find an e-mail that you know you filed away, but not sure where and don't want to search through each folder manually, use the Advanced Find function. It will save you lots of time!

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Take care - of your clutter!

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Is Your Company SOX Compliant?

Is your firm compliance ready according to Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX)? Do you have proper documentation to support any lawsuits or fines?

More and more firms are moving towards this compliance method, since they don't want to be slapped on the wrist by clients and other authorities, such as the Canada Revenue Agency. Keeping proper electronic and paper based files are very important.

• Make sure that you keep at least 10 years worth of data of your business, which includes any data files, e-mails, etc. Keeping hard copies of information is also suggested, since back up systems can fail or viruses can hit your company's system and destroy everything, if you don't have it backed up one way or another.

• I would suggest for small businesses to back up their information on a weekly basis at most, but daily would be preferred. Medium to large businesses should back up their information on a daily basis.

• You should also keep a few versions of data, usually one week's worth, just in case something happens to the last data back up files. You can always go back at least a week to any date and retrieve this information.

Don't be stuck in a situation where lawyers are coming after your business and eventually hinder your finances. Make sure that you have a backup plan in place!

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Best Way to Avoid a Computer Malfunction

Have you ever had a point in your career (or may have had many) where your computer or other office equipment just decides to break down?

You are working diligently on a project and are writing at the speed of light. You feel confident that you will meet your deadline and are happy with your report. Suddenly, the power goes out, you don't have a UPS unit and forgot to save your file.

Wireless internet providers provide great services and it’s a big achievement in the form of technology where no cables are used. The best web hosting is that which is cheap as well highly efficient in its quality. Web hosting services is a sort of Internet hosting service that permits people and associations to offer their own websites available through the World Wide Web. IP phones permit users to talk over the Internet or an intranet at very low cost. Web hosting services can be achieved online easily by watching online advertisements. Wireless internet how provides great service to large number of people. The best email hosting is again that which is cheap as well as high quality. These all features that make a computer the most important part of any organization that understands the ongoing trends of the market.

There is, of course, the auto-save function built in to many software packages, but it takes time for a computer to bounce back to the way it was before. I actually found an ad in a magazine that I have been preaching for quite some time now.

You can always rely on a pen and paper, since if the pen breaks or the paper rips, you can replace it within seconds. A computer is much more costly and takes longer to reboot.

Just some food for thought and thought that this would brighten up your busy day.

If you have any questions, suggestions or comments, please feel free to click on the "comments" link below and leave some feedback. If you are reading this via feed or e-mail, please click on the title link and post your comment via web.

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8 Steps to Archiving E-mails

Do you archive your e-mails in Outlook? You really should, since it's become the norm for many companies that have the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

Just imagine that a client calls you up and states that they never ordered your product/service and doesn't want to pay for it. What do you do? Well, you can go back to your old correspondence that you and your client had via e-mail, to show that they agreed to this.

Here are 8 simple steps how of you can archive your e-mails. I will also explain on how to retrieve these, if you ever need to back to one of them.

1. Click File, then Import and Export.
2. Click on Export to a File.
3. Click on Personal Folder File (.pst).
4. Click Filter.
5. Now, you can search for particular types of criteria, such as time frames, who you received/sent e-mails from/to, etc. - it really depends on what you want to archive, which you specify here.
6. Type in the file name that you want to use as well as the location and choose the option that best suits your needs below. It's always best to archive your files on a different hard drive or even a CD/DVD, just in case your computer crashes and you can't retrieve your data. You can also read my post on System Recovery, just in case this does happen.
7. Click Finish.
8. Now you have a copy of your old e-mails and you can go ahead and use the Advanced Find function to delete these e-mails. Just type in the same criteria as you used during the archiving process.

In order to retrieve your old e-mails, simply follow these 3 simple steps:

1. Click File, Open, Outlook Data File.
2. Now locate the particular file that you archived and click OK.
3. You will now notice that you have a new Mailbox in your All Mail Folders section with the file name of your archive file.

You can now view all of your old e-mails that you archived.

If you have any questions, suggestions or comments, please feel free to click on the "comments" link below and leave some feedback.

Until next time,

Take care - of your clutter.

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System Crash? What to do?

If you plan on getting your computer up and running again, here is a link to an article that I found very interesting.

The only other thing that I would mention is that if you have about $100 to spare (most people don't, but it's a really great investment), is to purchase Norton Ghost.

My system crashed a few times in the past and within 30 minutes, I was up and running again, at the exact point of where the crash happened. Using the "System Restore" function on Windows XP is not ideal, since there could be quite a bit of files lost and takes much longer.

Norton Ghost essentially takes an image of your hard drive(s) and places it onto another hard drive (make sure you have an empty one available). You can create as many backups as you want, so that you have extra copies of your data files, your operating system files, etc. But make sure that you have your hard drive(s) partitioned, so that you don't have your data files and your operating system files on the same drive.

For this, I would recommend Partition Magic.

If you have any questions, suggestions or comments, please feel free to click on the "comments" link below and leave some feedback.

Until next time,

Take care - of your clutter!

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