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Broaden Your Outlook
May 2010
Lisa Kianoff, CPA.CITP
Ever miss the obvious when it was right in front of your face? Look no further than Microsoft Outlook. If you’re like most business people, you use it every day. Yet how much do you really know about all it can do for you?
Spring Cleaning
Sure, the cost of data storage is going down, and that may be lucky for you based on the increase in “digital junk” you’ve accumulated. Some of that junk is crazy large but Outlook has a feature that helps you quickly identify the largest of the emails you have stored so you can delete the ones you don’t need.
If you have large emails, it usually means you have large attachment(s). With a couple of clicks, here’s how you can sort through your many emails so those large ones stand out:
Ø Open Outlook and look for the folder called “Search Folders.” It’s located near the bottom of your Mail folders in the left hand window of your screen.
Ø Expand the folder to see the subfolders; right click on the one titled “Large Mail”
Ø Choose “customize this search folder” and click on the button labeled “Criteria”.
Ø This is where you tell Outlook what you consider as “Large Mail”. The default is 100Kb and that’s a little too small for this exercise. Let’s start with those that are 5MB or greater. If you’ve feeling good after that cleaning, lower your threshold to 3MB; then 1MB. Just be sure you type in the right number as it is stored in kilobytes (Kb). If you want to see all emails larger than 5MB enter 5000, 3MB enter 3000 and so forth. Once you enter the size, hit OK.
Ø At the current screen, click on the browse button and verify that “search subfolders” is checked (it is in the lower left corner). Then click OK to close the browse button and hit OK once more to close the customize window.
Ø Your Outlook will now populate the contents of “Large Mail” folder with emails exceeding your size threshold. You can click on the header of the column titled “size” and sort the emails on the folder with the largest listed first. The list shows in your right hand window.
What Are My Options?
1. Delete the email all together.
2. Save the attachment(s) by moving them to a different storage location and then delete the email. If you are moving multiple attachments here’s a quick tip to help out. Highlight one of the attachments, right click on the mouse and choose select all, then copy and then paste in your new location. This lets you move them in one step instead of handling each separately.
3. Delete the attachment and save the email. To do this, open the mail in question. Highlight the attached document, right click with your mouse and choose remove. This deletes the attachment, the email remains intact.
Managing the Masses
The thing about email is it keeps coming. And you keep responding. The result is a constantly growing collection of emails stored in your Sent Folder. Some contain information that’s important to keep; some – most – you may never care to see again. So what’s the best plan for controlling the build-up in your sent folder while ensuring you don’t lose the ones that are valuable?
1. Keep only what you want.
2. When you respond to an email that’s important for you to keep, copy yourself.
3. When it arrives in your email, move it to the appropriate folder for storage. You can actually hand that process off to Outlook by setting a rule to automatically file in a project folder any email with your chosen “project” name in the subject line. For example, if all your e-mails on a Disaster Recovery project include DR in the subject line, all those emails would be automatically stored in your Disaster Recovery project folder in your Outlook when you e-mail them to yourself.
4. Now here’s the fun part: Once these processes are set up, you can simply delete the content of your Sent folder without ever worrying you’ve lost important data.
Finally, it would not be Best Practices if we concluded a discussion related to email without a reminder that like it or not, you are judged by the content of your emails. And, whether you know it or not, your emails are often resent. So the next time you are in Outlook with the idea of emailing somebody about something, remember the 3 Key Rules for emailing:
1. Be sure you clearly make your point. Without voice inflections or body language, it is more challenging to make sure the reader “hears” the content the way you meant it.
2. Check grammar and spelling.
3. Reread and confirm you are happy with it before you hit send.
Now go out and broaden your Outlook!