Exchange Messaging Outlook Volume 14, Number 26

Managing My E-mail

by Michael B. Smith, Consultant and Exchange MVP, The Essential Exchange

It’s often said that the first step to resolving a problem is admitting that there is a problem. So…I admit it. I’m an e-mail packrat. I have e-mail in PSTs going back over a decade covering four different companies.

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Archiving Best Practices?

And administrator recently asked about best practices for archiving older email. "Do you encourage employees to archive on a yearly, quarterly or some other time frame basis, or is it based upon volume of messages? Also, for notebook users, do you put the archived folders on their laptops and make a copy to a server for backup/retention purposes?"

First you need a policy for compliance or discovery and it should be all or nothing- either keep all of the old mail or delete all of it. You may, of course, need to archive mail as required law, but for everything not covered by law, it’s a business decision. You need to decide what needs kept and for how long then you need to stick to the policy.

You need a proper archiving solution on the server, not a hodgepodge of PST's floating around the network. Exchange 2007 and 2010 offer managed folders and there are many third party archiving solutions available.

If you decide not to archive, create a Mailbox manager policy to delete older messages from the user's mailboxes. This policy can also empty the Junk mail and Deleted items folders.

Discuss it: http://forums.slipstick.com/showthread.php?t=24819 

Booking more than 180 days out

The question of the week this week involved resource calendars not allowing meeting requests more than 180 days out.

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Outlook Quick Tip: Save as… MSG

Outlook 2007 uses the HTML formal as the default for saving email messages. Is there a way to change this behavior to the Outlook message "MSG" format instead of HTML.

No. But you can open the save location in Windows Explorer and drag the messages to it.

Bonus tip: if you select several items and use Save as, they are saved together in one txt file.

New ways to try-and-buy Office 2010

Microsoft is offering new ways to try and buy Office, and a new "lite" version that will replace Works on new computers.

Microsoft is replacing Works with a cut down version of Office called Office Starter 2010. Office Starter 2010 is a reduced-functionality, advertising-supported version of Office 2010, available only on new PCs. Office Starter 2010 will include Office Word Starter 2010 and Office Excel Starter 2010, with the basic functionality for creating, viewing and editing documents. Office Starter 2010 gives users a simple path to upgrade to a full version of Office 2010 directly from within the product.

Users who buy a new PC with Office preinstalled will be able to purchase a Product Key Card containing a single license card (no DVD media) from major electronic retail outlets. The key number contained on the card will unlock Office 2010 software pre-loaded by the PC manufacturers and enables any one of three full versions of Microsoft Office – Office Home & Student 2010, Office Home & Business 2010, or Office Professional 2010.

For those users who want to try (or buy) Office 2010 on their current computer, they can download the Click-to-Run offering. Click-to-Run reduces the time and effort required to download Office 2010 and automatically downloads and installs any software patches when connected to the Internet. Click-to-Run uses virtualization technology, allowing users to maintain multiple versions of Office so they can try Office 2010 side-by-side with their existing version of Office.