E-mail, like everything else, goes the way of entropy. Left unchecked, an inbox will bloat and create a categorization nightmare. Although wrangling Outlook into a seemly and organized file system may feel like a Sisyphean task, we will approach step by step.
- Backup the Inbox
- Clean the .pst file (waiting on SCANPST.exe)
- Archive Inbox
- Customize Outlook
- Compact Archive folder
- Set up Automatic Archiving
- Compress Outlook with Automatic Thread Compressor
- Setup Attachment Caching
- Remove Attachments from Inbox
- Remove Outlook Add-ins
- Disable RSS
You will need to have access to your client's Outlook and have Outlook 2013 or greater installed on Windows.
- Open Outlook
- Go to File > Open & Export > Import/Export
- Choose the "Export to a file" option and click Next
- Choose the "Outlook Data File (.pst)" option and click Next, though Comma Separated Values files are wonderful for data visualization.
- The folder you will export will be denoted by the client's name.
- Save the file as "backup_<CLIENT NAME>_<DATE>.pst" in a folder labeled "backup" in the U: drive.
- Make a second copy of the file in a folder caleld "archives_<CLIENT NAME>". This file will be our target to change in the proceeding.
The prinicpal task of sorting the Outlook inbox comes down to choosing the rules that will guide future emails to their proper homes. Ultimately, the client will decide how to sort new mail, but the following scheme has enjoyed historic success.
- Create folders outside of the Inbox folder titled Action, Pending, Archive, and News
- In addition to the new folders, add to the Favorites section the folders entitled Inbox, Drafts, Sent Items, Deleted Items, Sent Mail (Gmail), Inbox (Gmail), and Passwords – This links to the Passwords pst file.
specify conditions that an incoming message should meet, such as a sender’s name or email address, and then conditional formatting is applied only to those messages.
See Outlook Customization Documentation.
See Ithaka protocols.
- With Outlook open
- Go to Account Settings > Data Files > Select Archives > Settings > Advanced > Outlook Data File Settings > Compact Now
You can improve your performance -- as well as make your attached files easier to find -- by saving them in a folder on your hard drive instead of in your inbox.
- Download the program from http://www.kopf.com.br/outlook/outlookattremover-setup.exe
- Make sure Outlook is closed, and boot up outlookattremover-setup.exe
- Choose the file from which you want to remove attachments, the *.pst file in our "archives_" folder.
- In the Save Attachments Section, choose the "Replace by link attachment" option.
- Set the directory path in which to save the attachments to U:..\backup<CLIENT NAME>_attachments and press OK.
Outlook runs faster if the majority of your email files use your local computer's CPU, instead of an outlook Exchange server's.
- With Outlook open,
- Click File > Account Settings > Account Settings.
- Select the Client's Exchange Account
- Under Offline Settings, check Use Cached Exchange Mode.
The only emails that are deleted are those with the same content. For example, let’s say someone replies to the latest email in the conversation, but then someone else comes along and ingores that email by replying at an earlier point in the conversation. When you choose to clean up your conversation, the email that was ignored isn’t deleted because its content is different than the others.
- On the Home tab, in the Delete group, click Clean Up, and click Clean up Conversation.
- Click Clean up to remove emails with redundant information.