MS Outlook productivity question

[rstacpoole]

I'm using MS Office 2013. The task that takes me the most amount of time is moving emails from the in-box to my filing system. Do you have any general hints of the best way to do this?

I am specifically interested in reducing the amount of time that it takes to expose directories. As I go down the directory tree, I see more of the sub-directories that are available to me popping up, which i s great. However, I then have to spend more time scrolling up and down to find the specific directory I want to file an email in. Ideally, I'm hoping that there is a way I can automatically close all directories to their root -1 status, but any hints would be appreciated. Another way I am thinking of doing this is getting an extra screen, opening 3 windows in it, setting all these to my directory structure and then scrolling each to 1/3 of my file structure.

 

[Yevrag35]

Are the emails you're moving similar in any way? Cause if so, you could always just make a filter rule that just puts the new email in a specific folder if it meets certain criteria.

 

[rstacpoole]

Thanks for your reply. Similar? No. It is more the look-process-file workflow that I'm trying to optimize rather than the automate-file process to which you refer.

 

[Lexluethar]

How are these messages stored? Are they in your mailbox and you are expanding sub folders in your mailbox, or are they in a PST and you are storing them in sub folders in the PST?

I will tell you from experience, Outlook IS NOT a storage system and to use it like one is a mistake. For numerous reasons, two main ones being limitation of 2 GB data size limits (you can go higher but its not recommended) and it's not designed for storage, which is why it takes FOREVER to expand folders that have a lot of data.

I would suggest either looking into a data management system that integrates with Exchange, or look into storing the messages within windows itself.

 

[Yevrag35]

I will tell you from experience, Outlook IS NOT a storage system and to use it like one is a mistake.

I wholeheartedly agree with this. Once .ost's start getting too big, freaky stuff starts to happen to Outlook as a whole (one example, opening compose a new message only shows a white blank window, no matter how many times you close and reopen it).

 

[rstacpoole]

This is a good article that makes sense, sort of says ignore the filing, put everything into a single bucket and learn how to search. Works for me, Ten email commandments - FT.com

 

[Lexluethar]

You can do that - but you are still going to run into performance issues when you leave everything in one folder and you try to expand that folder. Searching is hit and miss too, if you are on Windows 7 Outlook by default uses the Windows Indexer in order to search your OST or any PST files attached in outlook. If indexing is not functioning properly (something that will occur constantly once you hit about 3 GB mailbox sizes) or not complete your search results will not be accurate.

Get used to archiving / storing your messages elsewhere, on your Exchange server or in PST format will fail every time in the long-run.

 

[rstacpoole]

Thanks Lex. The other recommendation i had was sanebox ... might look into that on the basis of your warning