size of outlook message files

[lionelhill]

I'm just wondering if I'm being hugely stupid:

I'm looking for a way in which our group can archive e-mail correspondence so that it's accessible to anyone in the group (i.e. job-related e-mails where anyone in the group might need to look at who wrote what to whom about that job, at any time years after the event).

Since we already have lots of other files associated with jobs, which we're already saving, the most logical thing would be to save e-mails as messages in the same way.

Looking at a typical saved Outlook message (which is completely devoid of any pictures, electronic signatures or anything; it's plain text), I have a 3K text that has become a 213K file as an outlook message. Strewth! What have I done wrong? I know disk-space is cheap, but this is painful.

Am I trying to do something stupid? If not, am I using Outlook in a stupid way, and hence the silly file sizes?

 

[kjv1611]

I don't think that's a bad idea. And dealing in KB, it doesn't take much, really, to go from 3KB to 213KB.

If you really only need the text from those emails, though, you could start copying out each email, and pasting to a text file each time. Or if you wanted to automate it, I'm sure you could set up a small VBA script behind a button to save email messages to text for you.. you could even specify the default location, file naming scheme, etc, all in the code, so you and your team wouldn't have to constantly remember what/how to do it. If you want to go the VBA route, then post over in forum707, and I'm sure at least one of us can help you take a crack at getting it together.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[lionelhill]

Thanks for the reply and hints; I hadn't thought of a VBA approach, which would definitely make things more user-friendly and maximise the chance that people do things properly.

 

[kjv1611]

Yeah, just bear in mind that if you leave the job at one point in the future, that someone else can come behind you and read the code if necessary, so they can know what's going on. That's one common problem with custom programming that seems to pop up all the time - lack of documentation. I know I have to keep kicking my own self to try and document at least some portions of code.. really ought to provide as much documentation as possible.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me