Managing email accounts

There is no foolproof method unfortunately. I worked for 32 years in IT support so saw the birth of email and its evolution and one of the constant issues has (and I think will always be) management of the inbox.

What I do tend to do is have an email client like Outlook on my computer and when I get emails arrive I will set up a rule that automatically copies it to a Personal Folder - sort of an offline store of emails on the computer. This gives me a audit copy if you like so I can go back and see all the emails I recieved.

There is a good article on how to use rules here:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/manage-email-messages-by-using-rules-in-outlook-c24f5dea-9465-4df4-ad17-a50704d66c59

Since the audit copy is automatic I will then go about deleting the junk or anything I don't want to keep to thin things down.

Lastly I will create subfolders under my inbox and file things away. This is time consuming if you get a lot of emails so expect it to build up sometimes.

Lastly I schedule a backup time where I will archive off emails from the subfolders into another Personal Folder ( the guide for creating these, or PST files as they are called, is here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/create-an-outlook-data-file-pst-to-save-your-information-17a13ca2-df52-48e8-b933-4c84c2aabe7c )

This means the mail file for my inbox on my computer and on the server never gets too big and I get snapshops of my mail through time.

For me a quarterly backup fits my needs but it was a bit more frequent when I was running several companies due to the volume. If you are a light mail user then annualy is probably fine.

That is the rought picture of how I do it. Let me know if you want any more specific support.

There is no foolproof method unfortunately. I worked for 32 years in IT support so saw the birth of email and its evolution and one of the constant issues has (and I think will always be) management of the inbox.

What I do tend to do is have an email client like Outlook on my computer and when I get emails arrive I will set up a rule that automatically copies it to a Personal Folder - sort of an offline store of emails on the computer. This gives me a audit copy if you like so I can go back and see all the emails I recieved.

There is a good article on how to use rules here:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/manage-email-messages-by-using-rules-in-outlook-c24f5dea-9465-4df4-ad17-a50704d66c59

Since the audit copy is automatic I will then go about deleting the junk or anything I don't want to keep to thin things down.

Lastly I will create subfolders under my inbox and file things away. This is time consuming if you get a lot of emails so expect it to build up sometimes.

Lastly I schedule a backup time where I will archive off emails from the subfolders into another Personal Folder ( the guide for creating these, or PST files as they are called, is here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/create-an-outlook-data-file-pst-to-save-your-information-17a13ca2-df52-48e8-b933-4c84c2aabe7c )

This means the mail file for my inbox on my computer and on the server never gets too big and I get snapshops of my mail through time.

For me a quarterly backup fits my needs but it was a bit more frequent when I was running several companies due to the volume. If you are a light mail user then annualy is probably fine.

That is the rought picture of how I do it. Let me know if you want any more specific support.

Thanks so much for posting Iain .   I think an offline folder for emails sounds very helpful.    I'll take a look at my inbox and see if I can do that.