Remember that email you got with that password you needed?

Where is that email with your bank information or vacation itinerary?

We’ve all seen Microsoft Outlook email archiving pop up and often they hit yes to archive old emails without knowing what it does. What is email archiving and how does it help? Is it worth it for the average person to archive emails? Does it save space or make it quicker to open emails? Many users have these questions when they first hear the term email archiving. Email archiving is an amazing tool for businesses, although for personal use email archiving may not offer many benefits.

Boston Mayor Isn’t Archiving his Emails

In the case of Boston City Hall, a close advisor to Mayor Menino has been reported to have deleted items from his inbox, sent box and the deleted/trash folder on a daily basis prior to traditional end-of-day tape backup. Now the Massachusetts Secretary of State has forced the hiring of an independent expert to retrieve City Hall emails that were “improperly deleted.” If a Microsoft Exchange archiving solution had been implemented, these email records, including email, calendar items and records of email deletions, would have been captured immediately as they happened, regardless of what was stored on backup tapes at the end of the day.

UPDATE:
Metalogix has just released an email archiving product that is soooo much better than even other company’s solutions like Symantec. And their offering Microsoft Exchange email archiving at only $15 per mailbox. Microsoft Exchange Administrators use Metalogix Professional Archive Manager for Exchange to dramatically improve Exchange performance and:

* Decrease the mail store by 80% and provide an unlimited mailbox
* Cut backup and—more importantly—RESTORES by 50%
* Get one-click disaster recovery
* Respond to E-discovery requests in minutes, without IT assistance
Check out their free trial here.

Email archiving allows a company to store emails on a private server for its employees to refer back too at a later time. Many companies often will send out updates on a new procedure, which can be missed if a person that works for the company was not in the office that day. Email archiving can also be an excellent tool for training new employees on current and new procedures. Once you access the server files, it is easy to direct an employee to a certain file or old email that is in the system saving someone hours looking for it and resending it to single or multiple users.

Why is Archiving Emails Important?

One example of this is, imagine you run into a problem at work that only happens every 2 months, you remember getting the email on the proper procedure, although you have had so many emails since the update you just cannot find it. Rather than spending hours looking for one single email, often times a company server is available with file named procedures in email archives, for that problem, and you can just open, read it or you can re-email it to yourself and flag it for later use. Email archiving saves time and space on employee’s personal computer for that reason alone.

Personal email archiving may not seem to make much since when it is easy to simply store important emails in a private folder; however, many users often forget to move an email that they need until it is too late. Making auto email archiving a nice feature, it is also very useful with so many professional email users now working from home as much as from work. Smart phone users are very used to synchronizing emails at home as well as work, and email archiving those emails to home can be as much of a time saver while working at home too, although they do take up space on your personal computer.

Email archiving may not seem like it is very useful when you haven’t had a need for it, until you need an important email and find that you do not have it. The pop up from Microsoft may have convinced many users to use email archiving without knowing what email archiving can do. Now knowing you possibly still have those emails you thought you lost can now be a major cause for a sigh of relief. Go check that email archive folder and see if you can find what you are looking for, and never forget where it is again.

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