Introduction

I have two goals when organizing my email:

Ensure that I don’t miss anything (since the volume of email is high).
Ensure I am able to easily retrieve information.

The discussion below is divided into two sections: how I file, and how I find. The two are directly linked; since my “find” technique builds upon the filing method.

A. How I File

Here’s how I organize, along with some “why” notes (note that I have been using this system since 1997 or 1998):

Several times a day I file email in my Inbox and Sent boxes. This is how I track what items need attention. Once I have dealt with an email I file it (see below). I know that anything unfiled requires my attention.

For example, if I receive a request for something, it sits in my Inbox until I reply. I use quoted reply and delete the original email when I reply. My reply sits in my Sent Items folder if I haven’t completely fulfilled the request; otherwise I file it. If the original email contained an attachment, then instead of deleting it I might file it (if I thought the attachment might be needed later).

Outlook’s Autoarchive feature is a key component of how I keep my email organized; you’ll see several references to it herein.
I have three local PST files open from Outlook at all times: “Attic.pst”, “Personal Folders.pst”, and “archive.pst”. Inside Outlook they are named, “Attic“, “Personal Folders“, and “Archive 2005-06 – “, respectively. The names of the first two are constant, the third one changes over time (although the .PST filename Outlook opens never changes).

Attic — I save all email for six months; even the email I deem not worth filing for long term storage. At least once a day I move all email from my Deleted Items folder into a subfolder in Attic named YYYY-DD. On the first day of each month I create a new YYYY-DD folder and delete the oldest one; so, as you can see in the image below, I always have 7 subfolders. Each of these subfolders, plus the overarching Attic folder, has Autoarchiving turn off (see image at right). Saving all deleted email for 6 months allows me to retrieve something I missed the first time around; something that saves my butt a couple of times a year. Note that Attic and all its subfolders have their Autoarchiving settings set to “Do not archive items in this folder.“
Personal Folders — This is where I file my email; when in step 1 I said that several times a day I move messages from my Inbox and Sent Items folders. As you can see, the structure is pretty simple. I work for a consulting firm, so the folders are indicative of a consulting firm’s business structure. Some folders, like Engagements (which are the projects I work), change over time. Other folders, like Practices, do not. To manage the size of the Personal Folders.pst file, and keep it from becoming overly large, I use Autoarchiving. Each time I create a new folder in the Personal Folders.pst I explicitly set its Autoarchive settings. Some folders are set to 12 months (for example, “Personal”) and others to shorter periods of time. Emails related to a specific transaction eventually get moved out and periodically I check the various subfolders there and remove the empty ones.
Archive 2005-06 – (the archive.pst file) — The .PST file has the name “archive.pst” because that is Outlook’s default name for that file and my philosophy is to change as few defaults settings as possible. I have the overall Outlook Autoarchive option set to never permanently delete anything; rather, it moves mail to the archive.pst file (see image to the right). When Outlook moves an item to the archive folder, it recreates the folder structure of the original PST file; so, my archive.pst file automatically contains the same folder structure as my Personal Folders.pst file. The internal-to-Outlook name of my archive.pst file changes periodically because I keep my .pst files from getting larger than 500 MB in size. Hence, when archive.pst approaches 500 MB I rename it to something that indicates the period of time it covers; for example, “Archive 2004-06 – 2005 05.pst” (the next time Autoarchive runs, it creates a new archive.pst file).

Some final notes on filing:

when I work a large, long-term project I create a PST solely for use with that project. In that project-specific .PST file I create a subfolder structure identical to the one found in Personal Folders.pst; that is, a subfolder with the project’s name sitting inside a “Transactions” folder. This is a slight violation of my “only 3 .PST files open” rule, but by maintaining the folder structure I enable finding the data later. Also, if that transaction folder grows larger than 500 MB then I close it and create a new single-transaction .PST; adding a date range to the filename. For example, on a recent 2.5 year long project I had 10 .PSTs, named “PName 2005-02 -- 2005-04.pst”, “PName 2005-05 -- 2005-07.pst”, etc.
I have moved all of my .PST files out of the default Outlook location (buried somewhere in a hidden folder) and put them into a folder called Outlook that sits inside my “My Documents” folder. This includes the archive.pst file (you have to change the location pointed to by the Autoarchive options panel at ToolsàOptionsà[Other]àAutoarchive). This makes monitoring .PST file sizes much easier

B. How I Find

For many years I used the above filing technique along with a manual searching method; that is, because the files all have a date range in the filename I was easily able to open one or two PSTs and then use MS Outlook’s Advanced Find panel to search out the specific message I was looking for. Searches spanning long periods of time were difficult because Advanced Find will only search one .PST file at a time.

A couple of years ago I licensed a copy of X1 (see http://www.x1.com/). The product is relatively inexpensive: $50. X1 allows all of your .PST files to be searched at the same time—without the need for those .PST files to be open inside your MS Outlook session; however, to quickly narrow the scope of your searches you need to have consistently organized your mail. Note, X1 also indexes all of the other documents on your hard drive.

X1 is much more effective than the free Google desktop search because of the manner in which it presents its search results and because it allows you to file mail items from its interface. It is also much better than the free MS email search plug-in, Lookout; because Lookout is limited to indexing 1 GB of email (after which it begins to crash).