By David Gewirtz
This week, rather than provide one long answer to a particularly vexing Outlook problem, we've decided to gather up a few recent letters to the editor and present them for your reading pleasure. Let's kick it off with a follow-up to last week's "How to combine PST files".
It's all touch and go
Russ Veinot asks:
Does anyone know a way to select multiple subfolders in a PST and be able to move them all to another PST? Dragging one by one to a new PST can be time consuming if you have a lot of folders. The interface only seems to let you select and move one at a time.
Nope. Such is life.
Computing Unplugged Contributing Editor Bill Mann tells us that there's a PST converter in Outlook 2007, but since he's looking at a beta, we can't be sure until the final product is released.
How many rules does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Jeffrey Carpenter, President of Monticello Homes writes:
I have been using folders per your latest email to organize my email. I have always used to rules to do most of this. Recently we started using MS Exchange 2003, which puts a limit of 50 rules. (not enough). So we redid my profile so I could have my rules based on my computer (client side) instead of server based. It is still being limited to 50 rules for some reason. Do you have any recommendations? I need more rules.
The article Jeffrey's referencing is a June favorite by Denise Amrich, "Using folders with Outlook to organize your mail" (at http://www.outlookpower.com/issues/issue200605/00001772001.html).
Fundamentally, if you need more than fifty rules, you're not thinking generally enough. I get more than 2,000 messages a day and I'm able to manage it all with about 15 rules.
Let's think about this like you would a house. You don't have a room specifically for your underwear and another one for your forks, right? Instead, you have a bedroom, which has a closet for all your clothing. Likewise, you have a kitchen, which is where you do all your cooking.
The same should apply to your rules and folders. You probably shouldn't have an individual folder for each correspondent. It's far easier to have a folder for "correspondence". Into it, place all the basic correspondence you get from all your key correspondents. You can have a single rule that'll do this. If you get a new correspondent, just update that one rule. By using grouping and all of Outlook's fancy View options, you can arrange that folder anyway you want.
Likewise, if you use rules for junk email, you can use a single rule to catch everything that goes to your Junk folder. I prefer using a Bayesian spam filter, but you can accomplish pretty much the same thing with a single rule.
Anyway, Jeffrey, I'd rethink your approach. 'Tis not more rules you need -- just a better approach to managing them.
