Using Email Service as Data Storage – Not Good.

Posted by Robert Lane on with 0 Comment

More and more people are using their email application as a place to save all the data that is sent back and forth.  As IT gets more efficient and stronger people are moving faster.  It is easier to leave the files you received via email from your client in your mailbox than it is to take the time to move it to a more appropriate folder not in your email program.  Why is this a problem?  Suppose you lose your mail service or your email data file?  Many times, backup services don’t backup the email data file. So many companies realize after a problem that their email has not been backed up.

Here are some tips that can really help you:

  1. Make sure that you have a backup of your email. If your email is hosted somewhere, make sure that the hosting partner is backing up the data files, or, you ask if they have an add-on service that can do it. If not, there are third party solutions that you can engage to do it.
  2. As the emails come in, save all attachments to the respective client folders in My Documents, not folders created in Outlook or respective email solution. If you client sends you a file, make sure you take the extra minute to save that to their folder. If the name is not descriptive, change it to better explain what the file is. Trust me, in the long run you will be glad you did this.
  3. Make sure you are employing your Archive feature in your email program. This is another way of storing your emails but also, you can have your archive folder backed up. Archiving also keeps the inbox size down.
  4. Spend an extra second or two getting rid of junk mail as it comes in. Either click on Block or Send to Junk or simply delete the junk email.

These tips will help you reduce the junk in your email data file, create redundancy so that you can find the data in more than one place in the event of an emergency, and, help you find information such as client files better.

Hope this helps.

Robert Lane

For further information contact Robert Lane of ASE, Inc. @ 703-273-8388 ext. 111.  Robert.Lane@goaseinc.com; goaseinc-staging.coydhea2-liquidwebsites.com. ASE, Inc. is an IT Network Support Services & Consulting firm providing IT engineering and hosted & managed services in the Washington DC metropolitan area since 2000.