Discussion on:

10 annoying habits your Outlook users need to break

Id like to stop seeing users store the mail theyve already read (but want to keep) in folders IN THEIR DELETED ITEMS FOLDER!!!

True story. And strangely, something Ive seen more than a few times. :-|

Deleted items should not be "backup" encase they want to go and restore that email they decided to delete originally. If you think you might need it in future; don't delete it. Expect Deleted Items to go away; it's a last chance catcher for before you close outlook.

Sent items shouldn't be long term storage. Ideally, let outlook put reply email with the original (which, naturally, you have sorted into an applicable folder already right? right?).

Inbox.. absolutely, make folders to contain your sorted and stored email. But, make them off a separate folder not your inbox. You can't run recursive filtering rules against your inbox when all your mail is a sub-folder of it. It takes two seconds, create your tree of storage folders separate from your inbox folder. Oh, and not a bazillion folders off your root mailbox folder. make a "Stored" directory which contains your sprawl of overly descriptive stored mail folders.

Deleted Items, Sent Items, Inbox, Drafts.. these are Outlook's system folders and they have specific uses. Make your own folders separate from them.

Now.. the trick is massaging users into these better mail management habits.

We have also had several users use the Deleted Items for storing their most important emails. We usually try to suggest that you wouldn't put your most important documents in your garbage can at home, why would you think that is okay to do with your important emails?

I think it is because they can just click the "X" or hit the Delete button and "handle" those emails quickly. People do get testy if you empty their deleted items, though - sheesh. =)

Unfortunately I, too, have seen the misuse of the Deleted Items folder as storage. Users assume, incorrectly of course, that if they need to retrieve the item again, they can use the Retrieve Deleted Items tool. As we all know, that cache does not hold mail items indefinitely. Every time I've seen this I've given my forehead a palm-slap and wanted to bang my head against the wall.

As for mailbox management, we've removed that headache. We limit our users' mailboxes to 100MB. We have the server automatically empty items older than 14 days from the Deleted Items folder, and we set up an archive to run every 7 days moving all items older than 1 month to their Archive folder which is stored in their home folder on the network. Yes, it does create a little more work for us when setting up a user's mailbox, but it saves us headaches in the long run.

OMG I thought only my nutcase clients did this. One of them had over 2GB of messages in Deleted Items. I couldn't believe it! This has to be absolutely the worst practice I've ever come across.

My mom did that... (folders and important saved email in her deleted items folder) and then told me after I had already deleted what was in her deleted items...

Worst thing I have seen is the constant usage by people of their Deleted Items folder, to store stuff in it - they never empty it as they are afraid to lose something in it. I shake my head when I hear someone say "Oh I still use that for some things I'm not sure about but will put them there in case I don't want them!"
What a total crock, the Deleted Items folder is FOR things to be deleted. I had someone scream at me once as a junior tech cleaned their deleted items folder in a bid to clean up their system (multiple issues, not important.) Just amazes me the idiocy of people.

A second thing is the people who 'never' delete anything no matter what, They don't archive, delete or otherwise do anything that sane/normal people do. Their email is ALL stored in the 'inbox' and their mailboxes (or PST files) are pushing 10Gb in size or worse... those people make me shudder (10gb is fine on Exchange & office 2010 PST files... but not 2003 & earlier...

Similar issues here. It turns out it's actually the number of items in an indavidual folder rather than the size of the overall OST/PST that causes problems. You start going over 5000 items in a folder and outlook starts having trouble keeping up. Hopefully that 10Gb of PST isn't 100k of items in the inbox.. but then, it probably is.

It's always the lawyers who want to keep everything forever. Unfortunately, the owners of a couple places I work with are lawyers. I think one guy is up to a 20GB mailbox.

The bad thing is he has needed some of that mail from ancient times for some litigation so his behavior is justified.

not justified. explained. If he needs documents archived for legitimate reasons, they should be archived out of his mailbox.

I regularly get people say" i cant get my contacts from home" or i lost all my contacts when i upgraded my computer.
Outlook 2010 apparently keeps the nickname list in a hidden message but prior to that you always had to remember to copy the nickname file when upgrading.
I regularly need to teach outlook users to put people into contacts

Previous versions do it too. In 2003 and 2007, you can find these cached names in this hidden file:

C: \ Documents & Settings \ username \ Application Data \ Microsoft \ Outlook \ outlook.nk2

and in 2010:

C: \ Users \ username \ AppData \ Roaming \ Microsoft \ Outlook \ outlook.nks

2010 at least provides a way for the user to manage these via the new 'Suggested Contacts' folder.

Even though it's possible to manage this file, it can still be a big pain. That file gets corrupted easily and sometimes the addresses in the file are not able to be sent to. This is especially true when moving to/from Exchange. I try to tell users not to rely on that file, but they end up using it instead of their contact list. It doesn't sync with the server and gets corrupted or they move PCs and lose everything. I'm actually on my way to work on an issue for this very problem today.

It's a huge pain in the keister. I'd love to disable it; it provides a crutch to users too lazy to create proper Contacts.

Even though it's possible to retrieve those items, we refuse to do it. Because as we all know if the hard drive craps out, it's no longer possible and it's impossible to explain the difference to our users. Trust me, after a couple of times of "losing their contacts", they will remember to enter contacts in the "real" Contacts List.

I've seen one guy doing worse than using deleted items: he kept moving all of the messages he did not like (for some reason: people complaining, or work to be done, or whatever) to his spam folder. Hoping to find some time to check it and sort everything.
I realised he was using it that way... the week after an information meeting explained to everyone in the organization new automated email management rules would automatically empty the spam folder after 40 days.
Of course he had moved the invitation for that information meeting in his spam folder...

At most of the companies I've worked for/with that used Exchange, I found that people ended up deleting as much as they could because the IT dept kept telling them that their accounts were too large and they needed to archive and/or delete. The employees would begrudgingly do one or both, usually ending up losing a few they shouldn't have. Then especially if they had laptops, several people a year would lose their archives to a hard drive crash or something... losing all the rest.

Now with storage being cheap enough to let everyone continue to use their email as a file transfer service and local backups being more common, people aren't being harassed to delete or losing everything so much anymore.

I get so tired of seeing the message from "system administrator", "Your mailbox is over its size limit." I keep moving mail to various folders on local drive on our network as my Outlook data folder, and then lose it because I forgot where I put it. Yet still every morning it's "Your mailbox is over its size limit."

It's not the number of messages that push your mailbox over the limit. It's the size of the attachments.

Add the 'Size' column (right-click any column heading, then click 'Field Chooser'; drag 'Size' next to the other headings), sort by it in descending order (click the 'Size' header twice), and your troublemakers will be at the top.

Ask yourself if you need the e-mail text or just the attachment. If possible, save the attachment separate from the e-mail (right-click the attachment and pick 'Save As'), then throw the e-mail away.

Also, check your calendar. Often meeting arrangers will attach files to appointments.

You get an email from someone with an attachment which means nothing in and of itself with the explanation provided in the email. Attachments ones are the first things I move. most of the ones without attachmments can be deleted. But "the hits just keep on coming."

I've got users who will open their mail, edit an attachment and attempt to save it back to their mail ! only problem is, sometimes they don't click save and lose a whole days work!! just save the attachment people!!!