Outlook email

In Outlook you can export messages from is mail folders to a file, usually a comma-separated value file, which Excel can read. You can also supposedly export directly to an Excel or Access file, but I've never tried that.

In any case, he'll be able to read it, but he won't like the format.

sounds like one of the department managers I used to work for. If he has the message open, he should be able to use the "save as" command and change the file type to txt. If he save them all to the same directory he can later dump them onto cd. Idont know of a way to do it in batches which will probably be his next request. If you select multiple messages and save as a txt file it save it as one huge file with no seperations.

exporting with tab separated values for dos/windows (choose but prolly windows) allows you to read the messages quite clearly in a text editor (ie notepad). (this is how i backup my email incase i decide to ditch outlook 2000 *quite tempting quite often*) backing up 1066 messages in this way took about 15seconds and about 1.74mb in a text file. The disadvantage however is that html formated mail will be unreadable... and you can say bye bye to attachments. It is also difficult to read and differentiate between mails in this format...
i guess the easiest way is to ask the user "which" mail program they use, and why they cant use outlook 2000 (unless they are a vp or something who are they to make such demands on the Tech staff's time) if they are important enough, you could always forward it to a webmail server (preferably a local IMP server) then burn both data and server (you'll have to find one that their personal computer supports). then after hours of work setting it up... and hours on the phone to them helping them set it up, they can read their mail from cdrom :) yay :)

My recommendation is to ask them nicely to buy outlook 2000 then you can just give them the backup data on cd... if they insist they need it standaloneexplain to them the costs/benefits curve (it costs much more than it will benefit you)

How about creating a hotmail or similar internet email account. Then all he/she would have to do is create a filter and have all email sent to this account. Can be accessed anytime, anywhere, with a connection to the internet. You could also enable Web email off of the Exchange server....

You've gotten some good ideas so far, however the question that lingers in my mind is, why?

What would your user be doing with the email, if they didn't have an email program? They certainly couldn't reply or forward it. Considering the cost, installing Outlook on their home PC would be far less expensive than all the other options.

Also, forwarding the mail they want at home to a webmail account is certainly a fast and painless solution to this situation.

Last, simply providing themwith a CD burner, and instructing them on how to save an email to a text file will give the user exactly what they requested.

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