[Closed] Any Outlook/Windows experts in - help with storing emails

What are the compliance issues that stop you storing the emails in mailbox folders? Outlook is just the client to access the mailbox. The mailbox is on the Exchange (presumably) server.

Create folders inside your mailbox within Outlook, drag them there instead. Pulling them out to the file system is absolute madness for far too many reasons for me to be bothered to list.

compliance issues dictate it can’t be an Outlook based solution

I highly doubt that. Someone somewhere has misread or misunderstood something.

Creating folders within Outlook isn't an "Outlook solution," it's an Exchange solution, Outlook is just a window onto the server. Perhaps this "compliance reason" is exactly the opposite of what you're doing - ie, it can't be a client-based (Outlook) solution but rather a server-based (Exchange / Office 365) one?

If there is an elegant solution to grouping all files together on the server

That's exactly what you're doing with what I've described above.

To clarify the compliance issues. It's not a misunderstanding of the rules - I just need to work like this until I can convince compliance that the base premise works. And yes, I fully understand the difference between Exchange and Outlook but unfortunately others at work do not and they do not want it Exchange based.

So unfortunately I need to store them off Exchange and in a file as and when they come in for now. Trust me, I appreciate the solution is far from conventional but sometimes needs must to move on to the next step of a more elegant solutions.

Compliance has a deep mistrust of technology and would rather have fully paper based files but we simply cannot carry on working as we are so I need to take baby steps here. As an aside this is exactly how an international insurance company I worked for based their paperless solution in the department I worked - we literally had to drag and drop then rename each email as it came it!

Do you have SharePoint in any form? If you put versioning on, dragging a new email in (opened in Explorer) might just count it as a new version.

But as above, seems a bit bonkers to move them outside of exchange. They're emails afterall.

I know you said you didn't want to rename emails but simply adding the date once you copy emails to a folder works well.

200201 Re: Client XYZ

Print the mails to PDF. You could probably write a macro to do just that. Nasty horrid way of working.

Alternatively, you could set up a pile of folders in outlook, then archive each of them to separate PST files. Set the archive rule to be every 1 day and store the archive on a shared folder so you can all be encumbered within this mess.

You could try telling the compliance imbecile that saving the message as a file strips the important tracing metadata out of the message making the mail a non-compliant entity (or at least makes it editable and so worthless in court, but they’d know that right, because they’re not an imbecile?)

I'd just use the outlook folders, simple (I do actually), and you can set rules up so you don't have to manually move them. It's also backed up. If needed, you could also copy over a folder out of outlook.

Christ, do people still use PST?????

Like Cougar says, create folders in your inbox and stick them in there.

Like Cougar says, create folders in your inbox and stick them in there.

And get clued up on exchange compliance/security, MS have great online resources, ready for compliance getting arsey.

Danny, what industry are you? Legal?

I can dig out some case studies/links if you are looking to convince your compliance people but I appreciate it may not be a battle that's worth you taking on at the moment.

I'm a Technology Strategist for Microsoft - I work with very big companies in utilities who also need convincing around security, compliance etc. There are some very traditional ways of thinking that don't really align with newer technology or security threats.

It’s not a misunderstanding of the rules
...
Compliance has a deep mistrust of technology

I stand by what I said then. They're imbeciles (as hot_fiat said). I'd argue that there is zero reason to work in the manner you're suggesting and ask them to provide the legal documentation that says otherwise.

What happens when you move all your emails into a folder and then your hard drive dies? How "compliant" will you be then?

It's idiocracy like this that would make me start job-hunting.

Defo hook up with @beej , I can also point you at compliance resources either through a mate in Splunk or in my home ground at Quest (though our compliance story is pretty poor right now, the principles still apply: keep things native, don’t touch the logs or data, as soon as you, or any human, can meddle it becomes no-compliant / inadmissible).

Ignorance around compliance is still pretty prevalent in loads of industries, it’s only when people get stung that they actually make an effort (or get beaten around the head by the ICO, SEC or FCA).

Go armed with white papers. I remember, as a very lowly Exchange admin, having to explain to the head of payroll and Vice chancellor at a very prestigious university, why using mail read receipts in a business process was stupid. Without published papers in my hand I would have been laughed down.

Thanks all for the thoughts. Re: the compliance issue - it’s nothing to do with the legal/regulatory issues. Just the compliance function likes things to be done in a particular way and that’s the end of it. And that way involves lots of printing and scanning and stuff.

I’ve give rogue though and am trying the Exchange route as it is by far the most sensible way forward. Living dangerously and all that 🙂

I was about to say, have you tried ignoring them?

Cougar's 5th Law of IT: It's easier to obtain forgiveness than permission.