How confident are you that you can produce that old email when you need to?
Searching through email to find a suddenly important document can be an enormous hassle. What’s even more annoying is that you might have deleted that email after being warned about your inbox being full, and now you can’t produce it.
How can you be confident of producing the email without having to put thought and effort into managing a process along the way?
The Oh So Simple Solution: Gmail
By setting up your email to forward a copy of every email you ever receive or send to a dedicated Gmail account (chuckwestbrookwork@gmail.com for example), the problem virtually goes away. You’ll probably never have to worry about deleting emails (Gmail has more than 4 gigs of space for its users), you don’t have to worry about being able to find emails either (Gmail’s search feature is close to instant, and oh yeah, it’s by Google), and as a result, you now have a complete system in place to CYA and forget it.
Setting It Up
This discussion on setting up a set of rules for your email in Outlook is exactly what we’re talking about doing. Users of other email clients can use this as a point of reference and then play around to make it work for you.
Just create a rule for all incoming messages that a copy be forwarded to your Gmail account. For outbound messages, do the same thing or set it up to automatically place your Gmail address in the bcc (blind carbon copy) section.
That’s it! Now you’ll never have to worry about full inboxes or missing messages! (Any technological types that want to add to, correct, or clarify any of the “how to” stuff, please do so!)
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8 responses so far ↓
1 Darin // Oct 23, 2007 at 11:06 am
*Ding* says the lame plug bell! How much did they pay you to write about Gmail?
2 Chuck Westbrook // Oct 23, 2007 at 11:18 am
@Darin– I get 10% of the money people pay to sign up for Gmail if they come from my site.
3 Darin // Oct 23, 2007 at 11:22 am
10% of what money? I thought it was free. DO you need me to make a few more accounts?
4 Chuck Westbrook // Oct 23, 2007 at 11:26 am
@Darin– It IS free…
5 Chris A. // Oct 23, 2007 at 4:57 pm
hey,
Thanks for the great tip. This is really helpful. Now if I can just figure out how to get Lotus Notes to do it. I hate Lotus Notes.
6 Chuck Westbrook // Oct 23, 2007 at 5:02 pm
@Chris A.– I’m very glad you found it helpful. Maybe there’s a market for ihatelotusnotes.com…
Here’s a url that might be helpful as you work to figure it out: http://uts.fiu.edu/Email/V6inotesfaq4.htm#FAQ_revision_15
7 Gilldaman // Oct 23, 2007 at 7:21 pm
I guess this way when I’m on Gmail all day it’ll look like I’m doing “work”!
Outlook is also kinda nice with its archiving function, it doesn’t count towards my mailbox size. I may not be able to find the email quicking in the 1000’s of messages, but daggummit it’s there!
8 Chuck Westbrook // Oct 24, 2007 at 11:05 am
@Grilldaman– “Find that email I sent you 2 years ago about the thing or you’re fired!” I’m just saying… What if? ; )
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