{"id":4785,"date":"2019-04-15T15:37:29","date_gmt":"2019-04-15T21:37:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.michaellinenberger.com\/blog\/?p=4785"},"modified":"2019-04-15T15:37:29","modified_gmt":"2019-04-15T21:37:29","slug":"something-to-consider-creating-multiple-processed-mail-folders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.michaellinenberger.com\/blog\/something-to-consider-creating-multiple-processed-mail-folders\/","title":{"rendered":"Something to Consider: Creating Multiple Processed Mail Folders"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As you probably know, I recommend using a single-folder\nfiling system to speed filing<\/em> and finding<\/em> mail. Typically, I recommend you\ncreate a subfolder of the inbox and name it Processed Mail. Or, in newer copies\nof Outlook, I recommend that you use the new Archive\nfolder and button<\/a> that Microsoft provides in many recent versions of\nOutlook. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clearly, if you use such a single-folder approach, it\u2019s\ngoing to collect a lot of mail over time. And with the huge storage limits we\nhave these days on Exchange\u201450 GB in many cases\u2014there seems to be no reason to not\nlet that single folder expand as much as needed. As long as you don\u2019t exceed 50\nGB total storage, why not simply let that folder grow?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Item Count Limits on\nFolders<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, it turns out that the Outlook system gets a bit cranky when single folders have too many items in them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

According to Microsoft, if you have too many items in a folder, you can start to see performance issues during many everyday mail actions. Microsoft recommends having fewer than 100,000 items per folder for Outlook versions 2019, 2016, 2013, and 2010. For Outlook 2007 the limit is 50,000 items per folder. Read this reference<\/a> for more information on these limits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, you might want to take a look right now at the item\ncount in your Processed Mail folder or Archive folder. To do that, look in the\nlower left corner of the Outlook window when you have the folder open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

If you are getting close or over the limit, one solution\nmight be to create one or more additional Processed Mail folders to move older\nmail to. Using a date range in the title of each makes sense. For example, you\nmight create something like what I show below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The goal, of course, is to get the count in each folder below\nMicrosoft\u2019s item limits, so you\u2019d want to set date ranges accordingly to spread\nthe mail out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you use the Archive folder I mentioned above, you cannot\nchange its name, but you can of course create additional custom-named folders to\nhold older mail moved from the Archive folder. Perhaps create them as\nsubfolders of the Archive folder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does this defeat the single-folder filing approach? Well, to\na certain extent, yes. But with very old mail, it probably doesn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the way, all these solutions leave the mail on your\nserver. But Archiving mail off your\nmailbox server<\/em> may be a better solution since your server space could\neventually run out, and you may want to remove very old mail from search\nresults. See my article at\nthis link<\/a> to discuss various off-server archive solutions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As you probably know, I recommend using a single-folder filing system to speed filing and finding mail. Typically, I recommend you create a subfolder of the inbox and name it Processed Mail. Or, in newer copies of Outlook, I recommend … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[40,39],"class_list":["post-4785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-filing","tag-single-folder"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaellinenberger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaellinenberger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaellinenberger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaellinenberger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaellinenberger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4785"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaellinenberger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4786,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaellinenberger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4785\/revisions\/4786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaellinenberger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaellinenberger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaellinenberger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}