re: indexing -- it's a time consuming process.

I have a bunch of folders that I use the way my brain works. It's not so esoteric that no one could understand it, but it could probably be more efficient.

I use my inbox like a to-do list and my new year's resolution is to keep it under 100 messages. That's working pretty well so far.

Anonymous wrote:Mine is very organized into folders - even the sent items are sorted into annual folders.

Off the point of the post, I am using outlook 13 and cannot get it to search to save my life. It has something to do with indexing. I've googled and tried everything, but it's never a reliable fix. I never had this problem in earlier versions, but I'm not sure if it's a Windows 8/10 thing, or outlook.

You are right - i can't remember how to do it, but everything has to be re-indexed. My IT group has to re-do it for me every once in a while. Maybe someone on here can post the steps who knows more than me.

Anonymous wrote:DH paid for some special program to index all of his email so he can get better search results. He ran it over thanksgiving and it took a whole day to index it all.

Your IT team may be able to do this too - its something to do with the .pst folders I think and re-indexing.

Nope. I have archive folders, one for each year, where I store older stuff. Other than that, everything stays in my inbox. I find that searching is faster than organizing the several dozen or hundred+ emails I get every day. From watching people who have a complicated "organize by project" type system, it still usually takes them just as long to find an email as it takes me to open my inbox and search for a keyword or two.

I do use the "follow up" flag to mark emails that require action. I check that list at least twice a day - once in the morning to plan my to-do list for the day, and once late afternoon to check for anything that NEEDS to be finished before I leave for the day.

My inbox is exclusively for action items. Informational emails or things that require no action on my part are immediately filed away. I keep every email sent and received in PST files to keep them locally stored (except for spam) and Outlook indexes it all for easy searching.

It's a running bit with my coworkers that if someone needs an email dated "I think it was two years ago" from "maybe somebody on Team XYZ" about "something related to policy ABC" I'll be able to find it for them in 5 minutes or less.

Mine is very organized into folders - even the sent items are sorted into annual folders.

Off the point of the post, I am using outlook 13 and cannot get it to search to save my life. It has something to do with indexing. I've googled and tried everything, but it's never a reliable fix. I never had this problem in earlier versions, but I'm not sure if it's a Windows 8/10 thing, or outlook.

Anonymous wrote:I have a million folders and file or delete things as soon as my responsibility to do something or respond is complete. I usually have less than 20 in my inbox at any given time which dictates my to do list. Like pp said, it is the most organized area of my life.

Same here. Any time my inbox (i.e. to do list) gets to be over 30 items or so, I feel stressed out. Alas, today there are 77 items in it. Hoping to get to as many of them as possible before we lose power!

I only flag emails that contain tasks anymore. Too many emails to organize them all. I delete a lot of emails, too.