Hi Louise,
This is always a problem, particularly when you need to handle attachments
as well.
Saving in .txt, .rtf or .htm format only saves the e-mail message, not the
attachments.
Saving in .msg format saves the message and attachments, but you need
Outlook to be installed to be able to view. Who knows if you'll be able to
view these in future ?
I wouldn't worry about the storage space. If it is more it is because of the
attachments.
You could of course save only the message (without attachments) and then
save each attachment separately (in their native format), but would users
get this right ?
All-in-all I think I favour converting e-mails to Acrobat (.pdf) format (or
to .tif format) and saving these.
Steve Norris
Alliance Group
http://www.alliancegroup.co.uk
> -----Original Message-----
> From: The UK Records Management mailing list
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of
> Louise Travers
> Sent: 30 June 2005 14:11
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Saving Emails
>
>
> We have to issue interim guidance to our business on saving
> email messages
> to shared drives. We will consider the issue more roundly at
> a later stage
> in our records management programme but we need to issue this interim
> guidance at short notice to fit with the timelines in another
> project and
> saving to network drives is currently the only feasible option.
>
> It is really the question of format I am most concerned with. It is
> unlikely we will get people to change formats later when we develop
> our "proper" policy so I suspect whatever we create now will
> remain with
> us. I am aware that there are issues of integrity with some
> message formats
> (ie .rtf) and of increased storage space with others
> (ie.msg). Have any
> colleagues already done any deeper research around this or
> developed their
> own guidance they would be willing to share with me?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Louise
>
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