Data Backup – Email Archives

Enterprises and individuals rely largely on emails to store all their personal, financial, business, and family information. All this hangs around in the inbox or email folders, ready to be accessed at any time. If the inbox is corrupted, or the webmail account is hacked, or any number of worst-case scenarios arises, you could find that precious data is gone forever.

All your email archives (Outlook Express and Microsoft Outlook) are stored on the hard drives. If a computer crashes, a virus attacks, or any program messes up the information on the hard drive, then all the important email information is lost. Don’t let that happen to you. To make sure you don’t lose all this in case of a hard disk crash or some other disaster, you can create backup copies of your emails.

All your mails, contacts, calendars, and almost every other detail you use are in Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express.  Email programs seem quite simple, but in terms of structure, folders, and information, they are quite complex. Each email program stores data in different places on your hard drive. Besides the messages in your inbox and your personal address book, your email program also keeps track of the folders you use to sort your mails, your email profile and much more. To do a thorough backup you will need to backup a variety of folders and files, but backing up your mail data is still easy.

The simplest way to backup information in you email program is to use a Backup Program/Software.  A lot depends on which email client you are using. The easiest way to transfer your email messages, address book, accounts and other information is with the help of a third-party utility that can back it up at one end and then restore it all with the minimum of fuss.

The other way to backup your emails is to simply copy them to another folder on your computer or an alternate drive. Below are the steps explaining how you can backup emails from Outlook Express and Microsoft Outlook.

Steps to backup emails in Outlook Express:

1. Create a folder on your hard drive, something like “OEbackup”.
2. Now, find the special location of the email folders on you hard drive.
3. To do that, from the Outlook Express menu bar, click on Tools-> Options-> Maintenance tab-> Store Folder.
4. When you click the Store Folder button, a window will pop-up with the path for the emails and email folders on the hard drive.
5. Copy it and paste the same into the Run dialogue box (Start->Run) and click OK.
6. This will show all of the items in Outlook Express Store Location.
7. Outlook Express folders end with the three letters DBX, simply copy them and paste it into the OEbackup folder first created.
8. You can also copy the files and folders to another storage media like a pen drive, external hard drive etc…

Steps to backup emails in Microsoft Outlook:

The Personal Folder file (.pst / PST) is the place where Outlook stores its data. Personal Folder file contains all of your Outlook folders, including the Inbox, Calendar, and Contacts. You may have a single .pst file, and you may also have an additional .pst file that you use to archive messages Below are the simple steps to backup your PST files. By backing up these PST files you will be backing up all your Outlook information.

1. Firstly, you need to find the location of your data files.
2. From Microsoft Outlook menu bar click File->Data File Management->Data Files.
3. Highlight the Personal Folders and click on the “Open Folder…” icon. Clicking on this icon will automatically launch Windows Explorer and take you to the location where this data file is stored.
4. Within the folder you will find an outlook.pst file. Copy this file to another safe location on the hard drive or to another storage media like a zip disk, CDROM, external hard drive etc.
5. You will need to completely exit Outlook prior to copying these files.
6. In case of any damage to the original outlook mails you can easily, import the .pst files from the backup.

Tips for an Effective Email

Email is an essential tool for collaboration and communication. In simple terms, Email is simply communicating with the written word. When you send a mail, you are representing yourself, your business unit and your company, to a wide range of internal and external recipients. So, it is very important that an email is being understood, for providing a positive impression and more importantly for business; credible and professional.

Email is now a mainstream business communication platform. Here are some tips for writing/drafting an effective email. Follow these simple steps to make accurate, timely and positive impressions on the reader of the mail. 

1. Subject line: The subject line should be clear and specific. It is the subject that determines whether the email will be read or not. It should encourage the reader to open and read the email. It is very essential to compose a meaningful subject line. An informative subject line saves the recipient’s time and ensures your emails are prioritized by the reader. Do not use all caps or all small case, it can lend to the impression you may be spammer. Try to keep it short and self explanatory.
2. Addressing: Always use the person’s name in the salutation. It’s pretty common to use a person’s first name, even when contacting someone for the first time, but use your own judgment regarding when it’s appropriate to be formal or informal.
3. Have a great opening: First impressions are important. Your first one or two sentences dictate whether your message gets read or deleted. Make your opening words count. Use short sentences and simple words.
4. To the point: Avoid long paragraphs. Keep sentences short. Use bullets for lists. Use subtitles to break up long emails. Use strong active verbs. Avoid jargon and acronyms. Your chances of getting a quick response will vastly improve when you keep your emails brief.
5. Highlight actions and key points: Underlining, highlighting or bold to help people concentrate on the key points is a very good practice. You can also highlight action items and important dates that are important.
6. Respect privacy in group emails: When you are sending mails to a group, try to maintain the privacy of the recipient. Use BCC field when emailing a group of contacts who do not personally know each other. Use CC field when there are few individuals/organizations involved in a discussion.
7. Formatting: Formatting an email is very necessary to be sure that 90% of the people you’re emailing your message to, can see it properly. There are several important points to be considered while formatting an email. 1. Line length, this is considered to be the most important element when formatting. It’s the main cause of the silly looking email. 2. Make sure your paragraphs are short, maybe around five or six lines, anything longer will take up too much space and the reader will most likely find it very difficult to read. 3. Use fixed width fonts to display emails.
8. Attachments: E-mail is primarily a text based system. However there are times it is essential to receive or send other types of information (e.g. programs, pictures, word documents, spreadsheets etc). E-mail is like sending a letter and an attachment is like sending a package by UPS. When you send an attachment make sure the file you are sending is in a format that can be read by the person on the other end. Never send large attachments. If the files are very large, compress them to make it smaller.
9. Down Edit Your Replies:  when you hit reply for a received mail, the email is attached with the previous email information which may be no longer important. Removing parts of the previous email that no longer apply to your response including email headers and signature files removes the mess. In addition, by making the effort to reply point by point keeps the conversation on track.
10. Signatures: Signatures can be almost anything: funny, interesting, quotations, stock quotes, programs, empty space, your address, ASCII art… but they should always also be brief.  Keep your signature files to not more than 5-6 lines. Limit your signature to your Web site link, company name, and slogan/offer or phone number. Include a link to your site (if you have any) where the recipient can get all your contact information from A-Z.
11. Take a second look: Re-read your emails before you send them. Always check for spelling and grammar, so that the email can be easily understood by the recipient.

Email Challenges

Email is undisputedly the most important business application for most organizations. E-mail providers are updating or rolling out new e-mail clients that provide users with more security and useful features. Users are checking messages not just on traditional desktops, but also laptops and Web-enabled devices, such as phones and PDAs. Email faces many ongoing challenges, the most important being “Email Security”.

Several email challenges/problems are:

1. Readability: In real, most emails are straight text. That is they are very easily readable by anyone coming into contact with the message. This hinders the privacy aspect of a confidential email. Many solutions include a component of encryption either using PKI (public key infrastructure) or something more proprietary. Alternatively, many software packages are available for this, which can interface with common email clients. This solution controls who can read a message.
2. Route of email: Email messages are sent using the “Internet.” This means that messages are typically routed through many servers and make stops along the way. Thus, email is available on all the servers along the way. This is one the greatest disadvantage for maintaining email security.
3. Control over message forwarding: Email has the capacity of being instantly transmitted. This further complicates the control over email. This feature of being easily forwarded and distributed hinders the security of the content or the email itself.
4. Spam: Spam is receiving bulk unwanted, unsolicited emails. These are emails you did not ask for and from senders you do not know. As more people use email, marketers are increasingly using email messages to pitch their products and services. Email spam is very annoying and some popular methods for filtering and refusing spam include e-mail filtering based on the content of the mail, DNS-based blackhole lists (DNSBL), greylisting, spamtraps, enforcing technical requirements, and checksumming systems to detect bulk email.
5. Email Virus/worms: There are-mail viruses that have been flying around the Internet. Email virus as the name indicates are the viruses that spread vial email. They are also called as “Computer Worms”. They easily enter your inbox or your computer as an attachment. When you download such attachment your computer gets affected by virus destroying all your important data. Scanner programs offer protection against computer worms and email viruses. Email filter is another solution to this problem. “Email Filter”, filters malicious content and attachments using customized controls and settings. It conceals your mail servers and gateways from the threat of anonymous connections.

Importance of Email

In today’s electronic world, email is critical to any business being competitive. In most cases it now forms the backbone of most organization’s day-to-day activities. Companies of all sizes require email solutions to function effectively. In other words, every firm’s or individual’s job is increasingly reliant on the availability of email. According to a study, “Microsoft Exchange and Outlook Analysis, 2005-2009,” the worldwide email market will grow from 1.2 billion mailboxes in 2005 to 1.8 billion mailboxes in 2009.

Message sending through post has been taking through Emails as it is much faster and accurate way of sending and receiving information. Today’s customers and clients expect to be able to correspond via email. If you are not utilizing email to its potential in your business, you could be losing business. You may miss out the opportunity to market the business and make important business relationships, all via email.

You can access your email inbox even while you are away. The ability to do business or take care of important matters while you are on vacation or at a conference thousands of miles away from your business is critical these days.

Email can be a very powerful marketing tool, too. It is valued by many online users as a timely, easy, inexpensive and convenient way to get information from advertisers and marketers. Email Marketing (the promotion of products or services through the use of email lists) has become one of the most lucrative frontiers today. Email allows small businesses to make a real connection with their target audience and compete with larger businesses.

Below are some of the major reasons why emails are most widely used:

1. Email is FREE.
2. Email is fast.
3. Email generates an immediate response.
4. Email is targeted.
5. Email is proactive.
6. Email expands your reach.
7. Email allows you to foster long lasting relationships.
8. Email will grow your organization.