Saving emails to hard drive from Outlook

[Hal Winslow]

Greetings- Due to Outlook Server limits, I have begun saving emails as files to my hard drive. When I choose "save as" Outlook defaults to the rtf format for the file. Unfortunately, rtf does not save the attachments within an email. So, each time I msut manually change the file type to msg. Is there anyway to change the default file so it comes up as msg first when I am saving an email as a fil? Thanks Hal

[Jon Finley]

There's an easier way to save the emails locally.

Create a "Personal Folder".

If you're using Outlook 2003 or 2007, click on File, New, then at the bottom, select "Outlook Data File".

Save it on a partition of your Hard drive with the most room.

This is your local message store. You can create any additional folders you need to categorize your email within this new storage area.

Once you've done this, you can drag and drop whatever messages your want over from the Exchange Server Inbox, to a folder within your new local "Personal Folders".

Jon

[Hal Winslow]

Jon, thanks for your reply. I agree your method is a vastly easier way to go. I failed to mention that our company does not allow the use of personal folders saved locally. Thus, I have to do it the harder way.

[Jon Finley]

Well... then the easiest way to save the message as a msg file, is to do the following:

Press and hold the Ctrl key. While holding the Ctrl key down, drag and drop the individual or selected messages to the desired folder. They'll drop as MSG files.

Jon

[Hal Winslow]

JOn Finley, you are the man. Your tip works fantastically. Thanks, Hal

[Jon Finley]

Glad it worked for you Hal.

When you get a chance, assign some points to the responses (it's how we get our funny hats). :-)

Jon

[Caitriona Barry]

Have just tried this. Thanks for the tip. My mailbox was getting far too full, yet I didn't want to lose information.

[greenman_1]

I am looking for a way to save Outlook emails to my hard drive as well, but I would like to be able to save it with the date that the email was sent to/from me and not the day I moved it to my hard drive. Any thoughts on this. The Ctrl method works great but it uses the current time/day that you moved the file.

Thanks!

[Leif Penrose]

Perhaps since this thread began Outlook has changed or there is something that the I.T. department has been able to turn off. When I try this the with Outlook 2007 there is a black circle with a cross hatch over the folder where I'm trying to drop the file. I'd love to be able to do this as well.

[Hal Winslow]

If you are trying to do this from work, it is probably a security measure imposed by your company to avoid sensitive information being saved locally or to an external drive. My locally-based Outlook still performs as discussed in this thread. You might try the measure I initially was trying to avoid-- open the item, choose save as, and select the non-default .msg file type.

[AJJ65]

John,

I have copied a bunch of emails from Outlook 2010 to an external hard drive.

I now want to bring those emails (.msg) to Outlook folders on another computer using Outlook 2013.

If I drag and drop the into the Outlook 2013 folders, they show up as .msg files sitting in the folder and do not appear or sort as 'emails.'

If I open the individual messages, I can then 'copy' them to that or another Outlook folder.

When I do this, it somehow magically coverts them to a normal 'email' file and not a .msg file.

This would be fine if I needed to input a few email, however, I need to bring in thousands of emails.

How can I go from .msg to normal email quickly?