RESEARCH-HOWTO-L Archives

Archiver > RESEARCH-HOWTO > 1999-11 > 0942706710


From: "Audrey Bennett" <>
Subject: RE: Saving files to zip drive
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 14:58:30 -0800


Regarding email messages, I guess the first question I'd ask is: Do you
really need them?

Are these messages you refer to often? If not, consider simply deleting
them. (Rootsweb archives all messages for you - they're pretty easy to find
if you need them.) If you're fearful of deleting something you might need
to have handy, consider starting a folder for "To be Deleted" messages. If
it turns out you need a message from that folder, then move it to a more
"permanent" place. If not, delete messages after a specified period - say
30 days. (My email program, Outlook, keeps "deleted" messages until I
manually delete them a second time, which serves the same purpose for me.)

Still worried about deleting something you might need? I recommend reading
through some of the messages you have saved. I find that every time I go
through my saved messages I find a dozen I can safely delete....either they
are out of date information or they are about families that I now know can't
possibly be connected to mine.

Another thought.....do you need to keep them in email format? One person
mentioned recipies. Off the top of my head I think I'd want my recipies in
another form...maybe even printed. If not printed, then pasted into a Word
Processing program by category. You mentioned pasting messages into Word.
You'll save space if you have a Word file for each category of your research
(e.g. Smith, Jones, Alabama) in which you keep just the information from the
messages. (As opposed to creating a Word document for individual messages.)

I once fell into the habit of trying to keep messages which offered links to
various genealogy sites. I stopped doing this long ago - Cyndi lists many
more than I do and has a much better gift for organization (=: If I do
find a link I want to keep handy (handier than on Cyndi's List), I bookmark
it. And half the time, an Alta Vista search will find the site before I can
find it in my notes or saved messages!

Finally, when using any type of program where you add information and delete
information regularly, which is what you do with email, it's wise to
compress/compact your email folders regularly. Some programs prompt you to
do this, others have the ability to do it but you must seek it out yourself.
Perhaps compressing your email file will help with the slowness problems you
mention. (It's also possible you need to de-frag your whole hard drive.)

Hope this wasn't too off topic - it's not really what you asked but after
having been in the same boat I've found that hanging onto everything wasn't
always the best solution.

Best of luck-
Audrey Ann Bennett

Bellevue, Washington USA
(near Seattle, home of Starbucks, Pearl Jam, Boeing, and Microsoft)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [mailto:]
> Sent: Monday, November 15, 1999 2:04 PM
> To:
> Subject: Saving files to zip drive
>
>
> I'd like to know if there is a way of doing this short of what I've been
> doing. I have literally hundreds of genealogy e-mails that I
> have saved in
> my AOL personal filing cabinet. I have created categories with
> file names
> and e-mails stored in each. In some file folders I have
> sub-folders. The
> only way I can figure to save them to disk where they are easily
> opened and
> accessed is to save each e-mail in a word processing file (I use
> Word) and
> then save them either in folders on a zip disk or on the hard
> drive. I have
> a wonderful software program called PaperMaster which is a filing cabinet
> with drawers in which you place files and documents in each file,
> just like
> an actual filing cabinet. But the only way I can figure out how
> to get them
> in there is to go to the intermediate step of copying the e-mail to Word
> first. I had to do something because my AOL Personal Filing
> Cabinet is so
> large that it takes forever for aol to open. Thanks for sharing
> any answers
> that come to you.
>
> Cathy
>

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