how to save attachments to e-mail in business contacts history

[Guest]

When I link e-mails to the business contacts, the attachments dissapear. Any
way to save them? Using outlook 2003

 

[Tim P via OfficeKB.com]

If you haven't manually removed them, the attachments probably still exist.
Check in the native Outlook folder where the actual email is residing (Inbox,
etc.) When you link an email to a Business Contact all that is displayed in
the Business Contact Record History area is the link with the subject line.
The original email itself is still stored in the separate Outlook pst folder.
Native Outlook items are distinct and separately stored from the BCM add-in
items that are stored in the MSDE database. This can be confusing because
BCM was designed to share object items within the same Outlook UI environment
and things can all appear to be somewhere that they are not.

Hope this helps.

-THP

 

[Guest]

Tim: all of this sounds right except that when you clic on the subject line
in contact history, the full e-mail then appears. The attachments are not
with it, however. I have since deleted the originals from the sent box,
inbox, etc. It seems those attachments are gone. Are the ony ways to save
them either by saving the original e-mail in a folder or saving the
attachment in my documents or another folder?

 

[Luther]

Are the ony ways to save them either by saving the

original e-mail in a folder or saving the
attachment in my documents or another folder?

Yup. After saving the attachment in a folder, you can always add a
document link to the Contact's history.

 

[Tim P via OfficeKB.com]

If you delete an original Outlook email that is linked to a BCM item, BCM
automatically does a rewrite of the native Outlook email contents onto a
Business History form (similiar in appearance to a Journal item) called
"Business Activity." If you reexamine carefully, this automatically
rewritten Business Activity record containing the text of the previous email
now is a different record item from the original email and this Business
Activity record also is now located within the BCM data base and the original
email along with any previous attachments no longer exists in the original
Outlook pst folder because you deleted it. They are different items
contained within different application databases eventhough they appear to be
the same.

It took me a while to see this clearly at first myself. Outlook & BCM share
similiar looking record object items within a shared environment but these
items are stored differently depending upon what you do with them. I would
suggest you experiment a little with different workflow options by creating
and deleting a few test items in different ways in order to comprehend more
clearly how this works.

-THP

 

[Tim P via OfficeKB.com]

To summarize:

If you want to delete your original Outlook emails that are linked to BCM
they will automatically rewrite and be archived into the BCM db as a Business
Activity Record. Before you delete the original Outlook email, be sure to
remove and save any attachments into a document folder first and then (as
Luther confirms above) you can link that stored document to any BCM Record
object if you wish. This linked document will not reside within the BCM db.
It will only have a link to it.

-THP

 

[Luther]

Note that BCM is only saving the first few 100s of bytes of the email
message in the database. So, if the email message is important you
should just not delete it from Outlook.