Automatically receiving mail messages and expiring them

[FJCarson]

Is there a way that if someone receives e-mail that it can be expired after
say...a week without any intervention?

A user is planning a newsletter and wants to send it out to a user that is
setup to automatically forward the mail to a group of users. This user wants
to have the e-mail automatically expire after one week. The user does not
want to have any manual intervention with outlook.

 

[Vince Averello [MVP - Outlook]]

Outlook messages can have an expiration date. Open the Options dialog while
composing a message (in OL2007: Options tab, click the little box next to
More Options) and set the expiration date. I think that will only work
between users using Outlook...

 

[FJCarson]

Thanks, I do understand how it works from user to user but I'm looking for an
automatic way of doing this without any intervention.

 

[FJCarson]

We are using Exchange 2003 and I have heard of RMS and even used it for a
little bit.

The user that I mentioned is the one that will be creating the newsletter
and when done wants to "push" it to the outlook user that is setup with the
forwarding rule and have the newsletter available for a week.....and yes I am
an admin for a corporate network. I understand your concern about this
request. I would also...but no worries.

I will try to look at it from the RMS side. Thanks for some advice.

 

[Ben M. Schorr - MVP (OneNote)]

Umm...so how is it supposed to know to expire this message if the user
doesn't want to be bothered to set a simple expiry option?

Or does he just want ALL of his messages to expire in a week?

I assume he's willing to at least type the message and maybe address it?


--
-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
http://www.officeforlawyers.com
Author - The Lawyer's Guide to Microsoft Outlook 2007:
http://tinyurl.com/5m3f5q

 

[FJCarson]

Yes, when the person sends the e-mail to the user that forwards them to the
group, the e-mail should expire one week from the day it is sent to him.

 

[Brian Tillman]

Yes, when the person sends the e-mail to the user that forwards them
to the group, the e-mail should expire one week from the day it is
sent to him.

Why not use Autoarchive to simply delete all messages older than a week?

 

[FJCarson]

I don't care about autoarchiving them. I want the messages to expire after a
week

 

[Brian Tillman]

I don't care about autoarchiving them. I want the messages to expire
after a week

Notice that I said have autoarchive DELETE them, not archive them.

What do you intend to do with the expired messages? Expired messages hang
around just as long as any other messages. Outlook does nothing with them
except change their appearance in the view by displaying them with an
overstrike through their header line. Expired messages don't go away by
themselves.

 

[FJCarson]

In the e-mail there will be links to articles in the newsletter. After a
week we don't want them to be able to access them from the links in the
e-mail. Yes, I like the idea of them being autoarchived, it's just we don't
want them to be accessed from the links in the e-mail after a week.

If I'm not mistaken, will the strikethrough still allow them to access the
e-mail?

 

[Brian Tillman]

If I'm not mistaken, will the strikethrough still allow them to
access the e-mail?

Yes. When I tested expired messages, the only difference between them and
normal messages is that the InfoBar shows they're expired and they display
in the Inbox header list with a strike-through and a slightly lighter font.
In all other aspects thet are normal. I could respond to them, click links
in them and all the normal things you can do with a message. The expiration
date is just a message attribute no different that the creation date or
modification date for you to use as you see fit with whatever tools Outlook
supplies that recognize that date. The only tool in Outlook that actually
acts upon that date is autoarchive, which can be configured to delete
expired messages. Unless the recipient does that, though, the message will
be just a message with a slight change in presentation.