Best workflow to keep track of contacts emails?

[frankieplus]

I'm trying to work out the best workflow to keep a track of my contacts emails and to be neat about it.

I have 'jobs/work' booked with my contacts and want to keep a track of emails to do with that particular contact for reference.

So far I've made a folder called 'Contacts Emails' and just throw all emails received for all contacts and prospects in that folder. Then, in the contact 'Activities' tab I can easily find all emails associated with any contact.

This has been working well up until now that it's time to move some contacts to archives and delete others that I've finished with. I want to clean up emails that aren't associated with contacts.

In regards to workflow I have a question..

Question: Was it a bad idea to just throw all emails in 1 folder and use 'contact activities tab' to sort them out?

Would it have been better to make a new folder for each contact and put -ALL- emails associated with that contact in it's own folder? I would have ended up with 100 or so folders though.

-Frankie

 

[Roady [MVP]]

No, that sorting method usually is just fine. I always recommend to only
make folders when it makes sense but try to create a little as possible.
Sorting your mails per contact per folder in general is a very bad method of
sorting your emails. You can use Custom Views, Categories, Automatic
Formatting and Search Folders to easily generate a group of relevant emails.
Especially when you combine that with Instant Search in Outlook 2007 as
well. There are over 50,000 items in my pst-file (if not a lot more) but can
retrieve any specific email received in the last 5 years within seconds.