Simply Copying Email To A Folder?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Fitzwilliam Darcy
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Fitzwilliam Darcy

I want to copy email to another folder, but it is not working.

I have tried 'Copy to Folder' and even selecting all and copy/pasting
the message, but nothing works.

Any ideas?

Thank you :)

COMPLETE SITUATION: I wanted to divide my emails into year folders: for
example, I filtered the emails between 1/1/2004 and 12/31/2004 to get
just the 2004 email. Then I created a 2004 folder. I then tried to copy
the filtered email into the 2004 folder, but it doesn't work.

When I chose move, it deleted the emails and did not Move them, so I am
had to restore them from backup.
 
Fitzwilliam Darcy said:
I want to copy email to another folder, but it is not working.

I have tried 'Copy to Folder' and even selecting all and copy/pasting
the message, but nothing works.

Any ideas?

Thank you :)

COMPLETE SITUATION: I wanted to divide my emails into year folders: for
example, I filtered the emails between 1/1/2004 and 12/31/2004 to get
just the 2004 email. Then I created a 2004 folder. I then tried to copy
the filtered email into the 2004 folder, but it doesn't work.

When I chose move, it deleted the emails and did not Move them, so I am
had to restore them from backup.
Click to expand...


Copy the .pst file where your message store is saved. Although the term
"folder" is misused in Outlook, that is only because "folder" eventually
replaced the term "directory" when referring to the file system. There are
NO FOLDERS (or directories) within your message store in Outlook. That is
simply how the data is represented in a hierarchical structure within your
message store. You cannot drag out an item under a folder in Outlook's
message store anymore than you can drag out a line in a document displayed
within Notepad to move it to some other path as a file. Every folder and
item displayed within Outlook is in ONE file, which is your .pst file.
Outlook is simply showing you what records it has in it database *file*.

Learn to use the Auto-Archive function within Outlook. Specify to which
archive .pst folder you will save old items. Then every year change to
using a different archive file. See the settings under Tools -> Options ->
Other -> AutoArchive. Auto-archiving takes 2 steps: (1) You enable the
global auto-archive function under Options; and, (2) You right-click on each
folder to decide whether to enable/disable auto-archiving for that
particular folder. The global option just enables the function to execute.
I believe in OL 2002 and later that an option was added to supposedly apply
that global option against all folders but I don't know if it works (I just
right-click on the folders that I want archived to enable the function, and
perhaps set different values than specified in the global option, like
permanently deleting old items from the Deleted Items folder rather than
moving that trash to the archive file).

While you could annually switch to which archive .pst file your old items
get moved to, you could just keep using the same archive .pst file. Then
set the auto-archive settings for each folder in the archive .pst file to
move old items to yet another archive file, and do so again for that second
oldest archive file, and so on. You end up chaining together a bunch of
archive files where each one's auto-archive moves items to the next one in
the chain. I don't bother using more than one archive.

You can have access to items in your old archives by using File -> Open to
open the .pst file for that archived message store. That way, you could
also search your archives when you need to find an old item.

Note that archiving is based on the *modified* datestamp, not on the
creation datestamp. If you move an item from one folder to another then the
modified datestamp has changed. So, for example, you could move a bunch of
2-year old items to another folder, run auto-archive which moves items older
than 1 year to the archive file, but nothing moves but you just moved all
those items a few minutes ago.
 
Thank you so much for the information. I will try to use autoarchive in
the future; however, at this point, I still have no idea what to do?

I use Outlook 2003. I have several years worth of email in my Deleted
Items Folder and I want to organize it based on Year. My original idea
was to 'copy' all of the 2004 messages into a 2002 folder and then 2003
and so forth.

Can I do something like this even though there are NO FOLDERS (as you
mentioned)? It seems to me that the folders are used so that you can
organize your data in a comprehensible fashion even though it is in one
file. What is the purpose of Copy to Folder and Move to Folder?

Any specific suggestions on how I can organize these old emails?

Thank you again.
 
Fitzwilliam Darcy said:
I use Outlook 2003. I have several years worth of email in my Deleted
Items Folder
Click to expand...

You should NEVER use "Deleted Items" for anything but items you want, well,
deleted.
and I want to organize it based on Year. My original idea
was to 'copy' all of the 2004 messages into a 2002 folder and then
2003 and so forth.

Can I do something like this even though there are NO FOLDERS (as you
mentioned)?
Click to expand...

First, click New>Folder and create a folder for 2002. Repeat for 2003 and
so on. Next, filter your mail so that you see only 2002 items. Select them
all and click Edit>Copy to Folder. In the browser window, locate the 2002
folder you created above, select it, and click OK. Do the same with 2003
and so on. It should all work. Personally, I'd be using separate PSTs for
this instead of folders, especially if I weren't using Outlook 2003 and
Unicode PSTs, but whatever works for you is good.
 
First, click New>Folder and create a folder for 2002. Repeat for 2003 and
so on. Next, filter your mail so that you see only 2002 items. Select them
all and click Edit>Copy to Folder. In the browser window, locate the 2002
folder you created above, select it, and click OK.
Click to expand...

I have tried this and it does not work. This was the reason for my
original post. Have you tried this and it works for you?

We have tried it on two different computers in various ways (cut/paste,
'Copy to Folder,' 'Move to Folder) with the same result.

If someone else has another specific procedure for doing this that I
could try, I would appreciate it.

As an example of what I tried:

1. Filtered e-mail for 1 year
2. Edit>Select All
3. Edit>Copy to Folder
4. Selected Destination Folder (for that year, like 2003)

Outlook then displays: 'Creating a new item from the selected items
could take some time. Are you sure you want to create a new item from
these 2342 items?' I choose Yes.

This then copies EVERY single message into 1 email and opens it.

It does not copy anything into the destination folder.

Something seems amiss :)

Any ideas?
 
Fitzwilliam Darcy said:
I have tried this and it does not work. This was the reason for my
original post. Have you tried this and it works for you?
Certainly.

We have tried it on two different computers in various ways
(cut/paste, 'Copy to Folder,' 'Move to Folder) with the same result.

If someone else has another specific procedure for doing this that I
could try, I would appreciate it.

As an example of what I tried:

1. Filtered e-mail for 1 year
2. Edit>Select All
3. Edit>Copy to Folder
4. Selected Destination Folder (for that year, like 2003)
Click to expand...

In what window are you when you try this? Have you tried viewing the
messages in a non-filtered way, sorting them by date, selecting the oldest
for a year, sliding down and, while holding Shift, selecting the youngest
for that year to select them all and then using Edit>Copy to Folder? When
you created the "2002" or "2003" folder, did you make sure its properties
were set to contain "Mail and Post" items?
 
And made sure that the selected items are only messages, not other types of items you might have deleted?

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers
 
Fitzwilliam Darcy said:
Thank you so much for the information. I will try to use autoarchive in
the future; however, at this point, I still have no idea what to do?

I use Outlook 2003. I have several years worth of email in my Deleted
Items Folder and I want to organize it based on Year. My original idea
was to 'copy' all of the 2004 messages into a 2002 folder and then 2003
and so forth.

Can I do something like this even though there are NO FOLDERS (as you
mentioned)? It seems to me that the folders are used so that you can
organize your data in a comprehensible fashion even though it is in one
file. What is the purpose of Copy to Folder and Move to Folder?

Any specific suggestions on how I can organize these old emails?

Thank you again.
Click to expand...


*Within* the .pst file for your message store (shown in the Folders pane in
Outlook), create whatever "folders" you want for whatever hierarchy you want
to create for items stored in those folders. For example, Create a "Old
Mails" folder under the root level (so it is at the same level as Inbox,
Deleted Items, Sent Items, etc.). Under that, create a subfolder called
"2002 Mails", another called "2003 Mails", and so on. Then simply drag
whatever messages you want to whatever folder you want to put them in your
hierarchy.

Personal Folders (root level)
|-- ...
|-- Inbox
|-- ...
|-- Old Mails
| |-- 2002 Mails
| |-- 2003 Mails
| |-- 2004 Mails
| :
|-- ...
:

Go to your Deleted Items folder (and EXTREMELY BAD place to hold old
messages), sort by Received Date (you'll have to add that column and then
click on it to sort by it), highlight some messages, and then right-click
and use Move to Folder to move those selected files into whatever folder you
want.

The above is just one example of how to organize your old mails. Create
whatever hierarchical structure of folders you want for however you want to
organize them. Just remember that when you move them, the Modified Date
will change so Auto-Archive won't work on those items (if you are instead
moving them to an archive .pst file), but you could use File -> Open to open
the archive .pst file and then drag the items from your current message
store file into your archive message store file.
 
My problem was that I had other items in there like old tasks and such
(as Sue suggested above). Once I ensured that I was selecting only
messages, it worked just fine.

Thank you for all of the replies and suggestions. It is making
organizing Outlook much more efficient.
 
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