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Saving Email Messages as Documents.

Your email inbox can get pretty full and either your Outlook or other mail program may be getting slow as a result. If you use webmail such as Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail etc., your storage space allowance may be getting full. Naturally you would delete anything unnecessary but what about those important emails you simply should keep?

There are ways to save your emails outside your mail program. This can be the solution to freeing up the space and mail system you are using. The ways to do it depends on how you receive your mail so below are 2 methods, firstly to do with Webmail and secondly to do with POP3 programs like Outlook, Live Mail etc.,

Webmail

Websites like Hotmail don’t really give you a way of exporting your mail messages. However one way to ‘trick’ the system is to create a page exactly the same as the email by creating a PDF from it. This is as simple as printing your email but it becomes a document that you can save on your PC at that moment.

First you need to be sure you have a PDF printer in your system, just look in your Printers folder to see if that is the case. If not you can download a free PDF creator from here: http://dopdf-free-pdf-converter.soft112.com/quick-download.html After installing the program simply gives you a new ‘printer’ that creates PDF documents.

So with your email message on screen select to print your email. When the printer dialogue box comes up, change the printer name from the list to your PDF printer. Click OK.

Then the PDF Printer dialogue box appears asking you where to save the document. Browse to the folder of your choice. Click OK

You can repeat this as many times as you wish but always have a different name for each email -however slight the difference is, since you cannot store files with the same name in the same folder.

The new document is ‘read only’ so you cannot click within it or open a attachments from it but the text and layout is all preserved.

POP Mail

Programs such as Live Mail and Outlook can export email messages easily and in fact this is the better of the 2 methods here described.

First be sure to have a folder to save the emails in already created. In Windows 7 it could be simply C:\User\Documents\E-Mail folder and any sub folders you wish to create within that.

The easiest method is to put Outlook or Live Mail into a smaller window than full screen. To do this use the small Restore icon at the top right of your window.

Or drag the program window size to smaller using the arrow on any corner of the window.

The idea is you want to be able to see the mail message and the folder you are going to put them into.

Now simply drag and drop the message from its title in the Inbox window to your new folder like this.

The email will appear as a small yellow envelope that can be opened and read, printed, it is still a fully functional email to which you can even click the Reply or Forward icons to use it within the mail program. Attachments are preserved too. This is a very effective method that can be used to save emails for specific customers in specific folders.

The original email in your Inbox is not deleted so simply delete it manually to save the space. You have its copy now in your folder.

In Outlook you can even use the File>Save As option to save a message without having to drag and drop. If you prefer this option do the following:
Open your message in its own window.
Click File>Save As and browse to the folder where you want to keep it.

However BEFORE you click Save change the box at the bottom called ‘Save as type’ to Outlook Message Format (*.msg). Then click Save

Again your email is saved as a separate document so you can delete the one in Outlook.

For more information, see www.daveshelpline.com or contact Dave on 952664713
Providing computer help on the coast for 18+ years