Are You Backing Up Email?

Do you backup your email frequently?  If not, do you realize the risk you are taking?  Quick story…  We had a Client contact us a few weeks ago asking us if we could help retrieve his email as his computer completely crashed.  The Client expressed the importance of retrieving his email – over 5 years worth of important correspondence with Clients and Colleagues.  When we explained how POP email works, he quickly realized that he was in trouble.  Basically, when an email comes in, it is received to the server.  The email sits on the server until you turn your computer on and download your mail.  Once the email is downloaded into Outlook, it is removed from the server.  This means, you have the only copy of that email and to make sure it is safely secured, you must backup your email files (to a remote source such as a thumb drive) on a frequent basis.

 

This is true for 99% of POP email services, which is what most of the world uses, except those on Exchange email.  Exchange email, among other things, removes the need for you to do manual backups as any email that comes in (or is sent out) is synchronized with the server.  That means, whatever your Outlook has (and looks like) is exactly as it sits on the remote server. So if your computer crashes, or you buy a new one, you simply setup your email account and the Exchange server does the rest.  Within a few minutes (depending on how many months/years/decades of email you have) you will have a fully restored email box including all folders and subfolders.

 

So basically, unless you already have an Exchange type of email service, and are on regular POP email, you need to be performing frequent backups of your Outlook (or Outlook Express) data files to a remote disk or thumb drive.  We do not need to stress the importance of this – think of what type of nightmare it would be to lose every single email you ever sent and received.  If you are the type that will not backup your email, we highly recommend moving to an Exchange service (contact us for details – we do offer Exchange and also can recommend some great 3^rd party services).  Otherwise, “get to backin’ up!”.  The following link from Microsoft will assist you in backing up your email data files.  http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA011030811033.aspx  Be sure to click on the little plus sign, under the first two paragraphs, which is labeled “Back up messages to a .pst file”.  Once you expand this link, it will give you a step by step instruction on how to backup your email data files.

We hope you find this information helpful!

 

-The AJT Support Team

AJT Design & Marketing, Inc.

1800 Pembrook Drive, Suite 300

Orlando, FL  32810

1-877-258-3746 (Main)

1-877-497-5284 (Fax)

407-880-6810 (Local)

www.ajtdesign.com | www.ajtsupport.com