Outlook Organization: Efficiently organize emails in Outlook and Faster Mail

Modified on Tue, 6 Jun, 2023 at 5:42 PM

Over time, we at Faster Law have seen a lot of firms try a lot of different things when using Faster Mail to preserve emails. Below is a list of recommended settings to be used for email preservation to keep everything organized and accessible, without causing problems by over-organizing.

Use "{ReceivedOn} - {Subject}" as the naming convention for preserved emails

Generally, using "{ReceivedOn} - {Subject}" for your naming convention on preserved emails will be the best way to organize them. We have seen firms use sender and receiver names or emails as well as email direction, but this is usually unnecessary. Here are some reasons that we think this is best:

Organizing by date first will keep your most recent emails listed first
Using just the subject line is enough information to be able to at least find the right email thread
You can use the Preview Pane in Windows to see the content of each email in an email thread without opening it

Using any more information in the name of each email will clutter your Emails folder and cause more confusion than it's worth. To set this as your default, follow the steps below:

Go to "Faster Suite" > "Settings" > "Message Preservation" > "Messages"
In the box at the top, enter "{RECEIVEDON} - {SUBJECT}"
Click "Save and Close"

To turn the Preview Pane on in Windows, follow these steps:

From the "Emails" folder in Faster Drive (or the default folder for your emails) click "View"
Click the "Preview Pane" button

Do not use sub-folders inside your "Emails" folder

Some firms have tried to further organize emails inside this folder by creating folders for different contacts, dates, etc. This may seem like a good idea, but will usually end up causing more work than it's worth. Most matters have between 500 and 1500 emails associated with them which are seldom, if ever, referenced after filing.

When a firm decides to apply this extra level of organization to emails, they actually spend significantly more time categorizing the emails than they would if they just went to the EMails folder and looked for the emails there. Additionally, when emails are broken out into subfolders, it makes it harder to get a unified timeline of all the communications and when you are looking for a specific email, you then have to navigate through each folder to try to find the email you are looking for. This not only creates an added step in the process, but also makes it more difficult to locate emails which is why we recommend against it.