Outlook help, stop staff deleting emails???

PTL

Basically theres one girl who constantly blames emails not coming through for work not being done, and i've said it a few times not to bother cleaning her inbox up as theres plenty of space for emails and we want to keep them to check back. But I am wondering is there anyway to password protect the deleting of emails sent or recieved.

Ive had a play around with auto archiving them into a hidden directory but i cant get that working at all so i think outlook rules is my next option that the second and email is sent or comes in that i copy it to another folder but does anyone know how to do this or another work around?

And firing her isn't an option as apart from the email thing shes not a bad worker and the main job doesn't involve computers at all so its just she isnt very computer litterate and just want to do this for our benifit/reference rather then to catch her out.

any ideas?

mukki

request a read reciept with every mail, and you just keep the reciepts, if you don't get the reciept, then print the mail and hand it too her

seamus

What kind of mail server are you using? If you're using Exchange, there's a wide array of options open to you.

Receipts are a good idea, but on the off-chance that a rule is deleting the mails as soon as they are coming in, then a receipt doesn't help.

SorGan

PTL wrote:

Basically theres one girl who constantly blames emails not coming through for work not being done, and i've said it a few times not to bother cleaning her inbox up as theres plenty of space for emails and we want to keep them to check back. But I am wondering is there anyway to password protect the deleting of emails sent or recieved.

Ive had a play around with auto archiving them into a hidden directory but i cant get that working at all so i think outlook rules is my next option that the second and email is sent or comes in that i copy it to another folder but does anyone know how to do this or another work around?

And firing her isn't an option as apart from the email thing shes not a bad worker and the main job doesn't involve computers at all so its just she isnt very computer litterate and just want to do this for our benifit/reference rather then to catch her out.

any ideas?

not much of a good worker if she blames non rec. mail,
but if she is hot then sacking is out of the question,
does outlook have a messg. rec, functuon
apart from that on her end there are rec historys in outlook.:cool:

Tom Dunne

SorGan wrote:

not much of a good worker if she blames non rec. mail,
but if she is hot then sacking is out of the question,
does outlook have a messg. rec, functuon
apart from that on her end there are rec historys in outlook.:cool:

I have no idea what language you were attempting there, never mind what you were trying to say.

Anyway, to the OP, there is an option in Outlook to leave the mails on the mail server, so give us more details on your setup (version of outlook, server type, etc).

PTL

Only one computer in the place so no mad exchanges or anything like that ... just one mail account checked with outlook the normal way with stmp and pop with a user and pass thats as advanced as it gets

And she just keeps deleting the mails from the inbox and from the sent items ... id love to put some sort of password to stop her being able to delete any sent items or recieved items but dont think thats an option with outlook.

Leaving the messages on the server is a good idea for recieved emails but it wont save sent emails.

seamus

Your best bet then is to set up a mail proxy using another machine (or even using the same machine!), and change the settings in Outlook. Then on the proxy you store all incoming and outgoing items and you can review them at the end of the day.

Tom Dunne

So am I correct in assuming it is Outlook Express? Either way, you need to configure them to leave the mail on the mail server. I don't have either in front of me right now, but it is relatively straight forward (try tools->options->accounts).

On the sent items, there should be a sent items folder, check in there for your sent e-mails.

OMcGovern

Couple of ideas.... depending on the outlook version you have....

In Outlook you can define rules for handling e-mails.
Eg. I create various folders within outlook, and have rules which move my e-mails from the inbox to those folders. Eg. work, friends, spam etc....
Maybe you can work out a special keyword in your e-mail subject line, like "task:", and create an outlook rule on her machine to move it to a "work task" folder.

You may also be able to attach reminders / calendar events to your e-mails.

regards,
Owen

SorGan

tom dunne wrote:

I have no idea what language you were attempting there, never mind what you were trying to say.

Anyway, to the OP, there is an option in Outlook to leave the mails on the mail server, so give us more details on your setup (version of outlook, server type, etc).

ha, sorry my friend i was in a mad rush at the time, but i was refering to outlook storing sent and received(rec) mail, but as i havent used outlook for a while ill leave it in more capable hands, good luck.

bounty

lazy bitch... remove her email privileges

SorGan

bounty wrote:

lazy bitch... remove her email privileges

Or glue her fingertips together?

matrim

If she's deleting the emails they may just be going to the deleted items folder.
She mightn't know enough to emtpy that.

If you check that and the mails are there, you know they were deleted.

Another option is like tom dunne said, setup outlook to pop the mails but keep a copy on the mail server

Silverfish

matrim wrote:

If she's deleting the emails they may just be going to the deleted items folder.
She mightn't know enough to emtpy that.

If you check that and the mails are there, you know they were deleted.

And if they aren't in there, try 'Recover Deleted Items'. Worth a shot.

Capt'n Midnight

what type of mail server - this sort of thing is better done there

if you control the mail server you could setup a forwarding account / group
mdaemon is fairly good at this sort of thing

you could setup outlook rules to forward all incoming emails to another address

with outlook you can't look at a PST file if it's set readonly, a real pain as just opening it date stamps and changes it, and in your case it means user can delete stuff easily

seamus

Silverfish wrote:

And if they aren't in there, try 'Recover Deleted Items'. Worth a shot.

Won't be there. Only exists with Exchange

the_syco

Attached is a picture of a few screenshots, on making a rule to forward all emails to another address.

Once this happens, any emails that come in, will get forwarded, and you may find that the "great" worker only seems great, as she gets all the work done... that you see needs to be done. IE: the stuff she doesn't get done, is deleted, maybe?

layke

Mr. The_Syco is doing it the way I would. Simple, yet effective.

Then inform her that you will be receiving any emails sent to that specific address as they keep going missing.

Sengoku79

Don't forget that through the customise button, you can also remove outlook rules off the tools menu, may help stop her from removing them manually, also have a look at a program called Exlife, it's a rules based program that can be pword protected and does pretty much the same as Outlook rules.

SwampThing

Outlook 2000 or above required, I think.

Set up a rule that forwards and received mail to another address. That way, you'll have a copy and proof that the mail reached her mailbox.

For sent mail, set up a rule to CC the message to yourself whenever a mail is sent.

Get yourself a free e-mail account with a decent allowance (Hotmail is 250MB - maybe Yahoo is bigger) and send them all to that account.

I feel a song coming on - "Nowhere to run to baby, nowhere to hide..."

PTL

Hey thanks to everyone i had already tried doing an auto archive thing so it had created a new pst file or something which had a new inbox and sent items etc ...
so i set up rules that any message recieved on that specified account , a copy is sent to a sepecified folder (archive inbox) and then set another rule that on the specifiedd account all mail sent a copy is sent to a specified folder (archive sent items) and its working a treat.

Thanks to everyone, boards is the place to go if you have a problem too much brain power floating around here haha

ToxicPaddy

SwampThing wrote:

Outlook 2000 or above required, I think.

Set up a rule that forwards and received mail to another address. That way, you'll have a copy and proof that the mail reached her mailbox.

For sent mail, set up a rule to CC the message to yourself whenever a mail is sent.
/

Beat me to it.. Was gonna suggest the same thing

Best way to stop this and what you can do it inform her about this option so she has no more easy way out of avoiding work.. sounds like she did it once or twice by accident and now uses it as an excuse to avoid work, just delete the email and voila, no work!!!