I can't find that email

How many times have you heard someone say “I can’t find that email you sent me” or “Can you resend me the email because I don’t seem to be able to find it”. In business this is something that I think we all deal with at some time.

If someone if looking for an email there are methods that can be used to assist them in locating that specific email. Of course there is the request for it to be resent because they just can’t take the time to check their email themselves and don’t know the other ways to try and find it. I have received a number of phone calls about someone not being able to locate an email and asking me to resent it. I do resent the email but what I normally do is find it in my sent items and forward it showing them the original date and subject line that I used.

Search – this is one of the methods that can be used to locate an email when you have a general idea about the subject of the email. It doesn’t have to be exact but at least a general idea by help. An example would be “staff meeting” if you are looking for minutes from a staff meeting that was sent earlier in the year. The search would then show just the emails that are in your email pertaining to staff meetings. The person would then be able to find the email that they were looking for without having to ask for it being resent.

Sort – here is a method that can also help you locate an email if you know who sent the message in the first place. Email can be sorted by name, date, size, subject and are all different methods of helping you locate that email that you are looking for in your email. By doing the sort in a couple of different ways you will probably locate the message you are looking for as long as you haven’t deleted it.

Folders – using folders within your email system is another way to assist in locating the various emails you are looking for. The only thing with folders is the volume of email in each of these folders can get out of hand very easy.

Saving the attachments – if the email has a file attached the first thing you should do after receiving the email is save the attachment somewhere else which would also make it easier to locate. We all deal with tons and tons of emails and yes they can get a little overwhelming sometimes but knowing how to sort and search your emails can make life so much easier. There will be times when you have to ask a person to resend something because you deleted it but at least it won’t be as often.

All of these methods will assist you in finding that email that you received or sent. It is also very important to remember to not keep everything in your email account because things can be deleted in error or your email system can get corrupted and you can lose everything. The rule that I always try and use is if the document is something that I may need in the future, save it outside of the email system when you receive it. Don’t think just because the message is in your email today it will be there tomorrow.

Email storage isn’t unlimited so in some cases emails can be lost if there are issues with the storage. Figure out how to manage your email account and don’t just leave everything there and not understand how to locate what you are looking for.