This week one of my newsletter subscribers sent me a panic email. One of her email accounts had been mistakenly deleted and she was having trouble restoring it. The problem was worsened by the fact that it was a Gmail account; once you delete a Gmail account it is gone pretty quickly and you cannot restore it because the email address you used is hibernated to prevent security issues should someone else want to use the same address in the future.
"You did back up your emails?" I asked. Oops.
Many of us back up our computers but much of what is on our machines these days is merely a tag or a connection to something that actually lives online, "in the cloud". And if you deleted the item in "the cloud", such as your Gmail account, your computer backup won't have anything usable to go back to.
My newsletter subscriber had two issues - firstly an email account that was "cloud only" and secondly no backup of those emails.
But why would you want to backup emails anyway, I hear you ask. After all, you only really need relatively recent emails to refer back to, don't you? Not according to the law firm Pinsent Mason who say you should keep all your emails for a minimum of six years.
Not only that, but emailing is probably the activity you do most of each day now. For many office-based workers email is taking up a couple of hours a day. So, typically, a quarter of your work is now email. That makes it significant and worthy of special consideration.
There is also another reason to have an email backup strategy - it means you can easily find things you have "lost" such as that password to a service you signed up for two years ago, or that attachment which you thought you had saved but didn't. In other words, considerable amounts of non-email work is actually buried inside emails. So if you throw away the emails your other kind of work is potentially affected.
So, what can you do about it? Firstly, if you have a Gmail account get yourself another cloud-based email account such as the free unlimited service from GMX (part of the web giants 1&1).Then in the settings of Gmail set up a "forward" from there to your new GMX account. Then whenever you get an email inside Gmail it will automatically be copied to GMX. Should you delete your Gmail account by mistake, or should Gmail break down, you can still access all your emails over at GMX.
If you use a desktop email client, such as Outlook, then get a Gmail account. Set up a similar forward from Outlook to Gmail. That way, Gmail stores copies of everything you get in Outlook.
However, when it comes to finding things embedded within old emails, then these backup ideas only help part of the way. Finding things can take time. That's why you could also use Mailstore Home - a free email backup program. It isonly for PCs - Mac users can try Email Backup Pro, though I haven't used it myself as I don't have a Mac...! If you are in a business where you need five or more email accounts backed up, then you could use Mailstore Server or the enterprise level Barracuda Message Archiver. If, however, you access emails using business level Google Apps, then Backupify is an excellent choice to ensure your company emails are backed up.
Whichever service you use, though, a "belt and braces" approach is a good idea. Automatically copy your emails to an alternative email address and use a backup program to be able to search inside emails that are stored outside your email account inside a database.
If you do these two things, even if you accidentally delete your email account, all your past emails are safe and sound meaning that you can still access the past information you need - and have information available should those lawyers be right and that you might need to find some evidence should a case be made against you. If you had deleted your email account that could be a problem...!
WHAT I LEARNED THIS WEEK
Enthusiasm infects people
The other day I had a phone call from a friend who had come up with an idea for a local business event. I said it sounded a good idea and left him to ponder some more on it. Then, I set off up the motorway to Blackburn in Lancashire ready to give a talk about "The CLICK System". At the start of the meeting a few people arrived and the first couple were really chatty and enthusiastic individuals. As the room filled up, more and more people were smiling and chatting. At the end of the meeting the organiser remarked how great it was that everyone had got on with each other and that it was an enthusiastic meeting. Then I came back down the M6 to another phone call from my friend who had been thinking about his event while I had been away. He was full of passion for his idea and had produced a flyer, had spoken to people about it and had even booked the venue. By the end of that phone call I was excited about the event too. It all reminds me of the fact that if we set out in our business activities full of enthusiasm and passion, those we meet will inevitably become excited too. Enthusiasm is an infectious disease - we should make sure we spread it around more...!
Graham Jones
Internet Psychologist
Web: grahamjones.co.uk