MessageSave | 4.0 User Guide

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Overview

MessageSave is an easy-to-use, flexible and powerful product for saving, backing up, archiving and processing Outlook messages. See this page for a full list of MessageSave features.

Installation

To install MessageSave, simply download and run the installer. The installer will guide you through the setup process. Be sure to shutdown Outlook before installing or uninstalling MessageSave.

MessageSave installer requires Administrator (or PowerUser) privileges. Once installed, MessageSave can be used by regular users without Administrator privileges.

Functionality

Getting Started

See MessageSave Quick Start Guide for a quick introduction. After that, read on for a more detailed discussion of MessageSave features.

Saving existing messages

To save messages already in your mailbox

Select messages (you can select one or as many as you want)
Invoke the "MessageSave: Save Messages" command either by clicking on the Outlook toolbar button or by selecting "Tools->MessageSave: Save Messages" menu command.
You will see the "MessageSave - Save Messages" dialog where you can choose the folder to save messages into as well as other options that affect how messages are saved.
Select desired options and click the "Save Now" button. Depending on the number of messages selected, the operation will take anywhere from a split-second to several minutes (for thousands of messages).

Silent Save: if you hold down the "Control" key while pressing the "MessageSave: Save Messages" Outlook toolbar button, MessageSave will silently save Messages without showing the options dialog. Previously selected options will be used in this case.

Save Messages dialog

The Save Messages dialog allows you to customize the way email messages are saved.

Messages To Save - here you can select whether you would like to save the messages you selected or all messages in a particular folder. You can use the "Include Subfolders" option to specify whether you would like to save just the messages in the current folder, or all subfolders as well.
Destination Folder - folder where the messages will be saved. The drop-down box saves the last twenty five folders used for fast access.
You can either type the folder name, or click "Browse" to choose a folder.
Click "Open Folder" button to open the destination folder in File Explorer.
Options - this button toggles the dialog between advanced and basic views. The advanced view shows all possible options. The basic view shows a streamlined version of the dialog with only a few options.
File Naming - various options that affect how the saved files are called.
Subfolder Naming - MessageSave can create subfolders under the Destination Folder to group saved messages by Sender, Date, and Outlook folder name.
File format - select .txt, .elm or .msg file format.
Overwrite Existing Files - if you enable this option, MessageSave will overwrite files that map to the same file name, according to your File Naming options. If you enable this option, we recommend that you also enable "Append Message Date" and "Append Message Time" in order to avoid overwritting different messages with the same subject.
Include full Internet headers - saves all internet (RFC 822) message headers in the file. Without this option, only "From", "To", "Cc", "Date" and "Subject" headers are saved.
Note: not all messages have internet headers. If a message is sent and delivered by exchange servers within the same organization, it will not have internet headers.
This option applies only to .txt format.
Include no headers - saved files will have only message bodies, with no headers.
This option applies only to .txt format.
Execute - you can specify an application or script to run on the saved files. File name will be passed as the first and only command line parameter to the script. Other information about the message, such as sender name, subject, date, etc. is passed in environment variables. Make sure you specify complete path or add application to the system path. Please see MessageSave API for more information about this feature.
Permanently Remove Message(s) - the message(s) will be deleted from Outlook after saving. Be careful with this feature, it does not place the message(s) in the Deleted Items folder. Messages are deleted permanently.
More Options - This button displays the "Advanced Options" dialog.

We encourage you to try different options to find a combination that matches your needs.

Advanced Options Dialog

The Advanced Options dialog provides access to another set of powerful MessageSave controls.

General Tab

Prompt to save sent messages - If checked, MessageSave will prompt you whether you would like to file sent messages immediately upon sending them.
Prompt for custom file name - If checked, MessageSave will display a "Save As" dialog for every message, allowing you to provide a custom file name.
Add sender information to the saved files - If checked, MessageSave will set Title, Subject and Author file summary properties on the saved files.
You can view these properties by right-clicking on a file -> "Properties" -> "Summary" tab. You can also add these properties to the file explorer view by going to "View" -> "Choose Details..." menu and selecting "Subject" and/or "Author" in the "Details" check list.
Note: This feature works on NTFS file systems only.
Show a progress dialog - If checked, MessageSave will display a progress dialog when saving a large number of messages.
Include Mailbox name in folder name - If checked, MessageSave appends the name of the top-most folder for your inbox as the first level subfolder. You can use this setting along with the "Use Outlook folder name" Subfolder Naming option to store messages from different mailboxes/PSTs in different folders on the hard disk.
Use relative folder names - If checked, MessageSave limits the folder hierarchy to start in the Outlook folder you currently have selected.
Include attachment information in txt format - If checked, MessageSave includes name of attachments in the saved messages when using "txt" format.
Do not display "Save Messages" dialog - If checked, MessageSave does not display the standard "Save Messages" dialog. Once enabled, you can disable this option using the "Tools" -> "MessageSave" -> "Advanced Options" Menu Command.
Open the destination directory after saving messages - If checked, MessageSave will open the destination folder in Windows Explorer after saving messages.

History Tab

Remember which messages have been saved - If checked, MessageSave keeps track of which messages it has processed.
Do not save messages which have been saved before - If checked, MessageSave will only save messages which have not been saved before.
Clear Save Folder History - This button will clear the drop-down with "Save To" folder history in the main MessageSave window.

Logging

MessageSave has an option to keep a log of all saved messages. The log file includes the following fields:

Message subject
Sender name
Sender email address
Saved message file path
Status code ("OK", "Not Saved", "Failed")
Status explanation
Error code

Log is saved in CSV (comma-separated values) format. The easiest way to read the log is to open it in Excel. (Simply rename the file by changing its file extension to ".csv" and double-click to open it in Excel). You can use the full power of Excel to search, filter, and digest the log files.

The following options control logging:

Log MessageSave activity - If enabled, MessageSave will log every saved message name in a log file.
LogDirectory - Specify log file location.

Custom Field Tab

MessageSave has an option to prompt users for a custom piece of information to be used when saving messages. Most often this functionality is used to associate information such as case or matter number for lawyers, project name for consultants, etc.

Custom field related options:

Prompt Text - Text to be displayed to the user when asking for the custom field value.
Include in file name - Includes the custom value as part of the file name.
Include in subfolder name - Creates subfolders based on the custom value.

Scheduler Tab

MessageSave integrates with the Windows Task Scheduler to enable scheduled message archiving.

To schedule a MessageSave run:

Click the "Configure MessageSave Schedule" button. You will see the standard Windows Task Scheduler dialog:
Click on the "Schedule" tab:
Click the "New" button and specify start time:
Click "OK". Windows will prompt you for your password:
Enter it and click "OK".

Automatic new message saving and processing

MessageSave implements an Outlook custom rule action that allows you to automatically save newly arrived messages matching a certain criteria.
To create a rule with MessageSave:

Create a Rule Wizard rule that matches the messages which you would like to save.
In the "What do you want to do with the message?" step check the "perform a custom action" option.
Click on "a custom action" in the "Rule Description" window.
Select "MessageSave" in the "Choose an action to be performed" drop-down box.
Click on the "Change..." button.
Select "Save Messages" options.
Note: These options are specific to the rule. Different rules can have different options.
Click the "OK" button to save the rule options.
Click the "OK" button in the "Select Custom Action" window.
Finish creating the rule as usual.

Please refer to Outlook documentation for details on creating and working with rules.

Note: If you are running Outlook 2002, please install Service Pack 2 in order to use the custom action functionality.

Generating RSS files

See this page for details on MessageSave RSS support.

Uninstallation

To uninstall MessageSave

Launch Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs.
Select MessageSave (remove only).
Click the "Change/Remove" ("Add/Remove") button.
Follow the uninstaller instructions.

If you have questions that were not answered by this document, try our support page.

Thank you for using MessageSave.