Just 1 day into trial mode of this behemoth of a program (DTPO) and I am seeking opinion or advice on whether people find it best to create a separate database for emails or to merge them in with related groups for standard files (doc, pdf, etc.).
I like the idea of a “one stop shopping” approach where I can search both emails and files at the same time (I suppose you can do this even if you create two separate database??), but I am concerned that I may be designing a chaotic nightmare.
I create different databases for different customers/projects. My first approach was to archive every email related to that customer/project in the relevant database. Then that grew to be a lot of data that I wasn’t frequently using. So, I move the email archives to separate databases. Then, I found I used that source even less. Along about then, Lion came along with much-improved email search features. So, now I keep everything in mailboxes accessed through Mail, and copy over to DTPO the few selected emails that are most germane to an issue or task.
As a general rule of thumb, IMO, DTPO databases can be large and useful – the key concept is “useful” – if you find that you have data for its own sake, then it’s probably time to free up space in the database. That’s what I found with my own evolving email archiving approach.
(FWIW, I also use MailSteward for my secure offline email archive - which is purpose-built and more robust for search and retrieval (especially attachments) than DTPO.)