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Step 1
Open Outlook Express or your mail program to access your inbox. Go through your inbox and delete all the emails you do not want to save. Go into the "Deleted Items" folder and empty it by right clicking on it. Next, go into the "Sent Items" folder and delete all emails you do not want to save. You now have only emails that you want to keep.
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Step 2
Decide on the type of custom folders you want to create. Perhaps you need folders for family, hometown stuff, business, recipes and jokes. Any type of custom folder you create stays only in your inbox, so you can create whatever you want.
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Step 3
Create a new custom folder by right clicking on the word "Inbox" in Outlook Express. A menu will pop up with the words "New Folder". Click on "New Folder" and a box will pop up asking you to name the folder. Name this folder whatever you've decided; for example if you have a lot of business information in emails, name the custom folder "Business Info". Type the name of the new folder in the box and click on "Ok" to finish creating a custom folder.
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Step 4
Continue making as many custom folders for your inbox as needed. When you are finished making custom folders, you are ready to put your saved emails in them. You can either click the email and drag it into the new folder, or you can right click the email. When you right click the email, a box pops up with "Move to Folder" and a list of all your custom folders. Just click on the folder you want to move the saved email into.
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Step 5
Create archives by creating custom folders but name and date them. An archive is usually a group of items from a certain date. For example, you can create an archive for the year or month. If you create archives for the month, name it January, Feb., etc. At the end of each month, save the emails you want to archive to your custom folder.
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Step 6
Make a yearly archive. At the end of the year, create another folder to archive the whole year. To add each monthly archive to the end of the year archive, open the monthly archive. Click on "January" to access the January archive in your inbox. Click on the first email in the archive folder. Go to the top of the page and click on "Edit", then click on "Select All". All the saved emails in "January" are now highlighted. Go back to the "Edit" button and click on "Move to Folder"; select the yearly archive folder you've just made and all the emails are now transferred to the yearly archive.
