Information management

[Peter Maddern]

I'm looking for software that can help me track down project related
information buried within my outlook e-mails and my Microsoft office
documents. It is a time-consuming manual process to do searches on outlook
e-mails and then do a separate search on my office Word and Excel files.
The searches are also quite slow to produce results.

Is Microsoft Access the right tool for me? Can it import Outlook e-mails
and files from within Microsoft office and files from other non Microsoft
programs and can I then search these for keywords and get the results very
quickly?

Or would I be better off with something like AskSam?
Peter Maddern
North Wales, UK

[TC]

Access, like any other database product, is usually best in dealing with
information that has a regular structure; eg. customer invoices. It is not
the best tool for doing wide-rangine searches of free-form information like
emails & documents. Sure you could import that data into Access, but I'd be
looking for a more appropriate tool.

Googling on:

email "office document" "information management"

gave hundreds of promising hits. Perhaps start there.

HTH,
TC
"Peter Maddern" <Pm**@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:bp**********@titan.btinternet.com...

I'm looking for software that can help me track down project related
information buried within my outlook e-mails and my Microsoft office
documents. It is a time-consuming manual process to do searches on outlook e-mails and then do a separate search on my office Word and Excel files.
The searches are also quite slow to produce results.

Is Microsoft Access the right tool for me? Can it import Outlook e-mails
and files from within Microsoft office and files from other non Microsoft
programs and can I then search these for keywords and get the results very
quickly?

Or would I be better off with something like AskSam?
Peter Maddern
North Wales, UK

[Bingo]

"Peter Maddern" <Pm**@btinternet.com> wrote in
news:bp**********@titan.btinternet.com:

I'm looking for software that can help me track down project
related information buried within my outlook e-mails and my
Microsoft office documents. It is a time-consuming manual
process to do searches on outlook e-mails and then do a separate
search on my office Word and Excel files. The searches are also
quite slow to produce results.

Is Microsoft Access the right tool for me? Can it import
Outlook e-mails and files from within Microsoft office and files
from other non Microsoft programs and can I then search these
for keywords and get the results very quickly?

Or would I be better off with something like AskSam?
Peter Maddern
North Wales, UK

You can export all the messages into a csv file or an Access file
easily. Then make a basic form with a wildcard search. I did this
successfully in a few minutes. I wouldn't base a whole application
on it, but for Q & D, it works.