I’m not sure if it’s the worst thing about being editor of a national magazine or the best thing, but I get many, many emails from readers every day. Sometimes they’re nice; other times they’re not. And sometimes they’re quite simply useful – such as this one.

“Hi, I am looking for a program for deleting (my) sent emails over a short period of time. I have heard of such programs, but I do not know if there is one out yet/name of it.

“Ex: send an email to a person and have the message self delete over a X amount of days or hours (self set parameters). Maybe you or one of your colleague’s know. I appreciate your time and efforts.”

Now I didn’t know the answer to that one, but it forced me to do some digging and find out the answer. As ever, Outlook’s Help system is never one to give you a straight response when it can talk in riddles, but it’s all down to AutoArchiving.

Step 1: Right-click on the Sent Items folder

Step 2: Click Properties

Step 3: Select the AutoArchive tab

Step 4: Select the “Archive this folder using these settings” radio button, and then choose your settings as you desire.

Obviously, you can do exactly the same thing for any folder in Outlook.