Delete the original upon replying

[Guest]

I want to automaticaaly delete the original message when I reply. This way I do not have to keep tract of a string of messages. How do I do it?

 

[*Vanguard*]

I want to automaticaaly delete the original message when I reply.
This way I do not have to keep tract of a string of messages. How do
I do it?

Sounds like you are assuming all participants are including a copy of
the original message (and every reply made so far before they add their
reply). Takes only one person to not include the original message to
wipe out the historical listing of replies in an e-mail that has bounced
around a lot. It also doesn't take into acccount replies from several
recipients to which you only reply to one of them. How are you going to
prove something was said previously when respondents snipped out
portions of the e-mail to which you later replied but then only retained
that last partial version?

YOU don't have to keep tract of the chain of messsages (i.e., the
thread). Let Outlook do that. A couple ideas:

- Change the view (View -> Current View -> By conversation topic) to
group messages by their topic (i.e., Subject). This will let you group
all messages with the same topic in the same expandable node.

- Use sorting in the view (View -> Current View -> Customize current
view -> Sorting) to sort first by Subject (ascending or descending) and
then by Received (your choice). Then you can quickly find the topic and
see all the messages together for it. The only advantage is using
sorting over grouping is that you get to see the date, size, and other
columns without having to expand the group node first.

However, this could lead to same-Subject messages getting grouped
together. Although the SMTP server will add a Message-ID header to
identify your message, a reply will not include the headers for the
original e-mail so there is no means to track messages by their message
ids to group them together (as can be done with newsgroup messages). So
grouping by the topic (Subject) is about the only way to thread them,
but obviously the Subject may not be unique for unrelated messages.

If you simply do not want to see those original messages (and don't want
to do the manual deletes or moves) then maybe you want to hide the read
messages (View -> Current View -> Unread messages). However, invariably
users comes back to the newsgroup wondering why e-mails are disappearing
because they forgot about using this view.

I didn't see an option or rule that would let you delete a message when
using it as a template for reply. When the compose window is open for
the reply, and since you could also edit the original message, how is
Outlook going to know to which message you are replying, especially
since you could save the message in the Drafts folder for awhile and the
original may not even be around at the time you get around to actually
sending your reply?